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Posted
Aug 22 2008, 02:18 AM
by
Ryan MacClanathan
Rating:
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.
Out of all of the
blessings that have come into my life over
the last two and a half years or so (a new home, my daughter, financial
recovery, a new career, a lot of wonderful readers), the one that has truly
helped me to sleep better at night is the move away from living paycheck to
paycheck.
Paycheck-to-paycheck living
happens when you are regularly waiting for your next paycheck before you make
basic financial moves,
like paying bills or buying food or doing something fun. It's incredibly
dangerous for a number of reasons:
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Posted
Jul 18 2008, 05:35 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. About a year ago, I wrote a lengthy article about how to start a filing system, including information about what kind of filing cabinet to buy and what sorts of things you should file. Near the end, I wrote one little paragraph that deserves to be looked at again in more detail: A master document explaining what all of this stuff is. This is mostly a guide to the executor of your estate, containing all important information not in the other documents and also explaining online account access and other details, like where a safety deposit box key can be found. This may also include personal letters for people to read in the event of your passing. Think about this scenario: If you dropped dead right after reading this article, would your survivors -- your kids, your spouse, your family -- have any idea how to access your money? Would they even know where all of your accounts are?
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Posted
Jun 05 2008, 09:29 PM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Prior to our financial meltdown, my wife and I never sat down and talked about our finances. Right after the meltdown, we talked about things almost every day. Through our recovery, the number of meetings slowly declined to a monthly family financial meeting. The meetings have become a big part of the financial glue of our marriage.
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Posted
May 23 2008, 06:57 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Hopefully, that headline woke you up a bit this morning. Several months ago, I made a list of 101 goals that I wanted to reach in the next three years. I piled this list on top of an already long list of medium-term and long--term goals --including building a writing career and paying off debt. While making the giant list of goals felt very empowering at first, it soon became a big weight on my shoulders. I was reaching for too many things at once. When I set a goal, I'm committed to achieving it, and thus I often feel like Lucy and Ethel on the chocolate candy assembly line -- more to do than I can possibly keep up with.
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Posted
May 01 2008, 09:11 PM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. As I sit down to write about the value of investing in self-confidence, I keep picturing one of my closest friends. She's got a lot going for her, but she often finds reasons to think that she's a bad or unworthy person. She often doesn't have the self-confidence to step up and grab the ring, even though her talents have entitled her to it.
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Posted
Mar 21 2008, 06:06 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. When I first sat down to write the "Investing in yourself" series, I was thinking mostly about financial investments -- how you can invest money in yourself in order to increase your earning potential. What the series actually pointed out to me is that investments take on a lot of forms, and you can often transform one type of investment into another. For example, take The Simple Dollar. For me, it's a money investment (hosting fees), a time investment, an intellectual investment and a bit of an emotional investment, too. What do I get out of it? I reap some financial rewards, increased knowledge and understanding (as a result of the research), improved writing skills, a network of acquaintances, and the wonderful feeling one gets from helping someone. Is it enough reward for the time investment? I believe it is, but it's probably not an exchange everyone would see value in. There are lots of ways to invest in something.
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Posted
Mar 14 2008, 06:20 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post is from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Recently, I had coffee with an old friend who was torn over the decision to have a child. His spouse wants a child, as do his parents, but he doesn't feel ready to take that leap. I told him I thought he should stick to his guns on the subject, and he looked at me with a mix of shock and relief. He was sure I was going to try to talk him into having a child, given the value I've found in being a parent. But I made it very clear to him that there are a lot of deep costs to being a parent, and you need to be fully sure of your choice before stepping up to the plate.
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Posted
Feb 15 2008, 07:11 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. A while back, I reviewed in detail the excellent book "The Path of Least Resistance" by Robert Fritz. He posits that most of the time our lives take the path of least resistance around and through the obstacles of life, both those dealt to us by others and those within our own minds. An extension of that is the idea of a fundamental choice, as opposed to a primary or a secondary choice. A fundamental choice is one that actually affects the definition of who you are as a person. The others are merely suggestions about how to act. For example, a fundamental choice would be to define yourself as a frugal person, whereas a primary choice might be to decide to try to make frugal choices, and a secondary choice would be an individual frugal decision. For a lot of people, this seems like mere wordplay, but there's something deeper at work here. A person who makes the fundamental choice to be a frugal person is a person whose default choice is the frugal one. A primary choice to be frugal doesn't change that; you're merely deciding in harmony with your default choice whenever you can think about it.
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Posted
Feb 08 2008, 05:04 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Readers often leave comments at The Simple Dollar complaining that they make frugal choices, but their spouses see their savings not as a long-term financial benefit but as more money to spend right now. Thus, their frugal ways go without a long-term reward. They're careful about spending their money, but their bank account balances don't grow. I'm lucky. My wife is very frugal, and we share the same philosophy. In fact, she's probably more frugal than I am. Her only weakness is books, but she participates in PaperBackSwap to keep the cost low. She's in line with my goals: freedom from debt, saving for major purchases so we don't have more debt. Our goal as a family is to eliminate all of our debt by my 40th birthday. Unfortunately, many people aren't in such a lucky situation. They may be in sync with their spouses in a number of ways, but in terms of personal spending, they're in different worlds. Naturally, the frugal spouse is going to be frustrated, watching his or her efforts dissipate in a spending binge. On the other hand, the spending spouse probably feels frustration too, because his or her partner won't "live a little."
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