A collection of stuff

What to do with your money?

2012-01-29T14:13:00.002-05:00

I took these notes after seeing Suze Orman's show and added my own to it.

0 - Do you have credit card or car loan debts?
1 - Do you have an emergency fund of at least 8 months of living expenses?
2 - Do you own your home or rent?
3 - under water
4 - Did you put down 20% ?
5 - Are you fully funding your employee sponsored retirement plan?
6 - Save money in Roth IRAs or fund College Savings (529)Accounts?

Don't forget to give some of your money away.

If you save for your kids' college education, don't tell them. Surprise them at the end of four years once they graduate. Doing so allows them to create character and allows them to determine if they really want to go to college, to be vested in it and take responsibility for spending thousands of dollars.

Free Times at NYC Museums: When to Visit at No Cost

2012-01-29T12:50:00.002-05:00

http://mommypoppins.com/ny-kids/free-times-at-nyc-museums

Spare Change: Building a Tower Edition

2011-12-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2011/12/08/spare-change-building-a-tower-edition/

via Byline

For me, the past few months have been transformative. There have been some monumental changes in my mindset, which have begun to be reflected in my everyday life. Some of these changes are public — I'm doing more interviews, I'm preparing to tackle my next book project — and some of the changes are private. But it's my hope that all of them will allow me to better pursue my personal goals and to live a happier life.

Making these changes hasn't been easy. In fact, some of them have been tremendously difficult — not to mention scary. There are risks involved, there's uncertainty. My decisions affect other people's lives, both directly and indirectly. Ultimately, though, I believe my choices will lead to a better world, both for me and for those around me.

As part of this process, I've been thinking a lot about what it is I'm here for. Why am I on the Earth? Deep stuff, I know, but I'm not a spiritual guy in any way, so I don't often dwell on personal philosophy like this. Still, I can't deny that I feel called to help others improve their lives, especially their financial lives. Sometimes I fight against this — do I really want to write about money for the rest of my life? — but I always return to the fact that this is what I seem to do best. This is how I'm able to help the most people.

All of this navel-gazing is prelude to a simple announcement: My friend and colleague Chris Guillebeau has just released a short (and completely free) "manifesto" that he calls The Tower. It's all about building something great, about creating a legacy that's bigger than just you. The Tower is short but filled with wisdom. Guillebeau doesn't pitch any products or websites here. He's simply written a long essay about the importance of doing great work. I urge you to download it.

Guillebeau's isn't the only work that's caught my eye lately. Here are some other things I've liked from around the web:

First, both Kris and Wendy sent a link to this NPR story about why Americans spend too much. This is an interview with Princeton professor Sheldon Garon, who has just released a book about why the U.S. is a spender nation. He seems to think the issues are systemic — easy access to credit, a lack of incentive to save — which I believe is only part of the issue. (What do I think is of greater importance? Check out yesterday's post about why financial literacy fails to find out.

Note: Help a reporter! Every so often, I help reporters look for leads. Today I have somebody looking for folks who plan to celebrate Christmas after the actual date in order to take advantage of post-holiday sales. Is that you and your family? If so, drop me a line.

Next, Tyler (and several others) pointed to yet another xkcd comic strip about money. In this case, it's a chart of almost all money in the U.S., where it is, and what it can do. This is an amazing piece of work (with every stat documented) that I could explore for hours. (And in a similar vein, this year's version of the Death and Taxes poster has now been released!)

Elsewhere, Kevin McKee (the Thousandaire) has produced another personal-finance music video. This time he's tackling a controversial topic: prenuptial agreements. Here's his latest work:

Finally, if you have the time, take a look at this long but interesting article from Todd at Financial Mentor. "Are safe withdrawal rates really safe?" he asks, breaking down the guideline that you can generally withdraw 4% of your retirement saving every year. If you're thinking about retirement planning, and especially if you're nearing retirement, you ought to read this.

Twelve Excuses

2011-07-21T20:38:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I'm going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

Edward on Facebook asks "How about a small list of justifications and excuses people make for not getting their finances in order or for buying crap they don't need?"

I started just making a list of the common ones I hear and came up with a fairly round number of twelve (after merging the ones that were essentially the same). You'd be surprised how often I see these excuses right in the emails of people looking for personal finance help!

"I have too many other important things to worry about in my life right now."
Great, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to ignore your personal finances. Quite often, people mention this as a reason to not cut one drop of their spending, which is strange because many spending cuts often save time.

When I stopped visiting my favorite bookstore twice a week, not only did I start spending less, I found myself with more time to actually enjoy things in my life. If you have so many important things in your life that you can't worry about your basic finances, then you have another problem beyond your finances: a time management problem.

"Money is too hard and I'll never understand it."
Take it slow. Learn in bite-sized chunks. No one ever said you have to learn everything today. Start off with what you know. Ask one question about it that you don't know the answer to and would like to know, then learn about it. If you're confused, back down to basic meanings and information.

It's really no different than learning about any new topic. Ask questions, find answers to those questions, and ask more questions at your own pace. You don't have to learn everything in one gulp, and almost everyone can learn about any topic if they learn at their own pace in chunks small enough for them to mentally digest.

"The communists/Republicans/Democrats are trying to destroy the U.S. dollar."
Global conspiracy theories are not a good reaon to completely ignore your finances. I've actually had multiple readers write to me stating that they're just racking up debt like there's no tomorrow because the collapse of such banks is inevitable due to inflation.

Let me make it very clear: your explanation for ignoring your current finances should not involve Woodrow Wilson. If it does, you need to turn off the radio for a while and get reconnected with the reality of what's going on in your life.

"You never know what will happen tomorrow, so you need to live it up today!"
And then you wake up tomorrow to find that you have a child, live in a tiny apartment, and have so much debt that you can't pay your monthly bills. That's exactly what happened to me.

It's easy to delude yourself into thinking tomorrow has no consequence, but the truth is that if you follow that philosophy, you fill tomorrow with restricted options and misery. If you overspend today, you're only really making tomorrow miserable, which is a really bad option if your overspending today is for things you don't really need.

"Don't tell me what to do with my money, you busybody!"
When you read personal finance advice and feel as though your privacy is somehow being invaded, it's not. It usually actually means that the advice is hitting a nerve in your life and instead of being angry and rejecting it, you should appreciate it and use it to evaluate that portion of your life.

Unless someone is directly speaking to you about your specific problems, they're not being a busybody. Instead, they're relating tactics that work in general or, at the very least, work for them. If you've provided information to that person asking for advice and they're giving you advice based on the information you've given them, they're not being a busybody, either. They're doing exactly what you asked, even though you're not liking what they're saying.

"The advice given does not perfectly match every aspect of my life, so it must be useless."
No advice is going to perfectly match every aspect of your life unless you hire someone to tell your complete life's story to and give deep exposure to your personality to over a long period of time. Your spouse might not even be able to give you perfect advice on a situation.

Thus, if you're in this boat, you must believe that all advice is useless, which makes me wonder why you would ever seek any form of advice on anything.

"Frugality is boring. I need some excitement!"
There are plenty of exciting and interesting things to do for free or for little money. The challenge is that most people are so attuned to being consumers that not being a consumer feels boring to them.

If you feel bored without spending money, you need to ask yourself whether it's the activities you enjoy or whether it's a psychological addiction to the act of spending and acquiring. For many people (myself included), spending can be a psychological addiction, and denial is a powerful response to threats to that addiction. Since frugality is a threat to reckless spending, denial is a perfectly reasonable response to a psychological addiction to such spending.

"How am I supposed to get my money in order when all my friends spend like maniacs?"
The problem here is with your social circle, not with personal finance advice. If you choose to keep running with these people, you choose to also spend beyond your means.

Get some control over yourself. Evaluate those relationships and ask if they're really adding a net positive to your life. If you're drowning in debt and they're pulling you even deeper, they're most likely not a net positive in your life. This means it may be time to reboot your social circle. Any time your friends are dragging you into a dangerous place, it's time to look for new friends.

"The debt I'm in is just too big to think about."
This is denial in the classic sense. They're fully aware of the problem, they just choose not to think about it. The end result of this is not a magical resolution to the problem. In fact, it's just an assurance that things are going to get still worse.

If you feel like you can't get your hands around the problem, you need to change now. If you need help, ask for it from friends or family or in the Reader Mailbag columns here at The Simple Dollar.

"Oh, my spouse takes care of that. I just spend."
Having someone else handling the day-to-day money management for you is not an excuse to not understand your family's financial state. In fact, if you're trusting that day-to-day management to someone else, you absolutely should be on some sort of "allowance" so that you're not wrecking your family's finances with your spending choices.

Be informed. Have some money meetings with your spouse so you understand where your family is at and where your family is headed. Talk about goals and understand how challenging they are to get there and how your spending is actually affecting those goals. You don't have to understand numbers to understand these things.

"I don't know where it all goes! I just look and my bank account is empty! It's not my fault!"
Pleading ignorance is not an excuse for having no control over your money. You have bank statements, credit card statements, PayPal statements, and other sources to tell you exactly where every single dime of your spending goes. Sit down with these and they'll tell you exactly where your money goes.

Often, this excuse means that you don't want to know where your money goes and that if you don't know, you don't have to take responsibility for it. Buying into that mindset guarantees a never-ending financial disaster for the rest of your life and, the longer you stick with it, the longer it'll take to dig out of your hole if you ever do decide to face it. The sooner you get in control, the sooner you'll be out of the danger zone.

"I've already cut my spending to the bone! You want me to cut HBO and my gym membership and my unlimited data plan, too?"
Often, people cut one minor thing in their life and convince themselves that they've cut an extraordinary amount. They reduce their Netflix account and it's the end of the world and evidence that cutting spending is impossible.

Nonsense. People trim and eliminate bills all the time. Go without cable. Go without a cell phone. Downsize your house (or other living quarters). It's not the end of the world to make a change in one area of your life in order to improve other areas of your life. People do it all the time. I certainly have.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thesimpledollar/~3/2iYPH2IqOtk/

Sent with MobileRSS for iPhone

Personal Finance - Illusions and Reality

2011-04-12T12:50:00.001-04:00

An excellent article from www.thesimpledollar.com

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thesimpledollar/~3/WlJx_ksuITQ/

What I came to find is that the initial appearance of a person often has little connection to their actual success in life, when by success I mean the goals they’ve achieved, the security they’ve earned, and the relationships they have with other people.

Usually, what I’ve found is that genuinely rich people appear in whatever way they feel the most comfortable, while people who aren’t truly affluent appear in whatever way they think others expect them to appear. This covers everything from clothes and haircut and automobile to personality and attitude. Sometimes, successful people dress well, while others dress extremely casually. The same is true for people who seem to be avoiding true success.

Don’t worry so much about what other people think. Instead, focus on putting you in the right mindset and you’ll go a lot further.

Warren Buffett is often seen wearing cheap suits.

Bill Gates looks most comfortable in a well-worn sweater.

The appearance of affluence has little to do with true success. People do.

Quote by Bill Cunningham on Money

2011-04-09T07:37:00.001-04:00

If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do. That's the key to everything. Bill Cunningham from the movie "Bill Cunningham New York" http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/billcunninghamnewyork/trailer.html

Free Walking Tours New York City | NYC By Foot

2011-03-10T10:11:00.002-05:00

http://nycbyfoot.com/

Savings Calculator

2011-02-11T14:43:00.001-05:00

http://www.easysurf.cc/vfpt2.htm

Nature Vs Nurture

2011-01-15T22:25:00.001-05:00

Psychologist Donald Hebb is said to have once answered a journalist's question of "which, nature or nurture, contributes more to personality?" by asking in response, "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?"^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12] That is, the idea that either nature or nurture explains a creature's behaviour is a sort of single cause fallacy.

From Wikipedia article on Nature Vs Nurture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature-nurture_debate

Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White

2010-12-01T17:24:00.001-05:00

by Perez Prado

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://ilike.myspacecdn.com/play%23Perez%2BPrado:Cherry%2BPink%2BAnd%2BApple%2BBlossom%2BWhite:359025:s69095480.15853363.17986859.0.2.195%252Cstd_2009abcb34c442a48b9a391b5ea1ae2d&sa=X&ei=-Mr2TMmbOMP6lwfIvozyBQ&ved=0CBQQ0wQwAA&usg=AFQjCNHsRxGOj6fPpj8pSyOkQ_Lkr6_obQ

Raleigh Superbe ALL PARTS

2010-11-17T12:48:00.001-05:00

18 Reasons Why Projects Fail by Rita

2010-10-21T21:47:00.001-04:00

Reasons Projects Fail

• Failure to understand that a change in scope affects schedule, cost or performance

• Unrealistic time frames

• Lack of project management training

• Projects defined without the PM's assistance

• Project team not involved in planning

• No risk management

• Miscommunication of scope

• Planning a project using only a bar chart

• No viable historical records

• Inadequate budget for administration

• Senior management meddling

• No change control system

• No effective system for controlling the project to the project plan

• Inexperience

• Lack of effective communication

• Failure to understand the unique nature of the project type

• Overselling

• Turnover

From the book Piggybanking

2010-10-20T11:51:00.001-04:00

1 - Understand how a budget works.

2 - Understand difference between needs and wants.

3 - Understand credit.

Before you can become a successful saver, you have to learn to be a wise spender, otherwise you'll have no money to save.

The 15 Money Rules Kids Should Learn - WSJ.com

2010-10-18T13:54:00.000-04:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126973100584968825.html

2010-09-24T16:40:00.000-04:00

Beach Packing List

2010-09-02T22:42:00.001-04:00

http://familyfun.go.com/vacations/beach-packing-checklist-711168/

Diego Enrique

2010-08-18T11:42:00.001-04:00

15 Most Important Lessons For Avoiding Credit Card Debt

2010-08-18T10:01:00.001-04:00

http://theskinnyon.typepad.com/the-skinny-on/2010/07/the-15-most-important-lessons-for-avoiding-credit-card-debt.html

What is Retirement

2010-08-03T12:28:00.001-04:00

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2010/08/02/what-is-retirement/

Excellent article with even more insightful comments.

MindMap on Personal Finance

2010-07-31T06:26:00.001-04:00

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/57301187

Quote

2010-07-28T11:10:00.001-04:00

To play it safe is not to play. -- Robert Altman

Quote on Friends

2010-07-25T16:23:00.001-04:00

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company. -- George Washington

Diego - A Day with Thomas in Lancaster PA

2010-06-13T17:23:00.001-04:00

Project Management Flowchart

2010-05-25T12:56:00.001-04:00

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:5TGojX3trQQJ:swqualitymentors.com/Documents/Sample%2520Project%2520Flow%2520Chart.pdf+flowchart+project+management&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj-gNps519-FnkOWxGlbHXbcrpL5p2IXlarh6m8JhE_0SB1wGQf_lBvDLMnAWVZqIgOPZpmzDHCwvpjkufx7GNX1NG9itO5ocXTT8GXKfcXHTAlatjC8dX75uOOkEfGkEN0V3YU&sig=AHIEtbQWo2AwDU7oGpQMzqH08DI6Xe0svQ

Diego May 2010

2010-05-21T15:38:00.001-04:00