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Running a B&B is a lifestyle occupation and, in many ways, the ultimate home-based business. It’s also an enormous amount of work. Photo: A.G. Thomson House

Running a brothel was never part of Debbie Miller’s plan.

But 25 years ago, in rural Ohio, there were few people who understood the distinction between a luxury bed and breakfast and a house of prostitution.

“The local county commissioners had no idea what a bed and breakfast was,” says Miller. “And because it was a rarity to have a woman business owner, and nobody had heard of a bed and breakfast, I was asked if I was opening a brothel. It was very rough.”

In the past few days, three different readers have sent me a link to this great article from Fidelity entitled Five Habits of 401(k) Millionaires. The article offers up five suggestions for readers that will help you sock away a lot of money for retirement:

1. Start saving early
2. Contribute a minimum of 10% to 15%
3. Meet your employer match
4. Consider mutual funds that invest in stocks
5. Don’t cash out when changing jobs

These are five strong principles that I strongly agree with and Sarah and I are using all of them in our plans for saving for the future.

When I was in sixth grade, a classmate’s grandma won a million dollars in the lottery. This made the front page of our small town’s weekly paper.  Even as a 12-year-old I knew that buying lottery tickets wasn’t a smart investment strategy, but one detail of the story that didn’t make sense was why the lady chose to take a lump-sum payment instead of the annual payments for 20 years. The math was simple: She would have received more had she just been more patient. Or so my know-it-all preteen self thought.

By Peter Miller

Saving for a new home has just become easier. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say they will now buy mortgages with as little as 3% down, a big drop from the old 5% minimum.

Even though conforming loans are now easier to get because down payment requirements have been reduced, there’s still the matter of saving not only for a down payment but also for closing costs and a reserve fund for the inevitable repairs and other expenses that come with home ownership.

Saving so much money may seem like a huge hurdle, but last year roughly 1.4 million buyers bought their first home — people who purchased without any equity from past homeownership.