Personal Finance

5 Reasons You Should NEVER, EVER Sell Your Pension

June 2, 2013

Over the past several years, we’ve seen every manner of “financial innovation” which ultimately led to hardship. We’ve seen the securitization of mortgage loans which helped fuel the housing boom/bust, we’ve seen reverse mortgages leaving many seniors and heirs in the dust and now, there’s a major move afoot to buy pensions from Americans. Sure, [...]

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Should I Do a Home Equity Loan OR Not?

May 13, 2013

Since we’ve decided to stay in our home semi-permanently (whatever that means – we decided to forgo new construction, put an anchor in our backyard and not move), I’ve been thinking more about enacting some longer-term, higher cost projects around the house like new windows, replacing the front door, etc. These are things we know [...]

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What’s a Stay at Home Mom Worth?

May 7, 2013

There’s a recent study out stating that a mom is worth about $60,000 based on the type and amount of work she does if these services were rendered on the open market.  First of all, this study is quite flawed in my opinion and doesn’t reflect in any way any typical family since the standard [...]

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Extreme Early Retirement – Mainly a Myth Except for Hippies and Drifters

March 31, 2013

I was reading the other day about extreme early retirement (CNBC) where they profiled a few people who were retiring much younger than what you might consider even “early” retirement at 55 or so. In one case, it’s a 40 year-old retirement target – so sure, that counts as pretty extreme early retirement.  But I’m [...]

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Here’s Everything I’ve Done with my Money by NOT Having an Emergency Fund

March 24, 2013

The traditional personal finance advice is that everyone needs an emergency fund, often with absurdly unrealistic amounts of cash (6 month’s salary or more) stashed in a savings account losing money to inflation.  This is a horrible waste of capital in my opinion and while my approach isn’t for everyone, I also want to highlight [...]

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Americans Spend Less and Less on Groceries Each Year. So Why Are We Broke?

March 3, 2013

During my weekend BusinessWeek reading (the only periodical worth receiving in print still IMO), I came across this chart of household grocery spending over the past few decades which I found intriguing.  It shows that as a percent of annual post-tax income, Americans continue to spend increasingly less each year.  Less than ANY OTHER COUNTRY in fact. [...]

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1/4 Americans Have More Credit Card Debt Than Savings – What Does That Really Mean?

February 27, 2013

There’s an article making the rounds this week that makes Americans look like crap.  Based on a recent survey, 24% of Americans have more credit card debt than assets held in emergency savings accounts.  On the face of it, that looks really bad.  1/4 is a highly representative number and we all know credit card [...]

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Fee Only vs. Asset-Based Financial Planners

February 24, 2013

I think anyone can come to the conclusion that financial planners who are paid on a commission model are probably the worst choice for savers. But once you get past the idea of a financial planner paid on commission, what’s the right choice – fee only advisers or asset-based advisers? Pros and Cons of Fee [...]

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Here’s My Budget Under a Microscope – FIXED and Variable Cost Reality

January 13, 2013

For all the talk about saving money by skipping the lattes and tearing Bounce sheets in half, many people don’t actually have any idea what their fixed costs are each month.  They know they spend up to – or over – their monthly paycheck, but they’re not really sure what’s fixed and what’s variable.  By [...]

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Personal Capital Review – All Your Financials in One Spot

January 13, 2013

Personal Capital is a one-stop shop for aggregating all your financial information in one spot in an automated fashion.  The beauty of the system is that once you connect all your financial institutions from banks to IRA, 401(k) accounts and more, your Personal Capital dashboard will aggregate everything in various views and can be customized [...]

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