Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
It used to be that people would compare themselves with their family, friends and neighbors. It makes sense, if you think about it. People are most likely to compare themselves to what and who they see on a daily basis. If your neighbor buys a new car, you might be more inclined to feel the need to get yourself a new car. I mean, if
I happened upon an article today about a Law Professor named Todd Henderson. Todd discusses how unfair the expiring tax cuts are to his family. I’m not going to try to summarize it too much. Go read it HERE. Seriously, go read it. It’s interesting but what is FAR more interesting is the comments. There is a second article related to this HERE. This was
We received our tax assessment for the 2011 tax year today. Our assessed value dropped by $42,000. That’s on top of a $92,000 drop last year. WOW. Our assessed value has dropped by $134,000 in two years. If someone had told me that was going to happen a few years ago I would have looked at them in disbelief. Our home value has dropped by
Over the last few months my wife and I have been watching the implosion of some acquaintances of ours. Let’s call them Jack and Kris. When we first saw Jack and Kris we thought they were doing well. They drove two nice cars, had a nice new house and always dressed well. As we learned more about them, it was clear they were spending money
Well, this wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I guess the main thing to realize is that this is the average. If you are helping to increase the average, I’d say you are in bad shape, but if you are able to complete a college degree with average debt or lower, it seems like a good investment. I mean, many people
Think you know the single best thing you can do to save energy? A recent survey shows that most people don’t. The single best thing you can do to conserve energy and save money on your power bill is to swap out all of your light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. While you can certainly save money by vigilantly turning off lights around your house,
There are only a few things in life that are as easy as calculating a 10% discount. I think I grasped the concept at about age 7. Look at the total and move the decimal point one digit to the left to figure out what a 10% discount would be. For example a $10.00 total would yield a $1 discount. A $100.00 total would
I was browsing through my “Personal Finance†folder on my computer a couple of days ago and stumbled upon an old copy of my master budget/net worth spreadsheet from about 4 years ago. I’ve always enjoyed looking back at old copies of our finances because it reminds me of how far we’ve come. As I looked over the numbers on the spreadsheet, one number really
I was sitting around one day when I started wondering how much my property taxes cost me each day. I had absolutely no idea, although I knew that I pay over $4000 a year in property taxes. After a quick check, I found I’m actually paying $4450 in property taxes each year. Ugh. So, what does that work out to per day? $12.19. Double ugh.
As I’ve said many times in the past, I’m a HUGE believer in credit unions. Today I was considering tying up some of my cash in a short term CD. I logged on to my credit union and checked their rates, only to be very disappointed. Here’s what I found for a CD less than $50,000 (min $1000): 6-11 month CD: .65% 12-17 month CD:
