Easy Change

Dating with Data, Digging for Gold This article is part of a series on divorce which describes my experiences as part of going through a divorce. In short, I found that the dating world had changed somewhat by the time I returned to it as a result of my divorce. Now, the internet has changed dating, changed it even more than when I had originally met my spouse on America Online almost 20 years ago. Now the internet bustles with all sorts of applications for smart phones related to dating. Many of them are related and part of larger conglomerates at this point. I wanted to take this post really to just give my own personal impressions of dating as a result of this experience. I personally used an app called OKCupid which I found to be very good and helpful. Here are the things I liked: 1. It provided pictures and some opportunity to give a description. 2. It did not require for other people to know I was looking at their profile. 3. It allowed me to be able to answer questions...

One of the most important skills, indeed, the most important skill when it comes to personal finance is the simple rule: Spend less than you make. This is a simple rule that works for handling all personal financial situations. If applied correctly and the wisdom that it imparts is correctly understood, it can determine the course of your financial future. Personally, I am continuing to work on ways that I can spend less than I make. For this to happen, I need to accurately understand all of my expenses and all of my sources of income and determine how I can track it and ensure that I take steps until my income is larger than my expenses. I have reached this point many years ago and the progress has been positive since then and I consider myself lucky. Now, I am proceeding down the path and I realize that there are two aspects to this constant quest--a shorter term aspect which consists of very specific steps that can be taken in the very near term. Then there is also a longer ter...

Charity and donating is always an interesting topic when it comes to personal finance. Some people donate time, others money. And regardless of what people give away, the reasons for doing so are almost as varied as the donations themselves. Recently I heard a report that discussed how local charities are being rated and there is a <a href=" http://www.charitynavigator.org/ ">nice website</a> that you can go to to learn more about your favorite charities and determine how they are actually using your money. If you are anything like me, you want to make sure that your money is being used efficiently. But getting to more pressing and current issues, the G8 summit is on. And one of the major issues being discussed is aid to Africa. I find this particularly interesting because people are actually working on providing more and more aid to Africa - often to combat the issue of poor medical care. But despite all the attention that Africa gets, especially now with the cr...

I was about to write this as a comment, but its quite long and brings up a ton of issues so here goes. First, check out  <a href=" http://hereverycentcounts.blogspot.com/2007/06/money-and-etiquette-why-are-important.html ">this story at here every cent counts</a>. Now on to my response. I am just mortified by this story. I cannot even imagine that people with kids would expect someone in college to pay for their own dinner. I'm assuming that this is an aunt/uncle/great aunt/great uncle situation and that you are a young college student in late teens, early twenties with no full time job. All of my answers below are based on those assumptions. If that is the case, they should *splurge* the 20 bucks for dinner. They are an adult here and as much as I believe that you should be independent, while you are in college and struggling for money, you should be treated on an occasion like this. Big Question: How do your mom and/or dad and/or other immediate family ...

One of the major things that I notice that people deal with in our society is the whole concept of when to move out and start to assert their independence financially. The funny thing about this is that there are some seriously split opinions when it comes to this issue. Some people feel like it is important for young people to assert themselves early by making themselves financially independent of mom and dad. I personally happen to be in this camp. I've worked since I was fourteen and since I was a freshmen in college, there has never been any extended (more than 2 weeks) period in my life that I haven't worked. And for about 90% of that time, I have worked two or more jobs concurrently. Of course, this all underlines a couple of key things about my personality. I have a good work ethic. I think that hard work is good for your self-esteem, your wallet and your soul. But on top of that, I have a sense of responsibility to myself and my family. For me, many people who are not...

This weekend I was looking forward to a great time. I had lots of stuff going on and the weekend just sort of got away from me. On Friday night I got absolutely slammed with work and it turned out that I really didn't get out from underneath it until Saturday night. To add insult to injury, I was experiencing a bit of discomfort from a muscle strain in my back that was presumably from working out on Friday night. Truthfully, I am fairly timid when I exercise and I am surprised that I hurt myself, but then again, it was bound to happen sooner or later, right? So I've taken a break from exercising for a few days but now I am out of my routine. And just like anything else for me, once I get into a routine, the inertia of it all makes it simple for me to continue. But then again, once I find myself outside of it, it is hard to recover. But I've recovered before and so I am going to get back on the horse again. Similarly, at one of my jobs I made a financial mistake which cost m...

One of the most challenging things in life is prioritizing. I find this is true for me particularly during the holidays and during the summer. There are so many things to do and see and just not enough time to do them. This is slightly different from time management in that time management is really the art of taking the time that you have allocated for a particular task or set of tasks and using techniques to ensure that this time is used for the tasks that you have decided on accomplishing. For me, the problem isn't so much with time management. I've gotten better at that recently and I know how my body and mind work so I can handle that much of the time. Instead, the problem is more upstream -- prioritizing. I enjoy doing many different things throughout the day. I don't have ADD or ADHD or anything like that, but I really like switching gears often. I notice a significant reduction in my productivity if I have to do the same thing for more than 2-3 hours straight. I ins...

So on friday, I went to see Suze Orman at a book signing/talk in boston. I had a great time and it was fun to meet Suze in person. Her book about women and money seemed to resonate with quite a few people in the audience; my mom is a big fan of Suze and has really started getting her finances in order as a result of reading Suze's books and watching her show. It appears that Suze has changed her mind at this book in that she now believes that there are some fundamentally different things about how men and women handle money. I find this concept interesting but not *always* true. I like many of the ideas in her new book though and I think that men and women could both often benefit from the advice Suze gives when it comes to money. And the concepts in this book are really no exception, in my opinion. Sure, most guys are probably not as "touchy-feely" and emotional about money as women are. But that doesn't mean that some of the same concepts cannot be applied. One conc...