I was going to write a post about Oprah’s debt diet. (Their “finale” was yesterday) but I found that “It’s Just Money” did a good job and said pretty much everything I was thinking. One part of the show that I found a little annoying was their level of enthusiasm about declaring, “Great news. You are going to be a millionaire”. I guess I would
Picking Stocks and Mutual Funds is a Pain!
One thing that I’ve been doing is trying to learn more about stocks. I have a friend of mine who damn near seems like Warren Buffet. He learned his skills from a family member and has shown me some amazing stocks. I’m not someone who just wants the latest stock “tip”, rather, I’d prefer to understand how to find the stock myself. So, over a
Interesting Observation About my Financial Journey
This morning I was going through our investments/assets/expenses which I keep in a custom excel document that I created a few years ago. This spreadsheet includes multiple tabs, and a couple charts. I call this my Financial Dashboard. At a glance I can easily see all the figures that make up my net worth. It also shows me what my expenses are, what percentage of
Keeping Up With the Jones’ Happens in Many Ways!
If I had a nickel for every time someone snubbed their nose at me for my saving habits I could probably retire now. For some reason people like to offer their point of view in small ways. If you are a saver, you’ve heard them too: “You don’t have caller ID? It’s only $5.95 a month. Dude. Don’t be so cheap” “What are you saving
Real Estate is a Funny Thing
I continue to be amazed at how our home values keep increasing in our neighborhood. Prices are going up so much, that it almost makes me wonder when they’ll come back down. At some point, with interest rates going up, and prices going up, there won’t be any buyers that can afford to buy these houses. When I moved in to our house 3 years
More Money Saving Tips from ELYM
Well, here it is February. The holiday season is over and the debt hangover is finally taking shape. Holy smokes! You spent a lot of money on presents this year. Well, there’s only one way to overcome this hangover. Save LOTS of money on things. With all of the money you’ll save with these groundbreaking ideas, you are sure to pull yourself up and out
Random Thoughts
Can I tell you a secret? Money management is kind of boring once you put a lot of things on autopilot. I know that automatically investing in my ROTH, and automatically investing in my 401k is the right thing to do but it just isn’t sexy. The money just goes in every two weeks and automatically buys a couple index funds. No adrenaline. No euphoria.
Only way to Accumulate a Million is Via the Lottery?
Now, this article was a bit shocking to me, even though I’ve heard many of the statistics before. I knew that a lot of people don’t have a good understanding of how to build wealth over time, but 21% of the population thinking the easiest way to do it is by winning the lottery? And it’s higher depending on which demographic you look at. What
Make the Decision to Take Control
Suze Orman has some words of wisdom. She cites how everyone can save an extra $5000 per year by trimming lots of little expenses all year long. There are a few that work for me, such as stretching out the length of time between expensive haircuts, or saving the change from every purchase and then putting that money in the bank. What I think Suze
Don’t Let your Cash Cow Die!
The more time I spend browsing through all of the great personal finance blogs out here, the more I think about how it’s just too bad that so many people in the U.S. (and elsewhere for that matter), are so stressed out about their finances and could really benefit from reading these blogs. It’s too bad that they don’t take any interest in personal finance.