Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
I wish I had a nickel for every time this question has popped in to my head. I thought about this a lot more when my net worth was quite low and I had just gotten started. It’s hard to imagine that you are on the right path to retirement when you only have $10,000 put away in your 401k or IRA. So how do you
I’m going to confess something. I absolutely love to hear about other people’s finances. Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m just a competitive jerk that loves to see how I stack up. Okay, that’s not true but I do love to see how I stack up relative to others in my age category. Knowing the details of someone else’s finances doesn’t help my financial
Earl Crawley earns $20,000 a year as a parking lot attendant. Even with such a small amount of income he has managed to create a nest egg of over $500,000 in the last 44 years. If Earl is not an inspiration to you then you are a lost cause. You know those simple savings tips that you read on all the PF blogs? They can
I read an article on Salon.com about a woman who’s 30 year old son won’t leave home. Not only will he not leave but he also won’t help share the costs of living there. Every time the mother brings up the fact that she really needs him to help with the costs, he blows up and gets angry. She’s afraid of making too big of
My brother in law and I had a good conversation about money today while we were all visiting at my mom’s house. For those few readers that have been reading ELYM for awhile, you’ll remember that my mom and dad had a massive fire at their house back in December and then my father passed away two weeks later (from a heart attack). Anyway, my
Wouldn’t you know it. I stick my neck out a bit and buy this second home. Further, I sink every nickel I’m making in to finishing the place. Then drama starts at work. I’ve been with my company for 6 years and was able to ride out post 9/11 while thousands and thousands of people got laid off. I’ve always been a high performer and shouldn’t have
I’m so close I can almost taste it. (Although, I’m not really sure what $100,000 tastes like). After almost 6 years on the job, my 401k is about to hit $100,000. I would have already hit the mark if I hadn’t scaled back my contributions to help offset our vacation home purchase (scaled back to 8% to get all the company match) but I expect that
I just noticed there is a new “millionaire in the making” that I hadn’t seen. Jeanette Courts is a divorced 38 year old mom who works for the Pentagon making 94,000 per year. Here is a summary of her net worth: Government Thrift Savings Plan: $107,000Roth IRA: $6,000Savings Bonds: $2,000Online savings account: $10,000Brokerage account: $1,000Other savings: $4,000Home equity: $190,000 Jeanette is looking good. I’d say
It seems like such an easy question to answer. Of course the answer varies from person to person, but let’s just say that you know what you need to have when you retire. If you would like to retire with an annual retirement income of $50,000, you are going to need to have roughly a million dollars at retirement age. This assumes that you are able
I have posted about this subject before but I recently read an article that did a good job of explaining this. A professor got access to a database of people that have been participating in a study for the last 25 years. It started when they were in college and now these people are in their forties. While the original study didn’t cover finances, it