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Realistic Expectations For Making Money Through Blogging

by Luke Landes

When I started Consumerism Commentary in 2003, after about eight years of writing on the internet in a smaller, more personal capacity, I only had two goals: to track my finances while working to improve my money situation and to learn more about personal finance by finding articles, sharing links, and adding occasional thoughts of ... Continue reading this article…

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Treat Your Employer How It Treats You

by Luke Landes

The more profitable your employer, particularly if it is a large corporation, the more attention the employer pays to its biggest asset, its employees. Profitable companies offer perks to employees like vacation days, 401(k) matching contributions, health care subsidies, free lunches, on-site day-care, unlimited restroom breaks, and development opportunities. Don’t confuse these benefits designed to ... Continue reading this article…

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Wearing Many Hats: Specialism Vs. Generalism

by Luke Landes

Ron Howard, famous mostly for playing Richie Cunningham on the television program Happy Days, is one of the film industry’s most successful directors and producers, having been involved with a long list of films. He directed, among others, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The DaVinci Code, Frost/Nixon, and Angels and Demons. I happened ... Continue reading this article…

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Getting Out of Debt: Reductionism and Holism

by Luke Landes

We’ve updated our list of the best online savings accounts, so if you haven’t checked in recently, take a look at the latest reviews and interest rates. As a teenager I was fascinated by Douglas R. Hofstadter’s book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: and Eternal Golden Braid. The book explores set theory, computer programming, logic, philosophy, genetics, ... Continue reading this article…

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Seven Zen Principles to Guide Your Money and Your Life

by Luke Landes

A few years ago, I visited the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Japanese gardens are designed precisely to appear natural, resulting in an interesting collision between nature and man. There is a set of principles or aesthetics that guide the creation of Japanese gardens, including the dry gardens commonly called ... Continue reading this article…

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How to Create Your Own Extended Warranty

by Luke Landes

In my article the other day about the deal I got on a new computer despite my immediate need, I neglected to mention something important: I refused the extended warranty that the salesperson offered numerous times. Any extended warranty is almost always a bad deal. When I was a teenager, I had a short-lived job ... Continue reading this article…

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Is It Possible to Save Too Much Money?

by Luke Landes

For most humans, life is much shorter than we would like, and for many of us saving even ten percent of our income will never result in a state of wealth within our lifetime. There are too many forces working against this endeavor: a lack of sufficient opportunity, inflation, and unplanned events to name a ... Continue reading this article…

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Ten Things I Will Teach My Children About Money

by Luke Landes

I do not currently have children, but I have not ruled out starting a family some day. If and when I do have children, I hope I will be able to help them become smart and capable adults over time. I believe this is what my parents have done for me, and I’d like to ... Continue reading this article…

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10 Things Your Parents Didn’t Teach You About Money

by Luke Landes

When you were growing up, you probably became accustomed to hearing some typical thoughts about money from your parents. These parents are the ones who told you that money doesn’t grow on trees. If it weren’t for your parents, you wouldn’t know that children are starving in Africa and therefore you should eat your entire ... Continue reading this article…

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Why Be Wealthy? Focus on Real Goals, Not Net Worth

by Luke Landes

Even though I share my financial reports every month, I don’t see increasing my financial wealth as a goal. The accumulation of money is not a destination. I am not aiming for any particular measure of financial worth, such as ten million dollars of net worth or one million dollars of passive income each year. ... Continue reading this article…

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The Paradox of The Paradox of Thrift

by Luke Landes

If you’ve been paying attention lately, you might have heard that throughout the economic recession, Americans have been saving more of their income. Some economists worry that saving, while good for the individual, can be harmful to the economy as a whole. This is commonly called, “the paradox of thrift,” a theory developed by John ... Continue reading this article…

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9 Tips for Choosing and Achieving a Purpose in Life

by Luke Landes

Recently, I mentioned that setting goals is an important part of taking control of your personal finances, focusing on the idea that the best approach is to determine your major, non-financial life goals first. This is a difficult process for many people, and many people go through life without determining a direction. There’s nothing wrong ... Continue reading this article…

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The Correct Way to Pay Off Personal Debt: The Debt Avalanche

by Luke Landes
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When it comes to mathematics, certain facts are universally agreed-upon. For example, regardless of your culture or educational system, you must agree that one plus one equals two unless you mistakenly fall for an invalid proof. When dealing with money, why are people inclined to believe that one plus one does not equal two? If ... Continue reading this article…

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Your Job as Your Identity? Not For Me, Thanks

by Luke Landes

By the time I was in third grade, I knew the answer to the age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question is always formed this way, with these particular words. The object of this question is to determine not the philosophy of the individual, but the type of ... Continue reading this article…

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Following Your Bliss: Good Advice or Bunk?

by Luke Landes

One of my favorite musical “acts” is Blue Man Group. The Blue Man Group explores, with primitively modern musical instruments, society, detachment, and collectivism. You may remember them from Intel’s old Pentium commercials. You may also remember them from the television show Arrested Development, in which the character Tobias, played by David Cross, auditioned for ... Continue reading this article…

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Unintended Consequences and Money

by Luke Landes

Ethanol: a study of unintended consequences As recently as two years ago, ethanol was considered by many to be the solution for this country’s reliance on imported oil. Ethanol can be produced domestically, and it costs no more to make a car that runs on ethanol than it does to make a car that runs ... Continue reading this article…

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10 Steps to Break the Credit Card Habit

by Luke Landes

If you’re a Type A credit card user, chances are you know it whether or not you are willing to admit it. If you can answer yes to these questions, then a lifestyle change is in order. Do you pay interest fees when you send in your credit card payment? Have you ever paid your ... Continue reading this article…

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The New Emergency Fund: Five Components of an Emergency Plan

by Luke Landes

In an world of overly simplified platitudes and one-size-fits-all “advice,” there is little repeated more in personal finance than the importance of the emergency fund. Typical popular financial advice prescribes a high-yield savings account in which one can store three to six months’ worth of expenses. Suze Orman suggests aiming for eight months’ expenses in ... Continue reading this article…

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Always Be Prepared: 5 Tips for Unexpected Job Loss

by Luke Landes

Welcome, Consumerist and The Simple Dollar readers. Feel free to subscribe to the Consumerism Commentary RSS feed and stick around for a while if you like what you see. Whether you’re Joe Torre or Joe Cubicle, your at-will (more aptly, fire-at-will) contract may come to an end unexpectedly. If you’re smart, you may have seen ... Continue reading this article…

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Paying Off Debt: 6 Steps to Building a Better Snowball

by Luke Landes

The “snowball method” for paying off debt isn’t something out of the movie Clerks. It is a way to organize your outstanding debt in such a way that the funds you have available for paying off debt are optimally distributed in the manner that will allow you to pay off that debt quickly and cheaply. ... Continue reading this article…

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