Money Tips Network
Working from home … with distractions
This article is by staff writer Lisa Aberle.
Although I have liked almost every job I’ve ever had, I decided early on in my professional career that the most important thing to me was schedule flexibility. And so, I gravitated toward jobs that were flexible, and each new job had more flexibility than the last. I haven’t had a strict schedule since 2007, and I have to say, I like it like that.
5 Apps That Pay You To Exercise
There are lots of websites and apps out there that will help you track your eating and log your miles. However, these programs are typically the most useful for those individuals who have a great internal drive or commitment to healthy living. Or at very least, the motivation to remember to log in and stick to the plan. What about the rest of us who need a little (or a big) push? (Related: 8 Ways to Track Your Diet and Fitness for Free)
Is Rental Real Estate Really Passive Income?
Fox Business has an interesting post on passive income in general and rental real estate as passive income in specific. After having been a rental real estate investor for two years now, I definitely have some thoughts on this issue.
But let's start with what Fox says. Here's what they list as the definition of passive income:
Investopedia describes passive income as "earnings an individual derives from a rental property, limited partnership or other enterprise in which he or she is not actively involved."
Later the author clarifies his thoughts by saying the following:
Real passive income is earned in your sleep and regardless of the amount of effort you put into it.
Then they give a bit of a reality check:
This One Thing Will Get You to $1 Million (Tax-Free!)
We're surrounded by financial advice, often in the form of lists containing 10 (or 25! or 50!) things you can do to help solve a particular problem. While much of this information is useful, it can also be overwhelming. Where do you begin? On what things should you focus your efforts?
I'd suggest starting with the end in mind — with your ultimate goal — and let that guide you to the highest priority activities to help you achieve it. For most of us the end goal is financial independence, and that requires accumulating enough wealth to no longer rely on income from a job. (See also: How Cash Flow Allocation Helps You Retire)
The Cost of More
We have become a nation of “more is better.” We want more of everything — more toys for our kids, more cars in the driveway, more shoes in the closet, and more bathrooms in the house. Our houses, garages, dumpsters and lives are filled with Stuff. With a toddler around, I’m very tempted to fill the house will cute clothes and fun toys. Sometimes I stop for half a second to consider the cost of buying something, but I often don’t consider the true and total cost of “more.”
Purchase price cost
Go to the movies? At these prices it’s got to be a great flick to get me off the couch
If you decide to spend a night out at the movies, you better be certain you’re going to love that film. In my opinion, movie-going has become too expensive to be a casual pastime anymore. The theater industry says the average ticket costs right around $8, but that has to include discounted prices for kids [...]
Go to the movies? At these prices it’s got to be a great flick to get me off the couch from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.
This blog was posted by Alissa Fleck
A common calling is a good deal
Statistically, I’ve passed the midpoint of my life. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thinking more about calling, and legacy. Calling, in my mind, is the most important thing I can do, which would be the most difficult for someone else to do had I not done it. Legacy, in my mind, are the traces of my life left here after I’m gone.
Calling is something that both my wife and I have been talking about. After all, we agreed to go through our lives together, so we each need to consider, and value, what God calls the other to do.
It sure would be neat if He called us to do the same thing.
A couple’s common calling
A family we know is participating in hosting an orphan for a few weeks this summer through Project 143. (Please check out their website to learn about Project 143′s mission.)
Reader Story: Update on a dad in need of retirement help
This guest post is by reader Mike in New Hampshire. Mike wrote an Ask the Readers article last year, looking for ideas to help his dad get set for retirement. He wrote to us recently and asked if he could update their story. We were only too glad to provide a forum for them.
It has been a little over a year since I wrote in looking for suggestions on how I could help my father retire. I want to thank everyone so much for the comments, ideas, and support – they came at a time when I really needed it. In the end the solutions came not from me but from the relationships he had formed and the sacrifices he had made over the years. Everyone loves a story with a happy ending, right? Let’s get to it.
The other half of the personal finance battle
A high school friend posted a link to this Mother Jones commentary on an Economist article dealing with education in personal finance.
The main point brought out is that “courses in personal finance do not appear to have an impact on adult behaviour.” The article specifically mentions that financial education had no impact on degree of saving.
Knowing is half the battle …
I either never learned about, or completely forgot about, the safety lessons included in G.I. Joe cartoons. (But, with the magic that is YouTube, I can educate myself.)
Eight Strategies for Preparing Your Kids Early for an Inexpensive College Education (or Other Options)
It’s a worry that pops into the mind of most parents not too long after their child is born. College. How on earth are we going to pay for a great education for our child?
Prices at top-tier schools like MIT have seen annual tuition jump to over $50,000 a year, with no end in sight to the rapid climb. Even quality state universities have seen tuition rise to the $10,000 per year mark.
That’s an incredible expense facing students as they approach college age. Four years at a state university to earn a bachelor’s degree means a $40,000 expense just for tuition – that doesn’t include room and board or textbooks or other supplies. What if they want to go to a top-tier school? What about graduate school? The costs easily explode into the six figures and it’s just going to get more and more painful.
The value of your financial data
Free Money Finance was one of the first personal finance blogs I commented on. This was in 2005, so nearly … TEN years ago?! Yikes.
FMF is very successful, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him in real life. I can attribute what I know of his success to a number of things, and one of those things is that he practices every bit the personal finance he writes about.
Seventeen years of year-by-year data
The post today showed the year-over-year change in his net worth.
What struck me with this table was not the (multiple) double-digit gains. It was the length of the time period. He’s used Quicken faithfully and has seventeen years of his financial transactions at his fingertips.
Wealthy Shanghai Teens Are More Financially Savvy Than Average Americans
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently conducted a study, presenting a financial literacy test to fifteen-year-olds around the world, and has now published the group’s findings. The sample included 29,000 teens from eighteen countries (or, in the case of Belgium and China, two communities, Flemish and Shanghai). The test is designed to determine financial literacy and capability, with questions pertaining to income, taxes, borrowing, and money management.
Best Money Tips: The Health and Beauty Edition
Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some of the best articles from around the web on keeping your health and beauty costs low!
Top 5 Articles
13 Healthy and Cheap Beauty Replacements — Instead of purchasing blush, use just a small dab of lipstick to get some color on your cheeks. [Learnvest]
Money, Stress, and Your Health — Did you know that people who are stressed are four times as likely to get ulcers? [Get Rich Slowly]
7 Ways to Eat More Slowly — and Lose More Weight
Several years ago, my father's best friend started bringing his own silverware to dinner at our house and requesting salad plates to eat off of. Despite the ribbing he endured from my father and their other friends, Arnold remained steadfast in the importance of his new habits.
That's because he had discovered an important secret in being a healthy eater: small utensils. Several studies have shown that our minds tend to misjudge the quantity of food set in front of us based upon the size of the plate we're using. The same amount of food looks scanty on a large plate and overly generous on a small one.
The One Tool That Assures You Never Pay Too Much for Groceries
Couponing, price-matching, and clearance browsing are all valid ways to save big money on the food and supplies you need each week. Many books are written on these tactics, but there is one, less-exciting method that is often overlooked. (See also: Grocery Shopping for the Cheap and Lazy)
What is it? A humble price book.
Personal Finance Data and Meaningful Decisions
A few months ago, I read a great article by Bill Barnwell of Grantland.com entitled Bridging the Analytics Gap.
First, some background. Over the past fifteen years or so, there’s been a huge shift in how sports are analyzed. The amount of data collected on sporting events has grown exponentially and professional sports teams have found ways to put this to good use through statistical analysis. You’re probably familiar with this if you saw the great film Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, which is based on the book of the same name.
Barnwell’s point is that with all of these tools and statistics available for analyzing sports, the real challenge is communicating it and finding ways to translate it into meaningful action.
Ask the Readers: Do singles need to plan differently for retirement?
This article is by editor Ellen Cannon.
I’ve been single since I was divorced in my 30s, and I’ve been planning my retirement on the assumption that I will be single till the end of my days. I’m feeling comfortable financially with where I am in my plan. Yet when I was offered the opportunity to talk to Jacob Gold, a Certified Financial Planner and retirement coach with Voya Financial, about women and retirement, I said yes in a hurry.
On average, women outlive men by five or six years, so even if a woman is married now, chances are she will be living some of her retirement as a single. Gold is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, a popular retirement destination and he works with a lot of retirees. “More and more, a large segment of our practice is individuals who are single or newly widowed,” Gold says. “Often they have not discussed being single in retirement.”
6 Harmful Money Beliefs That Are Keeping You Poor
All action begins with thought. Even in our financial lives, how we think about money, the biases we hold about ourselves and money, and the money messages we receive from others influence our financial reality. (See also: 5 Stupid Things My Parents Taught Me About Money)
If you're working to build a brighter financial future, don't let these six common money beliefs sabotage your success.
Net Worth Gains through the Years
I love, love, love Quicken and have been using it for years -- almost two decades now. One thing I like so much about it is that it allows me to track my net worth and see my progress over time.
I thought I'd share my net worth gains by year (from Quicken) to demonstrated how the path to growing your net worth is not one straight climb. Sometimes it's up a bit and sometimes it's up big. And sometimes it's even down. Here are my results.
Over the past 17 years, my net worth has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.5%. But the gains versus the prior year have never been 12.5% exactly. Instead, they are as follows:
This Is Why You Settle (and How to Stop)
Brand new research suggest even rats regret settling for second best.
And while I'd be the first to agree that perhaps those researchers have too much time on their hands, it does raise an interesting point.
Why do we continue to settle when we know we're going to regret it later?
After all, we're all familiar with that icky sensation we get when we resign ourselves to taking less. We know that "THIS" isn't what we really want — we wanted "THAT" — but some unseen force convinced us that settling would be the better option, and we'd be just as satisfied with Plan B.
Except that it isn't, and we aren't.
And truth be told, we knew it going in.
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