Personal Finance Advice

Layoffs are hard, but not all layoffs are totally unexpected. Often you can see a layoff coming if you keep your eyes and ears open. Some warning signs: The company seems to be struggling and bills aren’t getting paid or customers aren’t getting their orders. Management shake ups are happening regularly as the company tries [...]

When people start throwing around financial advice (and when you’re deciding which advice to take), one of the considerations that often gets ignored is the significance of income level. Advice gets thrown around about what to cut and how to save without realizing that how much money you’re bringing in is the biggest factor in [...]

When it comes to reducing your debt, there are a lot of good reasons to pay off debt beyond the obvious. The benefits of becoming debt free are numerous and have to potential to improve a number of areas of your life, although there are some debt free myths as well. Understanding how becoming debt [...]

On one of the financial forums I frequent, a woman who was deep in debt posted looking for help. The main problem was that she couldn’t understand how their debt had ballooned because, “We have a budget.” When other posters started asking for more details, it emerged that she had gotten a budget sheet out [...]

One of the biggest disgraces of the school system is that it often fails to teach basics that we all need for everyday life once we graduate. A prime example of this is basic personal finances. If we could get more students to graduate from high school with a basic understanding of how personal finances [...]

By Dr. Charles Richards Why is it that just when everything seems to be going well financially and you feel like you’re getting ahead, something seems to crop up that alters your plans? In my practice as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen this pattern play out in clients and others many times. If this has become [...]

I get kind of irritated when I see people on financial forums tearing another poster apart because they’ve done something stupid with money. Well, so have we all at one time or another. Perfection with money isn’t possible. Even if your last name is Buffett or Gates, chances are you’ve made some mistakes with money. [...]

We all remember fondly the games we played when we were children. There is a simple game that kept me entertained when I was young. It was called Barrel of Monkeys. My Barrel of Monkeys came in a bright yellow plastic barrel with twelve monkeys inside. The monkeys’ arms were sort of S curved and [...]

Most people that have decided to take control of their finances and reduce their debt have come across at least one of the various debt snowball methods. Basically, creating a debt snowball is a way to arrange one’s debt so as to tackle a single debt at a time (to more efficiently pay off the [...]

When you and all of your friends or family are deeply in debt, you can all be miserable together. You can gripe about your finances, complain about how there’s never enough money for everything, and then go shopping anyway. You can egg each other into further debt by saying things like, “You’re only young once,” [...]

Getting your finances in order is a lot like weight loss. You start off great in the beginning. You drop a lot of debt quickly. It’s almost too easy to cut expenses. You realize that you’ve got lots of things you can cut and you eagerly drop unwanted services, renegotiate bills, stop eating out, and [...]

One of the hardest things for many people to see in relation to their finances is how their actions today are robbing them of future wealth. It’s easy to focus on today and think that if you can make the payments on that living room set that it’s okay. It’s easy to think that borrowing [...]

When it’s time to make financial decisions such as contributing to your retirement, paying down debt, saving for college, buying a home, and building an emergency fund, you need to ask yourself a question. “Will this change my life for the better?” This question is important because it’s the opposite of the question people usually [...]

A coworker came to me moaning about her debt level the other day. Her New Year’s resolution is to get out of debt and she wanted to know where to start. I asked her what kind of debt she had. Car loans? Student loans? Credit cards? Almost all of the debt she had was from [...]

Over the years, I have called the cable company to reduce the amount of money my mom pays for her cable TV on a fairly regular basis. I just did it again this week and saved her $170 over a 6 month period. No matter how many times I tell my mom that she needs [...]

When it comes time to pay down debt, there are two schools of thought. The first argues that you should pay it all down as quickly as possible. This may mean taking on extra jobs and sacrificing all of your fun and frivolous spending for as long as it takes to get the job done. [...]

The other day I heard someone make the argument that most financial advice was of no use to them because it assumes that you have some extra money, you just need to “find it.” “I literally have no extra money,” this person said. “Every dime I have goes to the mortgage, food, or the utilities. [...]

I’m a big fan of the yoga program “Inhale” on the Oxygen network. The host, Steve Ross, likes to say (when talking about mental health) that, “Psychology is based on suffering. Yoga is based on bliss.” What he means is that psychology generally assumes some misery is present and tries to rectify it. You’re depressed, [...]

I’m frequently asked how I stay motivated to remain out of debt. After all, there are so many temptations and so many fun things that I could blow my money on. People assume that it is hard for me to remain motivated and disciplined. Sometimes it is. Like anyone else, I have days when I [...]

This final lesson was about Baby Step 7, Build Wealth and Give. Everything has been leading up to this. We’ve been taught how to get out of debt, save money, and invest so that we can build wealth, not only for ourselves but so that we can give some away. I’ve mentioned the religious nature [...]