by: Hazzard
Last week I was invited to attend a financial event at the local baseball stadium. A friend of mine has been a client of a major investment/insurance company for years and was encouraged to bring a couple friends to this small event. (There were about 70 people total) I’m normally not very interested to attend speaking engagements like this but because it was at the
by: Hazzard
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time going over my spreadsheets and playing with various scenarios for our retirement. I often wonder how long I need to work before I can walk away and have enough to last the rest of my life. In reality, I think my wife will live much longer than I will so most of my scenarios ensure that she
by: Hazzard
I’ve recently found myself surpassing some financial milestones that I never thought I’d see. Our retirement accounts are at levels that I used to just dream about when I was first starting out. Never underestimate the power of consistent contributions and compound interest, that’s for sure. As I was sitting here looking over the numbers I started to wonder why I’d always thought these milestones
by: Hazzard
Lately I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the idea of tiny houses. I stumbled on to a Youtube channel that shows lots of different examples of people living in a smaller footprint. In this day and age, we are living in much larger houses than ever. During the economic downturn, I started to read about how builders were starting to build smaller houses to keep costs
by: Hazzard
I love this time of year. The anticipation of the next few month’s financial boosts always gets me feeling good. Once we’ve gone through those, then summer is right around the corner. So, what am I talking about? In February we get our annual bonus at work. In March, it’s our annual raises, and at our house we usually get a tax return about that
by: Hazzard
This year we worked hard to plan our shopping out ahead of time for Christmas and do as much shopping as we could online. We also tried to moderate how much money we were spending, not because we were concerned about how much but more because we just don’t need a lot and are becoming more and more conscious of “stupid spending”. By planning ahead,
by: Hazzard
I was doing some analysis the other day about my family’s spending patterns and noticed something. Since 2004, our spending hasn’t increased when I look at our monthly budget. In 2012, we are on track to keep our fixed expenses at 43% of our after tax, after investment income. That means that, after we’ve contributed to our 401K’s, invested for our daughter’s college and paid
by: Hazzard
I don’t know if I should admit this or not, but I’ve been spending too much time on Reddit lately. If you aren’t familiar with Reddit, it’s a website that sucks you in and never lets you leave. Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic but the reality is that there is SO much content on Reddit that it’s hard to walk away from it. If
by: Hazzard
I think they should write a book about people that have buyer’s remorse, or at least sort of have buyer’s remorse. I walked in to an Apple store a couple days ago and bought a 32GB Iphone 5. For those of you that don’t follow Apple products as if they were a cult object, that means I spent $299 on the phone. I also decided
Yesterday, my daughter went to the store with my wife to find a birthday present for my nephew. My daughter made sure to take her little money box with her in case she saw something that she wanted. She keeps her allowance in an old plastic mayonnaise container that we had in the cupboard. Anyway, I dropped them off and ran to another store while