Start Late, Finish Rich
Filed under: Books, Education, Finance, Money, Saving, Spending
Tis the season for resolutions.
A lot of people will make the resolution to read more and learn to take control of their finances.
Here is a good book that I recently finished and it fits 2 of my requirements for a good book. It was easy to read and contained some really good information.
Wal-Mart and creative math
According to an article that MSN had The Price Of Wal-Mart Coming To Town, Wal-Mart has an interesting way of doing math. They promise an increase of taxes and jobs but none of the supporters that I’ve read subtract the local jobs that have been lost. It’s like they are using a broken calculator. It was probably made in China.
The Value Of Education
Filed under: Education, Investing, Rant, Saving, Spending, Uncategorized
We’ve heard all our lives that education is important. I think most people look at education as a structured school activity that ends when they graduate, but I believe it’s much more. I tend to think of education as a daily activity. I also think education comes from many different places. We can also learn from some pretty unlikely places.
The important thing to keep in mind is that not all you’ll learn is correct and the world is changing really fast. This is not to say that there’s no point in learning if it’s going to change soon, what it means is that education is a life time activity.
I watched a finance show recently that gives advice to callers and was amazed that some of the advice was so shallow that it was worthless. It didn’t take into account the whole story. One caller wanted to know about investments and instead of saying learn how they work, and know how to protect yourself, the advice was buy and hold. I fell for that thinking a few years ago and watched my stock go from 30 a share to 4 bucks a share. I should sell them but I keep them as a reminder to not fall for so called experts’ bad advice. It was an expensive lesson but well worth it.
Another caller asked about buying a piece of art and was told not to buy. She treated it like he was blowing more than 20 grand without taking into account if it was undervalued and/or likely to increase in value over the next few years. Granted art is unpredictable and it could lose value, but to not even mention it, was enough to make my blood boil.
Some things don’t change, like spend less than you make or you’ll eventually pay dearly. I was looking over an article I wrote a long time and was pleasantly surprised that it was still 100% true. Granted that I wanted it to be valuable for a long time, but things change and the economy has been really changing lately.
Here’s one of the articles I wrote
I’m going to track the rest down and bring them into Financial Comedy over the next few weeks.
The 4 jars Method Of Saving Money
Filed under: 4 jars, Cashflow Quadrant, Charity, Doo Dads, Getting Started, Investing, Rich Dad Poor dad, Robert Kiyosaki, Saving, Spending
Here’s an interesting way to save money that I adapted from Rich Dad Poor Dad or maybe it was Cashflow Quadrant or one of the other Robert Kiyosaki books. He said to take 3 jars and label them as the following:
Saving
Charity
Investing
I added Doo Dads and if you’ve read the Rich Dad Poor Dad books you know that Doo Dads are the little toys that usually drain our paychecks.
So what you do is take 4 piggy banks or jars or whatever and put in a dollar to each jar everyday and then deposit the investing jar into an investment account, donate the charity jar, deposit the saving jar into your saving account and buy a toy with the doo dad jar.
If you can’t swing a dollar for each to start, then do a quarter or if you can do more, then do that. The important thing is to put something in daily and to use it for what the jar is for. When you’re first starting out, you may be tempted to take money out of the jars, treat it as a loan and pay yourself back asap.
You’ll be surprised how little you notice the money gone and how fast it adds up.
Getting Started
Filed under: Discounts, Getting Started, Saving, Software, Spending
I hope you have a sense of humor because I can go off on a rant from time to time.
In todays times, more and more people are struggling. Some are victims of unscrupulous loan agents and some are victims of their own lack of financial education.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you have 4 choices.
Cut back on spending
Increase income
Both
Or the worst, neither
We all have things we can live without so that is a definite choice.
Personally, I chose to increase my income and cut my spending. But if you want to get your finances under control, the first thing you need to know is where the money is coming from and where it’s going. I use Microsoft Money Home and Business which you can try for 60 days for free. If you like it, you should look into Amazon and check prices. I chose Money simply because of the free trial and it was pretty easy to learn. I also love the cash flow forecast since you can play with different scenarios and see what happens if you chose to spend or earn more money.
You may chose a different program such as Quicken, one of the new web based programs or some other way.
Regardless of how you track your money, you must if you want to get ahead.
NAKED RETIREMENT
Naked Retirement strips down the old traditional models of retirement planning and replaces the it with a more creative and intuitive one that helps people take control of their retirement planning, saving, and investing.
The book details the evolution of retirement and uses it to help baby boomers and retirees understand why they are behind in saving and what they can do about it.
"Retirement planning can no longer be one-dimensional, focused exclusively on merely providing information such as how pensions or a 401(k)’s work. It needs to extend beyond financial planning to include aspects of health and social issues that will impact future retirees," according to author, Robert Laura.
Billed as the ultimate defense against the scary, anxious, and stressful feelings people get on their first day of retirement when they have only a financial plan full of numbers and charts to guide them, Laura simplifies the mental and emotional aspects of retirement planning with thought-provoking questions about your definition and approach to retirement as well as important retirement conversations that foster strong relationships in retirement.
The book culminates into a one-page Naked Retirement plan that will help people as well as planners successfully estimate retirement preparedness and future success.
Book is available at NakedRetirement.com and is emailed in pdf format directly to participants.