Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
On the subject of things that don’t seem to make sense……. Kiplinger has an article about how consumer confidence is at a 4 year high. I confess. This just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Gas prices are at an all time high, interest rates are rising which could have multiple impacts on consumers (credit card rates increasing, adjustable mortgages going up etc),
It’s been a little quiet on the blog posting front the last few days. We celebrated the Easter holiday at our house so there was plenty of preparations for that, and what has really kept me busy is that I took a new job within my company. It should be more exciting and a completely different technology than I have been working with so I’ll
Take a look at this article that talks about how to pay for that next family vacation. Basically, the article states that you should plan ahead a bit. If the vacation is important to you, then why not make it a priority all year long to put aside a bit of money. He also talks about potential ways to save on other things to make
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
I was going to write a post about Oprah’s debt diet. (Their “finale” was yesterday) but I found that “It’s Just Money” did a good job and said pretty much everything I was thinking. One part of the show that I found a little annoying was their level of enthusiasm about declaring, “Great news. You are going to be a millionaire”. I guess I would
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
If I had a nickel for every time someone snubbed their nose at me for my saving habits I could probably retire now. For some reason people like to offer their point of view in small ways. If you are a saver, you’ve heard them too: “You don’t have caller ID? It’s only $5.95 a month. Dude. Don’t be so cheap” “What are you saving
I continue to be amazed at how our home values keep increasing in our neighborhood. Prices are going up so much, that it almost makes me wonder when they’ll come back down. At some point, with interest rates going up, and prices going up, there won’t be any buyers that can afford to buy these houses. When I moved in to our house 3 years
Well, here it is February. The holiday season is over and the debt hangover is finally taking shape. Holy smokes! You spent a lot of money on presents this year. Well, there’s only one way to overcome this hangover. Save LOTS of money on things. With all of the money you’ll save with these groundbreaking ideas, you are sure to pull yourself up and out