The world of blogging has changed since I started Get Rich Slowly in April 2006. For one thing, “blogging” now encompasses other media. Some folks prefer to get their info via podcasts or video. (Me? I’m a reader.)
As an experiment — and to prove I’m not that old — I’m going to try a series of four weekly Facebook Live discussions. For the next four Saturdays, Kim and I are going to have a Saturday morning conversation about personal finance in front of dozens (hundreds?) of other folks.
That’s right: My girlfriend is going to join me for this project.
Last week via email, reader David Hatch asked:
If you were going to buy a new car, what would you get do you think?
I wrote a short email reply…then decide this topic is worth a deeper dive (of only for my own personal edification).
You see, Kim and I have been talking about cars lately. Mine is fifteen years old and hers is over twenty. Although both are running fine, we realize that we’ll have to replace one (or both) of them in the near future. When we do, what will we buy? What kind of new car is right for Kim? What kind of car is right for me?
Let’s start by looking at the cars I’ve owned in the past.
Every Car I’ve Ever Owned
I am not a car guy. Even though I can appreciate nice cars, I don’t have any desire to own them. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because my parents never had nice cars when I was a kid. They had practical, serviceable vehicles that got the job done.
During my 33 years of driving, I’ve owned five cars.
I’m generally a pretty laid-back guy but, like anyone, I do have pet peeves. Because I write about money, I have lots of trivial personal-finance pet peeves. (It’s “saving rate“, not “savings rate”. Dave Ramsey did not invent the debt snowball, and his version is but one kind of debt snowball. It’s not the only debt snowball. See? I told you these pet peeves were trivial!)
It’s silly that I’m bugged by this stuff, but I am. I’m sure you have pet peeves too, especially when it comes to your work.
One of my top pet peeves in the world of personal finance is when people who should know better conflate income and wealth. A high income can lead to great wealth — although it doesn’t always — but they’re not the same thing.
I see this error frequently — even in high-profile articles at major media outlets.
I’m not the only semi-celebrity J.D. Roth. For more than fifteen years, I’ve been receiving email and tweets and Facebook messages intended for the other JD Roth, the former executive producer of The Biggest Loser — and tons of other television shows.
Apparently the other JD Roth has a lot of fans. Actually, I’m one of them. I’ve been watching his shows since 2009, when season seven of The Biggest Loser inspired me to start my own weight-loss journey. When he published his book The Big Fat Truth in the spring of 2016, I read it the day it was released. I thought it was great, and wished that I could interview the author, but Kim and I were in the middle of our 15-month RV trip across the U.S. and I couldn’t make the logistics work.
This morning, for the first time in more than eight years, I weighed in at 200 pounds.
I am not proud of this fact but it’s the truth. I own it. I got to this point through my own actions, not because some cruel tormenter force-fed me cheeseburgers and beer.
When I’m overweight, I tend to internalize the problem, which generally leads to a vicious cycle of overeating, shame, and self-loathing. While I’m older now and more aware of my mental processes, I still struggle with self-defeating thought and behavior. (This is exacerbated, of course, by my recent battle with depression. In fact, I suspect the depression has a hand in my life-long weight issues. The onset of both seem to be correlated.)
Over the past three months, I’ve written a lot about buying and owning a home. Much of what I’ve written could be construed as anti-homeownership. Hear are some of the articles I’ve published recently:
Last week, a GRS reader named Carmine left this comment:
I’ll admit it: There are times that I think everything that needs to be said about personal finance has been said already, that all of the information is out there just waiting for people to find it. The problem is solved.
Perhaps this is technically true, but now and then — as this morning — I’m reminded that teaching people about money is a never-ending process. There aren’t a lot of new topics to write about, that’s true (this is something that even famous professional financial journalists grouse about in private), but there are tons of new people to reach, people who have never been exposed to these ideas. And, more importantly, there’s a constant stream of new misinformation polluting the pool of smart advice. (Sometimes this misinformation is well-meaning; sometimes it’s not.)
I read a lot of books. Nearly every book has some nugget of wisdom I can take from it, but it’s rare indeed when I read a book and feel like I’ve hit the mother lode. In 2018, I’ve been fortunate enough to read two books that I’ll be mining for years to come.
The first was Sapiens, the 2015 “brief history of mankind” from Yuval Noah Harari. I finished the second book yesterday: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Duke is a professional poker player; Thinking in Bets is her attempt to take lessons from the world of poker and apply them to making smarter decisions in all aspects of life.
Yesterday at the Financial Careers forum on Reddit, a user named /u/unfoldcareers posted some useful advice for job-seekers. “I’ve reviewed and screened thousands of resumes,” /u/unfoldcareers writes, “and I’m sharing my preferred resume format…along with my best resume advice.”
The poster notes that “bad resume format” leads most folks to get little or nor response to their job applications. To help current job hunters, /u/unfoldcareers created a free resume template that can be downloaded via Google Docs.
The July 2018 issue of the AAII Journal — the monthly publication of the American Association of Individual Investors — includes an intersting article about how to “increase your retirement resources”. This plain English piece summarizes some of the findings from the authors’ research paper “The Power of Working Longer“.
According to the article, there are three primary factors that determine “the adequacy of retirement resources”. Those are:
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