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ING Direct’s recent survey results about retirement are scary. I don’t know what the world is going to be like in thirty years, the time I’ll be approaching “retirement age.” I do know that if my pattern of increasing expenses doesn’t change until then, and if I’m still earning primary income by trading my time ... Continue reading this article…
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Although I’ve been tracking my finances publicly on Consumerism Commentary since 2003, this is only the fourth year I’ve outlined specific financial goals for the new year. The next year is a bit of a mystery for me. I feel like some changes are necessary, particularly in my day job. Although I have some big ... Continue reading this article…
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At the beginning of the year, I set a few financial goals and resolutions representing what I would like to accomplish by the end of 2009. Like last year, my progress is mixed. I’ll get to that in a moment. I’m not a big fan of the concept of financial goal setting. Goals or targets evoke ... Continue reading this article…
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Well, we went and did it. As of today, the Verizon FiOS TV service we’d been mostly enjoying for almost three years is suspended. We’re not replacing it with cable or satellite television, either. The normal TV service is effectively turned off. I’m scared and nervous and excited all at once. It’s been nearly seven years ... Continue reading this article…
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For some fun reading, I recommend these articles written recently and published across the internet. Estate Planning: Are You Ready When Your Time Comes? Lazy Man narrowly avoided death recently, but it is my grandmother’s condition that leads me to link to this timely post. Here, Lazy Man offers several tips to help prepare the loved ... Continue reading this article…
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While a budget in one form or another is a must-have financial tool, it’d quickly become big and ugly if you tried to anticipate and include every expense you might run in to. You’d quickly lose interest and wouldn’t stick with your budget, right? A budget is a basic recorder of recurring expenses, and trying to ... Continue reading this article…
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Now that the halfway mark of 2009 has passed by, it wouldn’t hurt to review the financial mini-goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and determine how far I have strayed from my path. For me, these goals are only milestones. They help my gauge my progress but numbers in my ... Continue reading this article…
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Do you have a 5-year financial plan? What about just a general idea? Do you know where you want to be financially in 25 years? Have you ever set a financial goal? If you decided you wanted to save $5,000 this year, could you do it? Far too often we get into situations where we ... Continue reading this article…
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Today’s podcast features an interview with J.D. Roth from popular blog Get Rich Slowly. J.D. talks with Tom Dziubek and me about how he was inspired to begin writing about personal finance and his decision to leave the corporate world behind and take his passion to the next level. Tom also speaks with Bryan J Busch ... Continue reading this article…
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I offered to write articles for Quicken occasionally, and the first of these articles was published yesterday. It focuses on trimming budgets and expenditures. President Obama has proposed cutting the federal budget by $17 billion. That’s a large amount of money, but it’s a tiny slice, 0.5 percent, of the total federal budget. Here is an excerpt: I ... Continue reading this article…
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April is National Financial Literacy Month in the United States. In most cases, schools do not extensively teach financial skills. Teenagers, highly susceptible to messages from the media, often do not have guidance from teachers, who are not trained to teach financial skills, or from parents, many of whom do not model healthy financial behavior. ... Continue reading this article…
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When the economy is growing and consumer confidence is high, it is common not to think twice about saving money and reducing expenses. If you are saving money every paycheck, investing in a 401(k) or other accounts for retirement, and spending less than you are earning there isn’t much motivation to reduce your expenses further. I ... Continue reading this article…
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One lesson I learned this past year, after setting financial goals for 2008 and evaluating my progress as of last week, is that I shouldn’t set goals that are heavily dependent upon forces beyond my control, such as the stock market at large. My main target of a $210,000 “modified net worth” assumed the ... Continue reading this article…
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In December 2007, I set a number of financial goals or targets to be accomplished by the end of this year. In some cases I was successful while in others I fell short. It’s important to keep things in perspective; when I set these goals, the economy was in a significantly different state. The goals ... Continue reading this article…
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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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Last week, I wrote about the importance of setting real life goals in order to take and maintain control of one’s own financial condition. It’s important to break past the idea that a life goal is based on money. For example, entering retirement with $4,000,000 is a good target, but it’s not a major ... Continue reading this article…
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Last month, I began writing about the process of taking control of one’s own financial condition. It’s common to outline any process by describing a series of steps, and that is the form I have chosen for writing about this particular process. The steps I’ve described roughly follow my experience as I learned to ... Continue reading this article…
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This is the next installment in a series at Consumerism Commentary about taking control of your finances. Please consider subscribing to the Consumerism Commentary RSS feed for updates. It’s no secret that budgeting is a chore. Although this piece of personal finance carries an ugly reputation, even a simple form of budgeting will help you achieve ... Continue reading this article…
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I may have fallen back into old habits. Several years ago, when I was refreshing my life and beginning to control my finances, I made deep cuts into my expenses. I took on three roommates, paying only $325 a month for my portion of rent. I didn’t own a car and relied ... Continue reading this article…
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In about 6.5 months, I will be free of credit card debt for the first time since 1998. Much like Inigo Montoya and the “Revenge Business”, now that it’s over, I don’a know what to do with the rest of my life. Readers of Consumerism Commentary have proven their wisdom many times over, so I’d like ... Continue reading this article…
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