Personal Finance Advice

When you’re ready to improve your financial life, how should you go about it? Do you immediately cease all unnecessary spending, slash expenses to the bone, and use all of your extra money to pay down debt? Or do you go about it gradually, making a couple of small changes at first and then adding [...]

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks listening to the bitter complaints over the “loss” of the two percent Social Security tax holiday. In case you’ve missed it (or you aren’t from the U.S. and didn’t follow our “fiscal cliff” debacle), here’s the gist: Two years ago our politicians reduced the Social Security tax rate [...]

Many people could use some extra income these days. Unfortunately, enthusiasm tends to wane when talk shifts to getting a second job. It’s a hassle to seek out and apply for the jobs, and it’s even more of a pain to come home from your main job, wolf down dinner and then head out the [...]

Many people think that becoming wealthy means that they no longer have to budget. The logic goes that if you have enough money, it’s no longer important how much is spent on various categories. When you have extra money, you don’t have to track where it all goes, right? Wrong. Those who want to remain [...]

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. [...]

When people find out that I’m a professional blogger, they either ask me what the hell that means or how is it possible to make enough money to live on by blogging. Many people seem to think that there must be some hidden secret to easy success that only a few know and that is [...]

I am frequently asked (and more often now that the economy is in the tank), “What can I do to generate some extra cash?” There are many ways to generate additional cash, some of them quicker than others. If you need a lot of cash, these tips alone probably won’t do it; few, if any, [...]

Do you know that feeling when you’ve had something hanging over your head for a long time — and then it’s gone? My husband and I have been enjoying that feeling. We just paid off our vehicle loan. What a relief! Now we have the happy problem of what to do with the “extra” money [...]