Personal Finance Advice

Kids seem to get more expensive when they are bored. Kids often claim that there is nothing to do at home and that only some new thing or outside stimulation will relieve their boredom. When boredom sets in and the whining begins, there is the temptation to give in and take them to a movie [...]

My uncle recently passed away. This would not normally be something that I would share with others, but he also gave me the best financial advice I have ever received. This is advice I would like to share with you so that you can share it with your children. There is no question that he [...]

We all have stress in our lives. Much of it comes from things we can’t control. We have trouble at work, someone we love gets sick or dies, our kid has problems in school, or we have too many things to do and not enough time. With all the stressful events in our lives, why [...]

One of the biggest (and hardest) financial lessons that many people have to learn is simply this: No one cares about your finances, except you. Your mother might have tried to tell you something similar when she refused to buy those designer clothes you wanted. She probably told you that it didn’t matter what brand [...]

I’m a big believer in lifelong education. I don’t think you need to stop learning just because you got a diploma. I encourage people to learn about finance because it’s not something that many people learn in their first pass through school. You may take an economics course in college that focuses on theory, but [...]

There are a lot of jobs that we did as kids that we tend to think we’ve outgrown. If we don’t think we’ve outgrown them, we think that they are now beneath us. However, these kid jobs can be the beginnings of a new full time job. Sure, you’ll be competing against the neighborhood kids [...]

My friends think that I am crazy because I shun many of the technologies that they assume are necessary in this day and age. The truth is that just because something may be a bit more convenient, it doesn’t make it a necessity. People can live with a lot less than they think and might [...]

One of the more popular pieces of advice to save money these days is to get rid of your landline phone and rely only on your cell phone. This may work for some people, however it is not something that you should take as gospel without considering your own unique situation first. You may regret [...]

Many small businesses fail. There are often a variety of reasons for the failure including cash flow problems, having a poor idea or product, or tax issues. Many businesses also fail because the owners are not professional. They’re late, they look strange, they don’t follow through, or they make excuses. It does not matter what [...]

If you’ve ever wanted to travel extensively but aren’t sure how you could afford to be on the road for months at a time, work share arrangements might be the answer you’re looking for. When you work share, you receive either free or discounted lodgings or meals in exchange for your labor. The work you [...]

Free can mean a lot of things. There are the free things that people leave outside their homes with signs that read “Free — Take Me Home.” I see a lot of those things in my subdivision, especially when people want to get rid of basketball hoops, but do not want to disassemble the pole, [...]

I have a friend who is a foodie. She loves to cook and is always making new things. I was at her house the other day and I noticed the (literally) hundreds of cookbooks she has in the house. When I commented how many she had, she said, “Yeah, and it’s cost me a fortune. [...]

I was recently helping a friend with her family’s vacation planning. They desperately wanted to go to Disney World, but felt like they couldn’t afford it. “It’s just so much more expensive than other places,” she said. I asked her what they were going to do instead. “Well, we’ll probably go to Cedar Point, instead. [...]

One of the newer businesses out there is, depending on your tolerance for such things, also one of the most disgusting: Poop scooping. You go from home to home cleaning up pet waste. This is one of those jobs that has to be done but which a lot of people prefer not to do themselves. [...]

Each time that I sit down to write an article, I never really know how it will turn out or whether it will be published. That sense of unknowing always takes me back to junior high school when I was always convinced that my papers just wouldn’t measure up to expectation. So far, I have [...]

On a message board that I routinely hang out on, there was recently a discussion of people’s finances and whether or not they could afford certain items. As with all discussions of this type, there were some people who stated that they would have huge trouble affording these things and other people said that they [...]

It seems that everyone these days wants to work at home. Every message board I frequent has almost daily posts asking, “How can I work from home?” The problem is that many work at home opportunities are scams. There are many legitimate options out there, but you have to sort through the garbage to find [...]