Easy Change

This weekend I am quite excited. I will be taking my mom to see Suze Orman give a talk about her new book about Women and Money. This past Christmas I gave my mom Suze's book about the 9 Steps to Financial Freedom which I liked. My mom devoured the book and has been taking steps to get her finances in better shape ever since. This book promises to focus on women's issues and will probably delve more into the emotional/psychological issues that many women have with regard to their money. But I'm ok with that. I think that many people out there need to hear some of these things and I think that changing your thinking is the critical first step to affect a positive change in your life -- whether its financial or otherwise. In general terms, people are creatures of habit. And yet we expect to do the same things again and again and again and somehow get a different result. It usually doesn't work. Instead we are stuck in cyclical behavior and thought-patterns and then are s...

Recently, I joined the blogger network No Credit Needed. It is similar in function to the NetworthIQ site in that it provides charting for your progress toward your financial goals. But in general, rather than tracking net worth, it usually tracks progress toward paying off debts specifically. In addition, it provides a forum where users can update/change/and provide comments on each others' progress. And I am excited to see that it got mentioned in the article. Here is the link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/us/18debt.html This is an excellent step toward broader recognition for all the work that NCN does in terms of keeping members updated and encouraging one another. As for me, I need to get my chart updated at No Credit Needed because this month, I took a big chunk of the tax return money and eliminated a small student loan that I'd been chipping away at for a few years. This was a huge step for me since I know now that I have one less bill to worry about each m...

I've been thinking about moving yet another of my debts to a zero percent credit card: my car loan. As of last night, I found out that the payoff on this loan is hovering at just under five thousand dollars, with just over 300 bucks-a-month as the payment. For those math whizzes out there, thats about 17 more months of payments. After some back-of-an-envelope math (isn't that the best kind), I discovered that I could save myself more than 20 bucks a month by switching to a zero percent credit card. Thats about 350 dollars in interest.   So this leaves me wondering. Are there any downsides to doing this, provided that I can find a deal where I can transfer this non-credit-card-debt to a credit card and I am able to get myself a card with enough of a limit? Again, I'm not racking up new debt, I am transferring existing debt (secured by my car) to an unsecured credit card. I still haven't decided if I am going to go for it or not. I like the the idea of saving money...

Net Worth is just one measurement of wealth, of progress toward goals. However, it is just as important to consider other measurements. This thought came to me recently as I was updating net worth for January. You can see the latest info here: http://www.networthiq.com/people/easychange   At any rate, one of the more interesting things to consider is how much progress has been made with regard to savings to income ratios and debt to income ratios. By age 30, according to some estimates, there should be about 100K of savings in order to stay on track. But I don't know if that is going to happen; the best way I can get further on this is to increase income.   On that note, I thought I'd start thinking about small business/new business ideas. Currently there are various things that I am using for income streams but unfortunately, not enough of them are passive income. Ideally, I'd like to figure out some new businesses that can generate more passive income for m...

Retirement planning is a tricky business, and I guess when it comes right down to it, I should trust the experts. But when I do these online retirement planners and calculators, I cannot help but feel annoyed. The latest one I tried out was a basic one on the fidelity website and according to them, I will have somewhere between 700k and 1.5 million when I retire, even though I need about 2.5 million (according to them). But the flaw with most calculators, this one included, is that you don't understand enough of how they got to their conclusions. The scary part for me is that I have done some basic calculations and I have found that I will more than handle the amount of money that will be needed. My conservative calculations put my likely retirement somewhere around 1.7 million for just my 401k and then 150K for my roth. And all of this is not including real-estate or potential social security. And all of these are conservative calculations where I only intend to increase my con...

Well this weekend I was quite productive. And I think that I should mention how I got through it -- perhaps these ideas will help you get through a tough day or week that you might be going through. First thing, I got my taxes done. Getting those out of the way was not easy but I didn't do it all at once. If a project will take me more than 2 hours to do, I generally break it into 90 minute or less chunks. I find that I can accomplish the most in this period of time and then my mind starts to wonder. Consider doing some form of timeboxing if you find yourself distracted and feeling like you are 'missing out' on fun time for yourself. I kept my eye on the prize. By getting through all of my tasks on Saturday, I knew that I would have Sunday for myself. So I did my onsite visit for a few hours, then I got home and did some programming that needed to be done and started wrapping up on my taxes. I knew throughout the whole process that I could get through it all because I knew ...

One of the most interesting things that I've seen recently is the idea that people are actually tracking the percentage of their incomes across various income streams. That is, they are tracking how much they make at each job etc. Personally, almost all of my income comes from my primary job (about 95%), which is one of the things that is generally frowned upon. I'd like to really work this upcoming year on developing more passive sources of income. Income that doesn't require my intervention or my physical presence would be ideal. Real estate is the one that often comes to mind, but dividend paying stocks might be more reasonable for me so far. Not long ago, I wanted to get into buying a few shares of individual stocks and I bought a few shares of HD stock and its gone up a fair bit so that I've made about 12% on it so far. But right now I have no intention of selling. I bought it for the long-haul, not for the short-term gain.

This article over at FreeMoneyFinance really got me thinking about my student loan debt. The fact is that I have three different student loans right now (and that's after consolidating several years back). But the reality is that I still regret not paying more down on them. I know that I didn't totally mess up, but I feel like much of the struggle that I am in right now (and it isn't as bad as I am making it sound) is that I didn't get rid of the loans when I should have and instead I spent too much money on "stuff". I don't really regret anything that I bought, but I feel like I should have been able to retire that debt sooner. The lessons I've learned, and I hope to pass on to other people that are taking student loan debt are the following: 1. Find out how much money you will owe. (do this while you are in school.) 2. Figure out whether the interest rates are fixed or variable. 3. Check with your financial aid rep to find out what loans are federall...