Personal Finance Advice

I must admit that I wish I had more artistic talent. When there is an art piece that catches my eye, I can stare at it for hours wondering how the artist was able to visualize the final piece from the raw materials she decided to use. I also must admit that I have a [...]

I’ve reached one of those milestone birthdays where you stop and take stock of your life. I’ve been looking at where I’ve been and where I’m going professionally, personally, and financially. In looking at my finances, I’ve realized that there are eleven actions that have contributed directly to my success. These actions have all been [...]

A coworker of mine recently decided to get her finances in order. She admitted her debt troubles and her concerns that they don’t have anything saved for the future, let alone emergencies. While I applaud her desire to fix things, I question the method and the seriousness of her effort. I had to hide a [...]

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 [...]

If you turn on the TV or read a newspaper, you’re likely to be confronted with two opposite messages. Either everything is great, the economy is strong, and finances are looking better, or things are terrible, everyone is poor, and we’re heading for doom. It depends on the day and the reporter/station as to which [...]

One thing I learned along ago is that personal finance is not rocket science. In fact, it is far from it. The hitch is that simply because I know how to get my personal finances in order doesn’t mean that it’s always easy for me to do so when there are a lot of competing [...]

One of the biggest (and hardest) financial lessons that many people have to learn is simply this: No one cares about your finances, except you. Your mother might have tried to tell you something similar when she refused to buy those designer clothes you wanted. She probably told you that it didn’t matter what brand [...]

Last week I wrote about reframing the economic crisis. The point of that piece was to bring a little positivity into what is becoming a pretty gloomy economic time. I hoped to challenge you to think of the positive things that may come from disaster. So, in the interest of continuing that bit of positivity, [...]

It’s well known where I work and in my circle of acquaintances that I am, shall we say, financially conservative. I don’t blow money for fun and everyone knows that about me. So it never ceases to amaze me the number of people who still ask me out to pricey restaurants for lunch, or to [...]

A recent Saving Advice article called on all of us to pursue the path of kindness when confronted with people who are suffering as a result of our current economic crisis. I am very much in agreement with the author’s plea that we approach people in hardship without “anger” or “resentment” – those emotions are [...]

A neighbor recently confided that she had just paid off the last of her substantial debt. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is,” she said. “It’s like having my life back again. All that time I was living under the crushing pressure, and now I’m free. I don’t know how things got so [...]

If you value saving money more than keeping friends, I have the perfect article for you. Follow these 10 simple steps and you will not only save money, but also drive away those pesky friends. Depending on how close the friends are, you may have to complete all 10 items on the checklist and possibly [...]

When my mother died, I worried a lot about my father. How will he cope? What will he eat? Despite my worrying, I didn’t need to worry much about his finances. His forethought saved his financial life, despite our family’s terrible loss. Dad always has been a stickler for details. This carries over into his [...]

This weekend I read a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth by John Javna. As the title indicates, it’s a book about living a greener lifestyle. In the book the author talks about “picking the low hanging fruit” when greening your lifestyle. By “low hanging fruit,” he means those [...]

If there’s anything designed to ruin a marriage, it’s money. Not only could tension be created by the amount coming in, but there could be different money styles – a hoarder vs. a spender. My husband and I, thankfully, have similar styles. He’s more of a tightwad than I am, but we can find the [...]

Like any good financial nerd, I spend a lot of time watching and reading the media’s coverage of the economy. Over the last few months the tone has gone from mildly concerned, through concerned, and on to full blown panic. This amuses me because you can literally watch the rhetoric ratchet up and up, sometimes [...]

“Is it getting dark outside? Are you having trouble seeing? Turn the lights on!” is the gist of one “Wiggles Tips” segment on The Wiggles television show. These segments introduce the show’s preschool audience to a bit of humor – even they are old enough to know to turn on the lights when it’s dark [...]

I’ll be perfectly honest. Even though I make a living writing about personal finances (and enjoy reading and writing about the subject), I have to make a concerted effort to stay financially motivated with my own finances. For those that have little interest in personal finances, but still want to get their finances in order, [...]

I used to think that social class was directly tied to wealth — if you were rich, you were upper class; if you were poor, you were lower class. If you were neither rich nor poor, you were middle class. Of course, even then I had a sense that because “rich” and “poor” are such [...]

A few weeks ago I wrote about books that are valuable for every level of financial knowledge. Almost all of those books were “how-to” books or books about developing and implementing investment strategies. This week I’m going to recommend a different type of financial book. These are the books that don’t teach you how to [...]