Liz Pulliam Weston reports on 7 Hot 401(k) Trends that work to give the relatively mature tax-advantaged retirement account system more credibility. The seven points, with my take mixed in: Making retirement saving automatic. As in automatic participation for qualified employees; non-participation was a surprisingly high percentage of qualified employees (almost 30%). This is amazing … Read more
The March 2006 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine has a feature called “Good Looks for Less.” They outfit a number of rooms with various accoutrements, divided into “save” and “splurge” columns. The “save” columns contained the thrifty options: $10 for a can of stain to update a kitchen island $13 for a can … Read more
A nice overview article on shopping around for auto insurance on Money Central today: Shopping for Auto Insurance It has a good combination of topics: Some tips to use Some pitfalls to avoid A list of risk factors that contribute to your premium Brief explanations of the types of coverage you might get One caveat … Read more
Last week I had the excellent opportunity to be interviewed by Scott at the Money Blogger Podcast. Scott asks great questions; I’ll leave it up to your judgment whether I provided great answers or not! 🙂 And if you’re in a podcast sort of mood, Scott also interviewed Jim, Cap, Flexo, ~Dawn, and Jonathan! Enjoy … Read more
Any predictions for future asset values involve assumptions about the rates of return of particular investments. Usually there’s a history to look at — perhaps a very long history of over a century — so you can at least say with confidence how a particular investment has done in the past. Of course, there’s always … Read more
The March, 2006, issue of Money magazine talks about what to do when going out to dinner with someone who makes a lot more, or a lot less, than you do. It’s also online: Through Thick and Thin Wallets — Ryan D’Agostino The main tactics the article mentions to smooth things over, if you make … Read more
Ran across this article on Yahoo! Finance by Robert Kiyosaki: Putting Debt to Work for You The article describes his and his wife’s experiences with making a down payment for a house — with credit card debt. This strategy ended up working for them, so the story goes, as they bought properties from which they … Read more
Sometimes people will take on debt to start up their businesses — from $7,000 up! If you already have debt, it doesn’t seem to make semse to take on more. Starting a business can be an avenue not only to debt reduction, but also to financial independence. There’s certainly a lot of effort to get … Read more