In February 2005, Sarah and I were handed a completely unexpected piece of information. Sarah was pregnant and our first child was going to arrive late in the year.
It was a life-changing moment. Sarah and I had several months to prepare, of course. Unfortunately, since we weren’t in the best financial shape at the time, we didn’t really focus on the financial implications very hard. Instead, we spent our time on learning how to be parents on a day-to-day basis. How were we going to take care of this baby?
While I’m glad we did so much reading and research and thinking about caring for that baby, I really wish we had spent more time preparing for the financial implications. Many of those issues came up in the first year or two of our child’s life during a period where we were frazzled by the huge life changes that parenting brings about. We didn’t always make the best choices given our exhausted states of mind.
Finances and cheating are amount the most common reasons for divorce. And what happens when you merge the two? You get a case of financial infidelity, but there’s a twist: a third party doesn’t have to be present to cause a problem.
In a nutshell, it’s the practice of concealing assets, debt obligations or conducting transactions behind your partner’s back that could have a major impact on your financial well-being as a unit.
And apparently, financial infidelity is somewhat commonplace. According to the results of a poll published by National Endowment for Financial Education, one-third of adults involved in a relationship where finances were combined admitted to some form of financial deception. Among the list of qualifying offenses were:
If you’re frustrated with the low interest rates of savings accounts but wary of high-risk investment strategies, Certificates of Deposit (CDs) might be your ideal middle ground. Your money will be safe and you’ll receive a better return than a savings account would offer, though the best CD rates largely depend on how long you’re willing to part with your money.
According to Bankrate, the average one-year CD interest rate in 2013 fell from 0.28% to 0.23% APY, or annual percentage yield. Certainly not an imposing return — that is, until you compare it to the average APY of savings accounts — 0.06% — in roughly the same time frame.
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Tracking grocery expenses
2. Price book advice
3. Letting go of old business
4. Credit cards and international travel
5. Compromise and financial goals
6. Enameled cast iron advice
7. Job change advice
8. “Sharing economy” thoughts
9. Amazon Prime question
Ever wondered what it takes to become a successful long term investor?
You don’t necessarily need to have deep macro knowledge about international trends, or a gambler’s mentality. No, long term investing really comes down to your investment principles, and having the courage to stick to them.
In the investment world, there are two basic investment principles. They are:
One of the foundations for successful investing is to be clear on which principle you want to follow. It’s advisable to choose one as your main principle even if you end up doing a bit of the other along the line. If you decide to go in just any direction at any point in time, chances are you’ll end up being confused – and frustrated.
There are about 45 million businesses in the United States of which more than 99 percent are considered small businesses. More than 40 million of those small businesses have fewer than 20 employees. All businesses, small and large share a common need for protection against the unexpected, and small business insurance satisfies that need. Unlike, big businesses that can have policies tailored to their exact needs, small businesses must rely on off the shelf solutions.
The challenge when it comes to small business insurance is twofold, having the right coverage and enough of it to provide adequate protection. The answers to both challenges are unique to the individual business, however, making a decision about how much insurance is necessary cannot be done without knowing what kind of insurance is needed. To help decode the myriad business insurance offerings, we’ve created an overview of each of the different business insurance products available.
I am guessing that a lot of The Simple Dollar readers already know their credit score. Even if you can’t recite the exact numbers off the top of your head, you probably know the general range. (I’m in the mid-700s.) I am also guessing that a lot of readers don’t regularly check their credit reports. Sure, there are a few of you who have calendar reminders to get your free, federally mandated credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com, but the rest of us haven’t looked at a credit report in years.
In my experience, many of the truly useful frugal tactics come about from little tweaks to one’s daily routine. If you can look at something that you do almost every day and find some little way to shave a minute off of it, you’ve saved more than six hours over the course of a year. If you can look at that routine and shave a quarter off of it, you’ve saved $90 over the course of a year. If you can do those kinds of changes to several routines in your life, you’re starting to look at some impressive savings.
I’m not talking about things that throw your routine to the wolves and force you to start over from scratch. I’m talking about simple little ways to alter a routine so that the expense of each run of that routine is a little less or the time involved is a little less.
Here are six examples of pretty normal daily routines in my life that I’ve managed to “hack” in significant ways over the years to save both time and money.
Erin wrote in with a wonderful question that I started to address in Monday’s reader mailbag, but the answer quickly escalated into many, many paragraphs. Here’s her question:
I don’t understand how billionaires who bring in millions a year can pay less in taxes than someone working hard at a job and making $50K a year. That seems really wrong to me.
She’s referring to statements like this one from Warren Buffett:
But the differential between me and the rest of the office, not just my secretary but the rest of the office, was greater than that. It’ll be closer, but I’ll probably be the lowest paying taxpayer in the office.
He’s not lying. It is very likely that Warren Buffett is paying a lower tax rate than the other people in his office.
How is that possible? Well, let’s dig in a little bit and find out.
The “Books with Impact” series takes a deeper look at specific books that have had a profound impact on my financial, professional, and personal growth by extracting specific points of advice from those books and looking at how I’ve applied them in my life with successful results. The previous entry in this series covered Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker.
Facebook
Become a fan
Twitter
Follow us
RSS
Subscribe