Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
My brother in law and I had a good conversation about money today while we were all visiting at my mom’s house. For those few readers that have been reading ELYM for awhile, you’ll remember that my mom and dad had a massive fire at their house back in December and then my father passed away two weeks later (from a heart attack). Anyway, my
It’s already been a very busy spring and summer for us here. We’ve got lots of things going on although the lake house is definitely taking most of our time. Our net worth has continued increasing at a relatively good pace. While I’m not posting too many specifics anymore I still like to list some of the more general percentages. Overall annual increase: 33% Month
I’m so close I can almost taste it. (Although, I’m not really sure what $100,000 tastes like). After almost 6 years on the job, my 401k is about to hit $100,000. I would have already hit the mark if I hadn’t scaled back my contributions to help offset our vacation home purchase (scaled back to 8% to get all the company match) but I expect that
The first thing I thought about when I read this story is, “That million isn’t going to last long”. This woman found a $10 bill on the ground and then used it to buy lottery tickets. She’s glad she did because she won a $1 million dollar jackpot. The article says that she has 9 maxed out credit cards and $8500 in debt from an
I just noticed there is a new “millionaire in the making” that I hadn’t seen. Jeanette Courts is a divorced 38 year old mom who works for the Pentagon making 94,000 per year. Here is a summary of her net worth: Government Thrift Savings Plan: $107,000Roth IRA: $6,000Savings Bonds: $2,000Online savings account: $10,000Brokerage account: $1,000Other savings: $4,000Home equity: $190,000 Jeanette is looking good. I’d say
It seems like such an easy question to answer. Of course the answer varies from person to person, but let’s just say that you know what you need to have when you retire. If you would like to retire with an annual retirement income of $50,000, you are going to need to have roughly a million dollars at retirement age. This assumes that you are able
I have posted about this subject before but I recently read an article that did a good job of explaining this. A professor got access to a database of people that have been participating in a study for the last 25 years. It started when they were in college and now these people are in their forties. While the original study didn’t cover finances, it
The idea of not having a mortgage payment and truly owning my house makes me salivate like a dog standing over a nice medium rare T-bone steak. I’ve been prepaying on my mortgage for a few years to knock some of the interest off and pay my home off early. I’ve taken a very unscientific approach to paying the mortgage off early. I’ve simply added
I guess it’s a sign that it’s getting harder for the banks and mortgage companies to find someone to loan money to. I continue to get more letters from various lenders telling me that I am qualified to either refinance my home mortgage with them or take equity out of my home. The latest is from my actual mortgage company. The top of the page
Here is a post that was previously posted back in March of 2005. If you haven’t reviewed the ELYM archives, you may want to take a peek. ———- As you’ve read through all of these articles, have you found yourself thinking that you should have done a few things different? Could you be better off now if you had made different decisions earlier on? Do