I have alluded in past posts to getting in over our heads in 2006 with a home equity loan. The loan was to cover getting the house painted and landscaping. That is pretty all true. But here’s what’s true(r): The landscaping part was mostly to get me to shut the hell up about the bleeping [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Getting It'
Money Habits: What to Teach, When
July 7th, 2009 2 Comments
It will come as no surprise to parents that my 5-year-old, who was so hot to trot for a Geotrax “Sir John,” spent his money on the first thing that caught his eye at Target — a Bakugan thingy whose world neither he nor I yet grasp, but that made his kiddy senses tingle. The [...]
Where We Are Now, and How We Got Here
May 27th, 2009 No Comments
If you’ve got a little time, I have seen no better example that encapsulates, in one man’s story, the mania that preceded the housing bubble and its very painful aftermath. His story is jaw-dropping. A financial correspondent for the NY Times Washington bureau, Edmund L. Andrews’s $120,000 salary was never going to support $4,000 in [...]
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Budget Buzz: Getting Over ‘I Don’t Know’
May 5th, 2009 4 Comments
Budgeting gets a bad rap as a giant drag. If you’re not someone who’s inherently organized, as I’m not, first thinking about the process feels like trying to corral the very air. “Money? I don’t know, I just, you know, wing it.” But winging it always left me uneasy. I’d think, “I must be overspending. [...]
Tags: Budgeting · money psychology
Creating a Budget for Irregular Expenses
April 24th, 2009 No Comments
It looks like we’ve finally whittled our monthly expenses down to a level where we’ll have from *$1600-$1900 left over at the end of each month. (*Much of that money will pay for somewhat more irregular but predictable expenditures like hair cuts, clothes, and saving for vacation or gifts.) We just played around with numbers [...]
Tags: budgeting for · irregular expenses · non-monthly
Big or Small? Sorting Out Your Financial Priorities
March 16th, 2009 5 Comments
If you’re looking to save money, do you sacrifice some big things in your budget, or do you look for ways to save $20 or so here and there? A few weeks back a friend asked me this. He opts for the big line items, while his wife haggles over the price of peanut butter, [...]
Tags: freedom
Do You Want What it Takes to be a Millionaire Today: Investing in Yourself
November 7th, 2008 1 Comment
Do you believe you can become a millionaire if you just work hard enough at it? Ninety-two percent of the great unwashed say yes, according to Middle-Class Millionaire authors Russ Alan Prince and Lews Schiff. Well and good, except then we leave it at that. Actual middle-class millionaires don’t believe they can do this alone. [...]
Thomas Stanley on Wealth and the Myth of Upward Mobility
October 21st, 2008 No Comments
If you like nice stuff — and hey, who doesn’t — it follows that more cash equals more. I mean, what’s wrong with buying the luxury dream car if you can afford it, right? Thomas Stanley says that’s an assumption about upward mobility that leads us astray. “People want to conform. You get out of [...]
Tags: assumptions · conforming · Planning · priorities
Saving Is In Again: Thomas Stanley on the Glutton Economy
October 15th, 2008 4 Comments
Thanks to this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance at Budgets are $exy for pointing to this post. Have a minute? Check out the roundup there. I hope to highlight at least one post I loved later this week. Hemispheres, the United in-flight magazine, just published a short piece I wrote last spring about saving to [...]
Tags: Glutton Economy · Hemispheres · Hey big spender · The Millionaire Next Door · The Nobody Treatment · Thomas Stanley
Getting It: Or Why I Started This Thing
August 20th, 2008 3 Comments
I can’t remember saving up for anything. Very recently, I still thought saving is something that some people do, but that I don’t, and that’s okay. Because surely modern life has proved that if you just make enough money, you don’t need to worry about that. (Despite ample evidence to the contrary.) Then I read [...]
Tags: Barbara O'Neill · Beth Kobliner · David Bach · Millionaire Next Door · MP Dunleavey · Saving · wealth
