Articles
My take on some popular personal finance podcasts – updated!!
UPDATE: I originally posted this in March 2018. Since then, I've tried three that are new to me, and changed my opinion on some others. My updates as of November 2019 are in blue, and the reviews of the three new podcasts are at the top of the list. I’m a podcast...
Are You on FIRE?
For those who haven’t heard of it, the FIRE movement has been taking the personal finance world by storm over the past decade or so. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early, and has been embraced by people who want out of the rat race. They save a huge...
Navigating the Jungles of Temptation
So I walked into Bed Bath & Beyond last week and was immediately dazzled by all the Beautiful Things. I could get gorgeous deck furniture! Colorful wine glasses! Throw pillows in so many fun colors and patterns! I could imagine my house with these fresh, bright, shiny...
The Basics: How to Get Out of Credit Card Debt and Start Saving
I've seen a trend lately of people who aren't in serious debt trouble, but who are carrying a relatively small amount of credit card debt - a few thousand dollars - and are having difficulty breaking that cycle. In nearly every case, they also have no cash savings....
Financial Literacy and Minimalism
I’ve been a little bit obsessed with the idea of minimalism recently. First, I watched a documentary on Netflix called “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things” directed by Matt D’Avella. One of the people interviewed was Joshua Becker, the author of a...
A Personal Finance Lesson From the Government Shutdown
I’ve been reading news stories over this past week about furloughed government workers struggling to pay their bills. Because they’re not being paid, they don’t have the money to pay daycare costs, their car payment, or their rent, and a lot of them are feeling...
The Pitfalls of Amazon Prime (or, Why Jeff Bezos Has All of the Money)
I recently had to advise a couple on an issue that I hadn’t faced before: out-of-control Amazon spending. This is a relatively new phenomenon in our culture. It wasn’t very many years ago that buying products off the internet was a new...
Why a big tax refund isn’t a bad thing
So I’ve been struggling for a while with the idea of discouraging big tax refunds. Every time it comes up, people get all fired up that they don’t want to give an interest-free loan to the government, which is, of course, exactly what a tax refund is. They’re...
Personal finance Q&A #2: dealing with income ups and downs
Q&A #2: Q: I’m struggling with managing my money. I’m self-employed and my income varies every month. When I work regularly, I make plenty of money to pay my expenses and pay down my debts, but the months I don’t work as much as I’d like to, I struggle to make my...
Personal finance Q&A #1: paying bills late
First ever Q&A! E-mail me with your questions! Q: I heard that companies like it if you pay your bills late. Is that true? A: Of course they like it! They can charge you crazy exorbitant interest and late fees if you carry a balance with them. What’s good for...
Freezing kids’ credit
When I started my business two years ago, one of the first things I was going to do and report back on was freezing my kids’ credit files. It had been on my mind for a while, ever since someone I knew personally had had an experience with her child being a victim of...
Adventures in credit freezes
Protecting your credit: Worst. Thing. Ever. Who wants to spend even 30 seconds thinking about how vulnerable we are to identity theft? Especially when no one knows what to do and it sounds like a hideously painful process to actually go through. It’s been in the...