Personal Finance Advice

In the process of making out my Christmas card list for the year, I was struck by how many of our close friends are also debt free. I’ve never given it much thought, but there it was. We didn’t plan it this way, it just sort of evolved over the years. Like any sort of [...]

I need to buy new sneakers today. I know this because when I took my dog for a walk this morning, the plastic heel guard in my right sneaker tore through the fabric cover and scratched my heel. More specifically, the abrasion continued for the full mile that I walked so that I [...]

I am tired. I have been up for the past two nights until about 1 am trying to finish projects for clients and writing content for my website. I am also a bit under the weather, as I seem to have a sore throat and headache that just won’t go away. I [...]

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the War to End All Wars finally drew to a close when the combatant nations signed an armistice to end the First World War. That event was commemorated for the first time on November 11, 1919. Over the years [...]

“More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level — far below the level needed to earn a living wage.” – National Institute for Literacy
“Nearly half of America’s adults are poor readers, or ‘functionally illiterate.’ They can’t carry out simple tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays [...]

Earlier this week a friend asked me out for dinner at a pretty pricey restaurant. Having been there once before for a special occasion I knew that the food and service wasn’t that great and definitely not worth the price tag (at least to me). I declined my friend’s invitation. When she asked why, I [...]

By Maggie Ellis
It is widely taught in financial education that there are only two kinds of debt that can be considered “good debt”: A mortgage and student loans (as long as they aren’t beyond your ability to repay comfortably). We’re always taught that it’s okay to go into debt to buy a house or another [...]

After close to thirty years of working for other people, I have finally decided to hang out a shingle on my own. For some people, self-employment is a natural extension of who they are. For me, as I insist on the possibility of great success in anything I undertake, the decision to go [...]

By Rebecka O.
Six years, 3 months and 13 days ago my mother died and changed the way that I look at money. She had always been frugal and a constant saver. When she passed away, she had an estate worth more than $1.5 million which had been accumulated on the small wages of being a [...]

If you’re debt free, chances are that you are one of the few in your family or circle of friends who is. In the circle of people I know well, only my parents and two close friends are debt free. I’ve met others but of the people I’m close to, I’m one of five debt [...]

By Maureen K.
If you had asked me a year ago if I would like being poor, I would have called you crazy. Both my husband and I had just lost our jobs and we were just coming to the realization that we were no longer going to be able to live the life of luxury [...]

Take a minute and think about how many web sites for which you have passwords and user names set up. Now think about how many of those are financial sites. In our age of online everything, many of us now do most of our banking and investing solely online. We may never even receive paper [...]

I once asked a friend of mine why he had not married his girlfriend of many years. He replied that he had always wanted to be a kept man and that she just did not have enough money to afford him.
Another time, back in the dark ages when I was in high school, a [...]

The other day, a friend and I were having a general conversation about personal finance. My friend began by complaining about some debt he has and then he mentioned how he had no idea what he had in his checking account and how he kept getting hit with overdraft fees. He kept railing at the [...]

Television has given us a lot of relationships with characters who we can never meet. I remember characters from a lot of TV shows better than I am able to recall certain childhood friends and classmates and I am pretty sure that I still know the TV characters better than I have known a [...]

We’ve all done it. Your best friend’s birthday is today and you completely forgot. Your anniversary is today and you haven’t done anything. You forgot to buy a Christmas present for Aunt Imogene and she’s at the door. You don’t have time to pick out a fabulous present, so what can you do, besides the [...]

I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie in the 70’s. Each episode had a moral to it, but it wasn’t until I staged a marathon viewing session courtesy of Netflix that I realized how many of those episodes dealt with the subject of money in some form. Maybe some of my money habits [...]

I just enjoyed a delightful lunch with an old friend. I drove to her office and we walked to a nearby seafood restaurant where we were able to relax and catch up. It was quite a pleasure and I had a completely and thoroughly entertaining meal with her.
After we had finished [...]

People often ask me some version of the following question: “Where did you get this idea that you should live a debt free life? How did you, in a world where credit cards are ubiquitous and debt is the norm, decide that you were going to go against the norm?” People are curious about my [...]

Last week I wrote a piece about the things that our forefathers never had to include in their budgets and the damage that those items are doing to our finances today. Writing that piece opened my eyes to another problem we have with our finances today. Many of us are no longer content with a [...]