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IT'S time to come clean about our dirty credit card habits and how we can avoid them eroding our wealth. While we've all been slowly reducing our outstanding credit card balances, with $34 billion still owing, they remain the scourge of most families. It's fair to say credit cards are the most potent weapon of mass financial destruction since the loan shark. Their convenience and flexibility means it's so easy for them to get out of hand and lead to serious financial distress. We need to be vigilant in ensuring our credit cards work for us and don't destroy our finances. To avoid getting into trouble in the first place, or get back in control of an existing debt, here are our five golden rules for using credit cards.

What is a stock dividend? A stock dividend is the payment a trader obtains from the company he/she is presently investing in. The company pays the dividend from the earning it acquired within its financial year. Hence, if the company does not make a profit, dividends are not likely to be given to the investor. The dividend is generally paid in two parts, an interim and a final dividend. This means an investor who has shares in a company for one year; he or she will ordinarily obtain two lump sum payments annually (most often as cash payments). To collect a dividend, you must have the stock before the ex-dividend date. The dividend is given to the investor on the payment schedule set by each individual company. The dates can be obtained from a company's official website in the investor relations section.

Is there anything that big government does well? I mean sure, our military is really pretty practiced at breaking things and shooting people; which (I guess) explains why they are being sent to fight Ebola. (If that logic escapes you, don't worry… I think a lot of us feel that way.) And yeah, the IRS is pretty good at separating me from my hard-earned money; but, then again, so is liberals. We on the right have been asking it for decades… And we still haven't been able to solicit a single honest answer from defenders of of the state. In fact, satire, sarcasm, and a little incredulity, is the general response from our esteemed colleagues on the other side of the ideological divide.

Democratic presidents tend to preside over better economies than Republican ones, but that may be down to pure luck, according to a recent paper from Alan Blinder and Mark Watson at Princeton. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. economy has grown at an average real rate of 4.35% under Democratic presidents and only 2.54% under Republicans. So what gives? "Democrats would no doubt like to attribute the large D-R growth gap to better macroeconomic policies, but the data do not support such a claim," they write. "It seems we must look instead to several variables that are mostly 'good luck.'" Three factors can explain 46-62% of the growth gap, according to the paper. Here are the reasons (via James Hamilton): Oil shocks. With the exception of Jimmy Carter, oil price shocks tend to dog Republican administrations more. The 1956-57 Suez Crisis, early-70s OPEC embargo, 1980 Iran-Iraq War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 all happened during Republican administrations. Productivity. It's hard to say that a U.S. president is responsible here, but Democrats tend to see bigger gains in productivity. Bill Clinton, for example, enjoyed a big boost in U.S. productivity during the 1990s. Consumer confidence. Consumers tend to have a rosier outlook on the U.S. economy in the first year a Democrat is in the White House. "Yet the superior growth record under Democrats is not forecastable by standard techniques, which means it cannot be attributed to superior initial conditions," they write. Chalk this one up to luck again, but it does come "tantalizingly close to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which consumers correctly expect the economy to do better under Democrats, then make that happen by purchasing more consumer durables."

Financial advisers stress that there are several money lessons everyone in their 20s should know. For example, start saving at least 10 percent of your monthly income. Changing your financial state requires a kind of time travel to commune with your future self. Where do you want to be in 10, 20 years? Are you on the right path, or heading in the wrong direction? The time value of money-that is, how savings, investments and debt levels compound with the passing of years-means that money habits, good or bad, created when we start to earn cash echo into the decades that follow. And a whispered bit of wisdom up front can keep you from howling over your mistakes later in life. We polled our NerdWallet network of Ask an Advisor certified financial planners about the greatest regrets and lessons you should learn in your 20s, 30s and 40s. Taken together, these could be considered 12 steps toward securing your financial future. And they all hinge on two keys skills we must learn-and often relearn-in our money lives: prepare and stick to a budget, and establish good savings habits. We'll address the 30s and 40s later this week, but first: your 20s. "Understand that the world has changed. You will be more responsible for your financial future in regard to earning a living, retirement planning, funding and investing, health insurance coverage and costs and less coverage through government programs," says Jerome Deutsch, managing director of U.S. Institutional Markets for Index Strategy Advisors in Decatur, Georgia. "Learn, plan and live mindfully and with a long-term perspective. It may not sound like fun, but you have a long life ahead of you."