Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
I keep reading about all the people that are one step from doomsday. Most of these people are dealing with adjustable rate mortgage increases. Why did they get an adjustable rate mortgage in the last couple years? From a purely financial perspective, it seemed like a riskier approach because interest rates were some of the lowest in 40 years. I can appreciate that the low
Awhile back I watched a series called “Country Boys” on PBS. The series was about two young men who were dealing with life in Kentucky. One guy, “Chris” lived in what I would call utter poverty. His family lived in a single wide mobile. His dad was a lifelong alcoholic that ultimately died of liver disease. His mother was an uneducated woman who drifted from
There is no question that my weakness in life has been automobiles. I just love them. There is also no question that nothing has had a higher impact on my net worth. Due to the crazy housing market, there is no question that my house has helped me increase my net worth significantly. Sure, there have been expenses to deal with, but I’ve still seen
When my wife and I got married, we talked about having kids and what we would do. I would always say, “I think you should go back to work after we have a child” and she would always say, “Maybe I should be a stay at home mom”. We would talk about it every now and then but we pretty much kept the same points
I have to admit I wasn’t as impressed with the latest “Millionaire in the Making” series on CNNMoney. I do think I need to cut these folks some slack because they are doing better than a lot of people. I think that changing careers in their 40’s and not coming to the realization that saving/investing was so critical when they were young probably plays in to
If you haven’t noticed, over the last few months I’ve pretty much kept clam about my financial state. I took down all of my financial details because a few of my friends found my blog. Me, being the rocket scientist that I am, didn’t do a very good job of creating an anonymous name. Had I made up a completely new name for myself when
Well, as some of you may have noticed, I took down the details of our net worth. I did this for a couple reasons. I decided that I didn’t want to put that level of detail out any more and not long after making that decision, a few of my friends discovered this blog. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed of where our net
I was reading a comment on My Open Wallet and it got me to thinking. What does good money management mean to you? As I’ve talked to people that have struggled with money I never realized that their definition of good money management and mine were completely different. My definition of good money management is that you have a plan, you know how much money
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
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