Skip to main content

Suze Orman Live and Other Notes

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 stuck with the same shoddy outcomes. Personally, when I started taking more responsibility for my financial situation, I started to feel much better.

The market tanked yesterday, but I am generally not worrying about it. Just out of curiousity I wanted to check my 401k balance but it seems that the Fidelity website was down this morning, undoubtedly because of the high amount of traffic. On the upside though, I do have a fairly large contribution coming up, and it may be that this amount could go through when the market is down. Wouldn't that be nice?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On Buying a Lifestyle...with a Fixed-Rate Mortgage

Despite all of the back and forth about sub-prime mortgages and the housing bubble, I am feeling just fine. The reason is that when purchasing, I followed some old advice: Don't expect to flip. In general, I've been told by many people that you shouldn't buy a home unless you plan to hold on to it for 7 years or longer. If the market does well and you decide to sell, fine. But if you want to be sure not to lose money, don't buy something that you only want for a year or two. I've been in my current location for more than 3 years. I like it. And I have no intention of leaving in the short or medium term. It seems to me, that real estate, like any asset class, has its ups and downs. But as a practical point, I don't look at my home as an asset per se. Rather, I consider it to be a fixed expense that I need to survive, much like food and water. Therefore, as long as the payment is reasonable and it functions to keep me warm and sheltered and comfortable, that is a...

Do Better With Your Time

Recently, I've been extremely busy with some work commitments. The interesting thing for me is that this increased work activity has really helped crystallize some of my feelings with regard to time. And these ideas are a critical part about my view on personal finance. I'm curious to know if others feel similarly. Time is money. That is, Time, in some way, contains energy. Money, is also energy. In the act of working, I am able to compound and increase the amount of money that I have. I am exchanging my time and effort and thought which are components of my work, for the productivity that I produce. And this production gets me money from my employer. However, the first dollars that I make each day, week, or month are the most valuable. Then the ones that I make at the end are the most valuable. (Forget about taxes for a minute.) The reason is, the first ones help me have a place to live and food to eat. And the last ones are the ones that I can use to really improve my life lo...

On Living Better...

I think that the goal of personal finance in my life is to help me live a better life. I am not talking about just having more money and being able to buy more stuff. Although there is an obvious component of being able to purchase more goods. But I think more important than the stuff is the ability for me to know that *I can* purchase these things without worrying. Removing my fear about spending money is one major goal of my personal finance journey. The second goal is to incrementally make my life better. Whether it is to have more choices for food, more places where I can travel, or even more people I can help with various issues in their lives, these things are all things that come from having more money. And the abundance in my life is due to better financial skills. Realizing weaknesses and improving myself is another goal of personal finance. I notice this trend more and more in the PF community at large. Even my mother is a good example. Once you tackle your finances, taking o...