Personal Finance Advice

If you spend more than a token amount of time either grocery shopping or cooking, you have probably noticed the Box Tops for Education and Campbell’s Labels for Education labels on certain grocery products. Box Tops for Education is a program sponsored by General Mills and it has returned over $300 million dollars to schools [...]

All of our other lessons up to this point have focused on saving money and paying off debt. But this week’s lesson was about making money. It makes sense. You need to make good money to pay off debt, build wealth, and plan for a secure financial future. That doesn’t have to mean hundreds of [...]

Most of us have collections of some sort. Maybe you collect dolls, stamps, coins, rocks, or movies. Some people collect bigger things like cars and antiques. Whatever our collector’s item of choice is, most of us come to a point in our lives when we ask ourselves, “Now what do I do with it?” Maybe [...]

I talk a lot about being debt free, but recently this question came up amongst friends: Am I as free as I think I am? I have no debt of any kind, so I am free from obligations to creditors. The bank cannot come take my house if I don’t pay my mortgage, my car [...]

Recycling can be good for both the planet and your wallet. You won’t get rich recycling, but you can earn a little extra cash and keep a lot of waste out of the landfill. So just how do you make money recycling? Simple. Every time you are about to toss an item (even if it’s [...]

The other day a friend mentioned that she was shopping for a new desk for her nine year old son. She mentioned that his current bedroom set was originally purchased at Ethan Allen and that she “did not want to go that route again.” Over the years, I have heard that a lot. Parents have [...]

I don’t need a lot of sleep. That does not surprise me because my father does not need a lot of sleep either. Usually about 5.5 hours is enough for me. If I go to sleep at midnight or 1am, I am usually wide awake at 6 or 6:30am and I start my day with [...]

This week we moved on to Baby Steps Four and Five, which are saving for retirement and saving for your kids’ college education. Baby step four was on deck first, which is to save 15% of your household income in tax-advantaged plans. Dave points out that, at the time this class was filmed, 53% of [...]

Sometimes I hear advice along the following lines: “If you want to be wealthy, you need to wear and drive the status symbols of wealth. That’s the only way anyone will take you seriously.” In other words, fake it till you make it. I can sort of understand where this advice comes from. It is [...]

In writing this column, one of the things that I see frequently in the comment trail is an argument about what counts as being debt free. Some people argue that debt free means freedom from consumer debt such as credit cards and car loans. Keeping a mortgage, whether for a personal home or a rental [...]

You’ve arrived at the grocery store with no plan. You didn’t review the sales flyer and you don’t have any coupons. Maybe you’re on vacation in a strange place, or maybe you’re just in a hurry and you didn’t have time to prepare. You may not even have a well thought out list. Is this [...]

Charles Baudelaire once said, “Anybody, as long as he knows how to be amusing, has a right to talk about himself”. Orson Welles advised that “Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest”. Anti-tax agitator Vivien Kellems was quick to proclaim, “Of course I’m a publicity hound. Aren’t all crusaders? [...]

This week was about the basics of investing. Once you’re out of debt and have your emergency fund, it’s time to move on to creating serious wealth. You do that by investing (or winning the lottery, but Dave doesn’t advocate that method). Obviously in a one-hour lecture Dave can’t touch on all of the intricacies [...]

I have a friend who recently lost her job. She’s not the only income earner in the household, but she does contribute a good bit to the family’s finances. Fortunately, she has a three month emergency fund saved up. However, her proposed management of that fund leaves me scratching my head. On the day she [...]

A debt free friend of mine came to me this week with an interesting problem. He’s recently been laid off from his job and is living on his (not insubstantial) emergency fund and unemployment while he looks for work. By his own admission he has enough in various savings products to last him about five [...]

Believe it or not, your daily schedule says a lot about your spending habits. Is your schedule packed to the gills with spending opportunities? For example, do you schedule your days around eating out, going to the mall, or going to the movies? Are these the items on your to-do list that are most important? [...]

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the best learning experiences are not usually found in classrooms. Experience is by far a better teacher than any textbook, but books and classrooms can make us better prepared to make the most of our experience. Among the best learning experiences that I have had in my [...]

This week’s lesson was about how to find big bargains. I thought this was kind of a funny topic because the last thing people in debt need to be doing is shopping. But then I realized that the lessons are starting to transition to topics that will be used after the class becomes debt free. [...]

I see a lot of people these days working for very little money. I’m not talking about minimum wage work; that pays a fortune compared to the work I’m talking about. I’m talking about people who write blog articles for content aggregator sites for a dollar for 400 words, take hour-long surveys for $0.50, or [...]

The other day, in a different context, I heard someone talking about “embracing a different way of life”. It got me to thinking about what that oft-repeated phrase really means in relation to a debt free life. When I think of embracing a different way of life, I think of going after something with so [...]