Personal Finance Advice

I have always been one who believes that it’s important to get all the big personal finance issues in order before you start looking at the small stuff. If you are losing several hundred dollars a month paying too high of an interest rate on your house payment and decide to spend your time trying [...]

By Brad H. Have you ever seen those guys on the side of the road at freeway off-ramps or busy cross streets holding up a sign that reads something like “No Job. Hungry. Will work for food or money” and wondered who they were? At least some of them are like me because I was [...]

Many people are totally dependent on their (or their spouse’s) “regular” job for all of their income. This is a risky proposition even in good times, but especially now that jobs are being cut left and right. When that one job goes, all of the necessary income goes with it, leaving the person with no [...]

As the economic decline slides further into uncertainty, we have to take a hard look at our own familial finances and begin to ask some serious questions. It’s time to take off those rose-colored glasses. First, we all need to understand what we, as individuals, can and cannot control. We can control how much we [...]

Someone told me the other day that I should want to earn more money so that I could afford the “finer things” in life. I responded by saying that yes, more money would be nice (isn’t it always?), but that the tradeoffs (working longer hours, more stress, more time away from my family) wouldn’t be [...]

It never fails: You encounter new people and the first question they ask is, “So, what do you do?” Occasionally you’ll encounter people that seem to ask this question out of a genuine interest in you and your life, but most of the time you can tell that it’s their way of quickly sizing up [...]

Several readers have commented recently that they would like to hear more about how to earn more and less about how to spend less. While earning more is a worthy goal — after all, you can never save more than you earn — I acknowledge that I am biased toward saving over earning in both [...]