Personal Finance Advice

What do you want? I don’t mean what fantastic things do you wish you owned or could do or could be. What reasonable things do you want in life that you do not currently have?
Do you want to be healthier?
Do you want to spend more wisely?
Do you want a nicer car or better [...]

This week’s lecture was about credit reports, credit reporting bureaus, identity theft, and collection agencies. Quite a scattering of topics. The first part of the class was on credit scores and credit bureaus. Dave makes the point that a FICO score is an, “I love debt score” because the only way to get a FICO [...]

Last week some long lost relatives came to visit (well, not long lost but definitely not close relatives). Frankly, I wish they’d stayed lost. We let ourselves get talked into hosting these people by another relative who, knowing that these long lost people were coming to our town for a convention, so kindly recommended that [...]

I frequently hear people bemoan the choices they have made when it comes time to “man up” and be financially responsible. They grieve over the vacation they have to cancel due to a layoff. They cry over the kitchen renovation that has to be put off when the roof needs replacing. They sob when they [...]

The more I embrace frugality, the more I wonder if a frugal life equals a life detached from society. And then I ask myself: Is that a bad thing? I find myself less and less interested in “mainstream” society as the years go by. I don’t watch TV much, so I couldn’t tell you anything [...]

I live in Florida. Until recently, I would have said that I live in “sunny” Florida to distinguish my state from the cold places to the north. This year, however, cold weather came south for the winter along with all of the snowbirds who flock to Florida just after Christmas. Indeed, from [...]

This is a series of posts about what you will find in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course. This is week four (week one — week two and week three)
This week’s lesson focused on getting out of debt. We’re getting to the meat of the plan now, and I was eager to hear Dave’s ideas [...]

Have you ever thought about how much control over your financial life you give to companies when you sign up for things like cable, cell phone contracts, Internet access, loans, or credit cards? When you engage in most financial transactions, you are letting someone else have a little bit of control over your financial life. [...]

One of the ways we’ve managed to avoid debt is very simple: We take care of all of our possessions so that they will last. Making things last longer means we don’t have to replace them as often, saving us large amounts of money. This sounds like a no brainer, but I’m always surprised by [...]

A shopping list sounds like such a simple thing to do, but how many times have you arrived at the store with no list and no idea what you really need? It leads to frustration and overspending, doesn’t it? I hear you now: “A list takes too long to get together. When I need to [...]

It is hard for me to believe that I have been writing here at Saving Advice for close to two years now. After about 150 columns, I am pleased to count many of you among my new friends! I’ve also developed a sense of how readers are likely to react to anything that [...]

This is a series of posts about what you will find in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course. This is week three (week one and week two)
The lesson for this week was cash flow planning, also known as budgeting. You could see everybody approaching this lesson with trepidation. Not only does it mean more work, [...]

I remember when I was a kid, my parents would take the time to show me how money worked. (This was in the days before ATM’s and online banking.) My mom would show me how to write a check out to “cash,” hand it to the teller, and get cash in return. She showed me [...]

I’ve been giving this some thought lately and I’m beginning to suspect that time moves differently for debt free people than for those with loads of debt. Speaking from my own experience and the experiences of other debt free people that I know, the debt free seem to experience life at a much slower pace [...]

When people set out to make a budget or adhere to a financial plan, they sometimes make things so complicated that they have no chance of success. They set up accounts at many institutions, they open ten credit cards to maximize the rewards, they make too many rules about what can and cannot be bought, [...]

There are a lot of reasons to spend money and each of us has his or her own. Our attitudes and perspectives are forged over lifetimes spent earning and spending and enjoying and regretting. I can look at any number of purchases and feel that I have made a good buying decision. [...]

This is a series of posts about what you will find in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course. This is week two (week one)
This week’s lesson is about money and relationships. I was excited about this week because relationships are something that everyone has to deal with, no matter how much money they do or [...]

I’ve written before about how we’ve cut out cable TV, preferring instead to use Netflix and over the air channels for our entertainment needs. Recently, however, we allowed cable back into the house. I’m a huge Olympics and tennis junkie and my husband is a big NASCAR fan. And March Madness is coming. Between the [...]

One of the biggest enemies of a debt free life is complacency. Not only is it an enemy, it’s a very sneaky enemy. When you become complacent (apathetic is another good word for this problem) you relax too much. You stop worrying about where your money is going. You start spending more and more, thinking [...]

One of the things that makes it hard when you’re trying to save money is the feeling that you’re not getting anywhere. You make some changes in your lifestyle or you stop spending on unnecessary things and you know you’re saving money, but you just don’t feel like it’s adding up. When people start feeling [...]