Easy Change

I found this post recently and I thought it was quite interesting to look back and see how reasonable and accurate it was since about 2 years have passed since it was written. So, I leave the full post here for you to read and my ideas/comments are at the end. To say that this month has been difficult with the spending would be a huge understatement. Just this past weekend I went overboard on the spending with clothes and christmas shopping. What's more, the car needed new brakes this weekend--420 dollars! Yikes! Yes, Christmas shopping. I know that it is early, but I still intend to be prepared and get it out of the way. That said, there are huge cutbacks this year. I'm hoping this update with help me get some perspective. First off, in our own families, we are keeping the gifts much smaller. Even though I normally give bonds to my nephews and neices I have decided to not do that this year. The bonds are normally quite small and we need to make sure we're being mo...

Thankfully, I have been debt free except for mortgage for over a year, and without a personal car payment on my own car for more than two years. My car is approaching 200,000 miles and knowing deciding what kind of car to buy has consumed a lot of time for me and I find myself wondering what the best kind of car is to get when the time comes. Budgeting the money for a new car is a major motivation for this. And in order to know how much to budget, I have to consider what kind of car I will purchase which is the subject of this post. In terms of changes since I last bought a car, I now have a pug. As a result, there is more fur than you can shake a stick at and I am considering a car with a hatchback/cargo area for the dog where he could be safe and comfortable as opposed to being stuck with having a bulky crate in the back seat. Other than that, I know that I want to maintain with either a small or mid-size car, but nothing larger (although truth-be-told, I'd love to have one)...

One of the biggest things that has made it possible for me to be able to improve my personal financial situation is the maintaining of a freedom fund. A freedom fund is a different bucket of money that is used for clear and present expenses coming in the next 12 months. This is entirely separate money from your emergency fund. The Emergency fund is some bucket of money that is set aside as insurance against loss of income for unavoidable expenses. When something happens and the income is lost, it is difficult to adjust lifestyle immediately. In fact, when you typically lose your income, there can be difficulty adjusting because you now have larger amounts of available time and this may coincide with some residual depression/anxiety resulting in an uptick in spending. If you're anything like me, there are a series of expenses that you'd cut immediately if there was a loss in income. Then there are probably a series of expenses that you'd cut only if absolutely necessary...

This weekend, Donald Luskin had an interesting and compelling piece in the Wall Street Journal that forecasted the impending doom to stock and bond prices were we to see the adjustments that are slated for the end of the year. I encourage you to read Donald Luskin 's piece to see if you agree with him. Then come back here....its ok. I will wait. For me, what is most interesting about this piece is not the doom-and-gloom scenario that Luskin is talking about. Instead, it is about what to do next? I recently found myself wondering what the correct next course of action would be in light of such a decline and how I might reduce risk to be better positioned. I am fortunate enough to be in the high end as far as US Household Income is concerned and measured. And of course, these numbers change all of the time and there is very little certainty about things. So, the question becomes, if you are lucky enough to be well positioned, you have more to lose if you're sandwiched. Of c...