Are you graduating from college with a great job waiting for you? If so, congratulations! Not all of your peers are so fortunate. I went straight to graduate school after college and was a “poor student” for quite a while: another six years after graduating from college. I quadrupled my salary when I left to … Read more
Allowances for children are a tricky matter. Whether to tie allowances to chores or not is just one question to consider. I still don’t think there’s one right answer but that doesn’t stop people from taking a stand. One of Gary North’s articles today (in his members’ section) has this headline: “Do You Pay Your … Read more
In my ten months of owning an investment property, things have run very smoothly. The mortgage is the same one that we had when we were living there; we had refinanced the loan in 2005 to cut 11 years off of our loan for only about $150 extra per month (we did a mortgage refinance … Read more
J. Money culled ten web domain names from his portfolio in an effort to clean out some of the mental financial clutter from his life. He had a bit of a domain-buying binge last year so there was room for culling. I have thirty-two domains in my Namecheap account. Some are for my wife’s projects … Read more
I have no doubt that my daughter understands negotiation. I don’t have to go any farther than the dinner table. JP (my daughter): “Daddy, can I be excused?” Me: “You need to finish your dinner first.” Three minutes later, pointing to her plate: JP: “How’s this, Daddy?” Me: “You’re not done yet.” Two minutes later, … Read more
I attended a wonderful holiday party this weekend. It was in a beautifully-decorated house. The food was abundant and delicious. The desserts were scrumptious. The family hosting the party was kind and gracious. I had never met them before that night. Nor any of the guests. The only person I knew there was another musician. … Read more
Easy: Plan A can go away without notice. J Money of Budgets Are Sexy was relieved of his Plan A. He was fired from his ~$70k/year job with basically no notice. The good news is that he was going to give his two weeks’ notice the next day. How’s that for timing? He had been … Read more
After you get to know someone for a while, you usually discover something that they do reasonably well — well enough that you say, “Wow! I didn’t know you could do that.” That level of proficiency doesn’t come without a fair amount of dedicated practice. They may or may not be at expert level, but it’s certainly … Read more