The surest way to work toward saving money each month is to reduce debt. Here are some ways to do that …. Being in debt simply means that at one point you borrowed money to fund some purchase, and are now paying it back over time. (For the purpose of this post, I’m not going … Read more
Income streams are important. If you have one, or more, consider yourself blessed. Make sure you protect them … If you’re like me, you have a job, and you also may have money invested and in savings. Your investments may have lost some, or a lot, of their value over the past months. But you … Read more
(By the way, NCN has a new podcast out after taking a break for a few months. He talks about staying true to the basics in this one.) In times of plenty it’s natural to want to enjoy more of what life has to offer. When people feel rich, they feel the draw to supersize … Read more
At the beginning of this series, I mentioned that part of the reason for the series was to remind myself of the basics of wise personal finance. The risk in doing that was that I would run across one (or more) of the basics that I was utterly incompetent in, and would need to write … Read more
(I thought that Thoreau said that word three times in a row in Walden but it was only twice. Oh well.) Simplify, simplify, simplify. As in make things simpler. As in get rid of the minutiae that weigh you down. Here are some suggestions for freeing up money and freeing up time by freeing up … Read more
Resoling your shoes. Patching a pair of jeans. Repairing a clothes dryer. Doing regular maintenance on your vehicle. Making things go a little further. Making do a little longer. Making things last. Dr. Thomas Stanley, late author of The Millionaire Mind, found that economically-productive households were more likely to “extend the lifecycle” on possessions like … Read more
Pretty much any good personal finance resource you run across will talk about this: Spend less than you earn. All this means is that your expenses (everything that leaves your wallet) are less than your income (everything that enters your wallet). If you’re spending more than you bring in, you’ll have to borrow the difference. … Read more
Millions of people in the US are feeling at least a little pain as the market whipsaws and home values go down. The people feeling the most pain now have more mortgage debt than they can handle, the inability to refinance that debt, perhaps a lot of credit card debt, and maybe even unemployment. People … Read more