I decided to write about this topic after talking to my recently married son and his new wife about some aspects of getting their finances in order that they hadn’t thought about. After a wedding, it’s easy to get distracted writing thank-you notes instead of doing important paperwork and planning related to your new legal status as a married couple.

The first thing that may come to mind is taxes. According to Geoffrey Kulik, a partner at Sterck Kulik O’Neill Accounting Group, Inc., newlyweds have to file their taxes for the entire year as either “married filing jointly” or “married filing separately.” “Because of the way the laws are written, this change of status could result in a significantly higher, Read more

The other day, I was about to hop in the back seat of my friend’s SUV, but I quickly changed my mind. The child safety seats—one for an infant and one for a preschooler—had been carefully installed and appeared to be permanently locked down.

Car seats have improved dramatically in both safety and design since they gained more widespread use in the ’70s. Today, most people know that young children should sit in the back of a car and use some kind of safety seat until they’re about 12 years old, depending on their weight. Read more

Back-to-school signals a fresh start: it’s time for new socks, new notebooks and new routines. With that in mind, here are some fresh ways to reorganize your home and make your school day routines flow with ease.

Find more back-to-school resources for Bay Area families

Create a family launch pad
A launch pad can help soften the pain of school-morning madness…at least according to Cynthia Ewer, editor of Organizedhome.com. Using bookshelves, hooks and cubbies, you can create an area for all of the things your family needs to get out the door in the morning. Read more

Here at American Ratings Corporation, creators of the Diamond Certified Resource, we love social media. Why?

Consider small-town America. Fifty years ago, the community epicenter might have been the local diner—you’d stop in for a cup of coffee and stay for the fellowship. In today’s world, small-town America is online and community centers have gone digital. Whether you’re catching up with a friend from high school, scrolling through pictures of your niece’s wedding or wondering how to remove wine stains from your carpet, social media channels are the places to connect. Read more

If you hate getting phone calls from telemarketers, you’ve probably done what I’ve done: signed up for the Do Not Call list, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created in 2003. So, why are we still getting illegal robocalls?

While the Do Not Call registry has reduced the number of unwanted calls from legitimate companies, according to EndRoboCalls.org, the FTC received more than 3 million complaints from annoyed consumers in 2014. (EndRoboCalls.org is an advocacy arm of Consumers Union and Consumer Reports magazine.) Read more

Watch this video for some helpful tips on choosing a new doctor. Read more

Parents, get ready, for they are coming.

Remember last September? Just after Labor Day, you sent them off with new lunchboxes, pointy pencils and extra-long pants. The classrooms unto which they were delivered smelled of fresh paint. They cried a little, and so did you. You went home to an empty house and drank a well-deserved, oddly uninterrupted cup of coffee.

Well, parents…eight PTA meetings, seven slumber parties, four music recitals and one soccer tournament later, your precious bundles of joy are coming back. Read more