When hiding your money in a piggy bank or under your mattress is no longer a plausible option, it’s time to start looking for a bank.  With so many options out there (local banks, national banks, credit unions, etc.), how do you know which to choose?  It’s important to ask yourself some questions about what [...]

The best way to manage your money is to have a plan.  Or a budget.  Or a financial checklist.  No matter what you call it, you won’t truly be in control until you know how much money is coming in and where it’s all going.  The tough part is being honest with yourself about your [...]

Life is always better when you have fewer things to worry about, so you look for shortcuts when they’re available.  You take the shortest route to work, cook meals that take 30 minutes or less, text message instead of calling (and use “TXT” talk to make that even faster still).  You’re probably looking for ways [...]

Paying yourself first has long been a strategy to increase savings and build a foundation for a secure financial future.  Even in the best of times, paying yourself first is often difficult for individuals living pay check-to-pay check.  It is not hard to understand why many people have found this increasing difficult to implement in [...]

Money issues are among the top problems in marriages, and it’s easy to see why.  It’s tough to get two people to agree on pizza toppings, let alone the best way to spend money.  And for some people, marriage and money is a sensitive subject.  However uncomfortable, though, it’s necessary to keep money issues out [...]

You can focus on making more money or you can focus on spending less. Beyond that, there really aren’t many more options to put more cash in your bank account. The latter (playing financial defense), is the process of finding inefficiencies in your spending, reducing the amount of unnecessary spending, and keeping your cost of [...]

With all of these blogs, books, radio broadcasts, magazines and so forth, personal finance sure seems complicated. There’s so much to manage and so much to do that it can be overwhelming and seem like a full-time job. It doesn’t need to be though. I for one like to keep my life simple and do [...]

Got money to burn and wondering how to spend it? Maybe it’s $10,000, $20,000 or just $500. There are obvious smart things you can do with your money or you could just enjoy it and get some self satisfaction out of it. If you’ve recently looked at your quarterly investment reports, you might be well [...]

Any time an investment, business, or strategy is being evaluated, one of the elements to consider is the velocity of money. This is a methodology that many real estate investors use to determine whether or not an investment property is worth their time or not, but it applies in virtually any wealth building strategy. The [...]

Calculating net worth is as simple as taking your assets and subtracting your liabilities. The number you have left over is the total amount of money you are worth today. The tricky part is correctly identifying your assets and liabilities. Your home, for example, can be both an asset and a liability. Assets are those [...]