Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
I have to admit I’m still really enjoying Mint.com. For the first time in many years, I’m tracking my actual expenses against my budgeted expenses. The reason I’m doing this is because Mint has made it so easy. As long as we use our credit or debit cards for purchases, they all automatically download in to Mint and are assigned in to the right category.
I’ve been sitting on the sideline when it comes to signing up for an online tool that allows me to get a consolidated view of all my investment and bank accounts. The main reason is that I didn’t want to offer up my account logins for fear of creating extra drama in my life. I finally bit the bullet yesterday and am somewhat surprised at
Okay, so the title is probably a little bit inflammatory. I’ve heard more than a few people talking about what they should do with their money during an economic downturn. Of course there probably isn’t any one answer to this depending on your circumstances but I am doing a couple things to give myself some peace of mind. Step 1: We keep about $1000 in
From the beginning of my investment career I have always thought that if you weren’t in stock with all your money then you were probably missing out on some returns. That was especially true as I watched the dot com era and then the latest run up in stock prices. While I did keep most of my investments in index funds, I have always had
I was watching a show called "Airline" recently and watched as two passengers were refused entrance on to their flight. They had been drinking too much and were somewhat drunk and belligerent. The younger of the two people started saying he wanted his money back and was directed to the ticket counter to receive it. On the way, he made all kinds of drunken comments
I have to confess something. We’ve been running with a dangerously low emergency fund balance for quite some time. It all stems from building the lake house and all the costs associated with doing that. We have finally caught up with everything from construction and are working hard to start building our emergency fund back up. How bad is it? Well, we are currently running
Okay, I know. That’s a little harsh. I’m trying very hard not to be bitter about having to spend upwards of $1 trillion dollars to rescue our economy. As hard as I try not to be a little bitter about it, I’m not having a lot of luck. Maybe it’s because I’m not confident that this "rescue" will really save anything. Regardless of whether they
My wife, daughter and I were sitting at the breakfast table this morning when my daughter, who’s 5, randomly told my wife, "There are a lot of advertisements that are just trying to take our money." Over the last year or so when we are reading the paper and looking at advertisements I’ve tried to make a point to our daughter that sometimes you can
What a horrendous market this week. I guess it’s not really a surprise that things are headed south. I’ve been worrying about the overall economy and all of our country’s debt for a long time. So, if a simple guy like me is worrying about it, there must be a real problem. I’m actually not all that terribly worried about the market. I have $10,000
Over and over I read about various people’s plans for creating retirement income. You know the one thing that they have in common? They all have different approaches. There is no “one size fits all” approach to retirement out there. Many of us do not know what will happen after retirement, we may be fine financially, but illness can occur and the need for a philadelphia home
