Most articles on the subject of retirement planning focus completely on growing tax sheltered retirement savings plans like 401k’s and IRA’s. It’s an effort to build a large capital base as a way of creating a strong retirement income to enable us to maintain the lifestyle we’ve become accu… Continue Reading

When people are in need of a car, the focus is on the car itself to such a degree that it can seem as if the purchase is happening in a vacuum. After all, there’s always a dealer somewhere who will show us how we can afford something we’re not really sure we can. Often, that magical way to affo… Continue Reading

On Friday we considered the effect that being frugal has on your ability to achieve financial freedom in The Connection Between Financial Freedom and Being Frugal. Today, we are going to dare consider that there may also be a connection between happiness and being frugal. While being frugal may s… Continue Reading

In past articles, I’ve made the case that earning more money is more important than being frugal. On balance, this is a position that I still hold to. However, there are significant ways that being frugal can complement the effort to earn more money. And bigger picture, there does seem to be a str… Continue Reading

Everybody knows that too much debt is bad; the financial universe is filled with blogs, experts, and gurus who tell us as much and even how to get out. So why is it that people cannot get out of debt? Is it because debtors behave badly, that they fail to adequately confront their credit problems�… Continue Reading

In an earlier post we covered the importance of having your down payment ready before you buy a new car and now we’ll take a look at the mechanics of how to sell your car yourself to help raise that down payment. By selling your car yourself, you can maximize the amount of money you’ll get fr… Continue Reading

In 11 Ways to Cut Your Car Insurance - we examined ways to cut your car insurance premiums. Today we’ll flip it around and take a look at what we can do to lower our health insurance costs. This one is even bigger — in many households, health insurance costs are second only to housing as the to… Continue Reading

Have you ever known anyone who absolutely hates his or her job? People who do are usually not particularly happy about their lives overall either. It’s not hard to figure out why. There is an intimate connection between job satisfaction and happiness in life in general. A Gallup Survey came out… Continue Reading

My friend Jay and I were talking about jobs this past weekend and he pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about: There are no astronauts any more! That may not mean too much if you’re under 30, but when he and I were growing up being an astronaut was the ultimate “hero career”. … Continue Reading

Ominous question, isn’t it? There are all kinds of implications that go with that possibility, and none of them fit neatly within the economic progression of the past 30-40 years when it seemed the entire economy was running largely on the back of the real estate industry. But whether we like it… Continue Reading