Personal Finance Advice

I have an uncle who is pushing ninety years old. He still gets up early, gets dressed, and goes to work every day and often on weekends. He doesn’t do it for the money; he’s covered in that department. He simply loves what he does so much that retirement has never entered his vocabulary. He [...]

Last year there were changes to our health insurance plan. The employer has always used a high deductible plan and they have always been kind enough to contribute $2,000 toward that deductible. The money has always been available at the first of the year. Well, last year, they got a new plan. It’s still a [...]

You’d think that all anyone has to do these days to secure an enjoyable and comfortable retirement is save money. The media, financial gurus, and your employer harp on money as the end-all, be-all of retirement. Just get there with enough money, they say, and you’re all set. Well, money is certainly important to your [...]

Retirement can be a scary thing. You wouldn’t think so, since so many people look forward to the day when they can stop working and take it easy. However, the financial and emotional adjustments can cause problems if you aren’t prepared for them. Most of us just blindly save money toward retirement thinking that the [...]

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 [...]

You’ve probably seen retirement calculators scattered all over the Internet. Almost every bank and brokerage firm has their own. You can also find them at sites like CNN Money or MSN Money. With so many available, you’d think that everyone would know their “number” that they’ll need to retire. The thing is, even with this [...]

SavingAdvice is starting a new column that’s going to look at strange, offbeat ways to save and make money. Anything that’s a little odd, uncommon, or contrarian is fair game – as long as it’s legal. You probably already know about Roth IRA’s. These are IRA’s that you fund with after tax dollars and then, [...]

If you follow financial news, you see the statistics all the time. The average 401(k) balance is $10,000. Or less, depending on the report. Seventy percent of Boomers haven’t saved nearly enough for retirement. Only fifteen percent of people eligible to participate in an employers’ retirement plan do so. Even less participate to the full [...]

This week we moved on to Baby Steps Four and Five, which are saving for retirement and saving for your kids’ college education. Baby step four was on deck first, which is to save 15% of your household income in tax-advantaged plans. Dave points out that, at the time this class was filmed, 53% of [...]

Over my years of debt free living I’ve learned that procrastination is a huge enemy to staying debt free. We all tend to say, “I can take care of that tomorrow,” and put off things we don’t want to (or can’t) deal with right then. The problem is, the longer you put things off, the [...]

In financial circles the big push is to get people to save enough money so that they can retire in comfort. That’s a noble goal, but the fact is that more and more people aren’t going to be able to retire, at least not in the way that they dream about. Pensions are a thing [...]

By Retire@50 It’s the dream of many to retire early. This is how I did it: I had a paradigm shift: It was the early 80s and I was in my early 20s. I was working an entry level job and living paycheck to paycheck. It was difficult to find jobs at the time and [...]

Debt free living has one important benefit that many people don’t consider at first. Sure, it makes bill paying easier and it lets you save for vacations and other fun things, but it also lets you save big sums for retirement. When all of your money goes to servicing debt, not only can you not [...]

About ten years ago, a woman I know gave up a high paying job in Connecticut because she felt that she could not handle the stress. She moved to rural Florida for a few years, lived with a guy she had met in high school in a house that her parents bought and basically became [...]

There are many things you can do to improve your finances. We talk a lot about the various ways to cut your spending and increase your savings, both big and small. All the options can be difficult to sort out. There can be a lot to learn, particularly if you’re new to looking after your [...]

I have a friend who has reached financial independence at the relatively young age of thirty-eight. He is completely debt free, having paid off his modest mortgage several years ago and owing nothing else. He has enough money invested to live quite comfortably, if modestly, from the earnings those investments produce. In other words, he [...]

When my interest in personal finance began to grow, I began to seek out knowledge from sources such as books, the Internet and personal advice, as well as various other sources. But if you’ve ever read more than one finance book, or read more than one personal finance blog, you realize there can be conflicting [...]