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Posted
Oct 09 2007, 02:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Getting hitched to Mrs. Dough 19 years ago was the best money move The Dough Roller ever made, he reports in " My best and worst financial decisions ." Why? In the early days, she kept a lid on spending when Dough, a graduate student, was using the ATM "like it was a slot machine." Then, when it was his turn to work and hers to go back to school, she put him in charge of their finances and he learned the value of a buck.
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Posted
Oct 18 2007, 02:59 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Pinyo at Moolanomy back in August launched the "My One Money Advice" meme , challenging personal-finance bloggers to share their best pearls of wisdom. Pinyo opened with: "Save 10% of your income and make it automatic." More than 50 bloggers have contributed advice since then, ranging from chestnuts like "Spend less than you earn" to the more philosophical " Money is not the problem, you are ." The Dough Roller offered " Live below your means ," only after running around screaming "Get it off! Get it off!" when he saw he'd been tagged with a "MOMA meme." (He calmed down when he looked up meme at Wikipedia .) The latest poster, Growth in Value , a 20-something Canadian, says his favorite "financial cliche" is: Pay yourself first . There's nothing hackneyed about how he does it. A whopping 25% of each paycheck is automatically deposited into savings. "Maybe there'll be one less beer after the game that week, but that sum I ferret away is sacrosanct," he writes.
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Posted
Oct 31 2007, 09:41 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The Dough Roller is pitching a series of posts he plans to write about financial freedom , and he has already captured our interest. You won't be reading the "seven steps to this" or "nine steps to that" at his site. He says that approach suggests the work you need to do is much easier than it is. "I do think that there are some key habits that should be followed, but there is no one right way to taking back control of your money," he writes, adding, "But there is one thing that is critical -- understanding that achieving financial freedom is simple, but not easy." He's right. Spending less than you make is a simple concept; doing it takes a lot of discipline. DR concedes he'd be more popular if he sugarcoated his advice. But that would defeat his purpose. He writes, "We need to recognize that getting control of our money is a battle to be waged every day."
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Posted
Nov 02 2007, 03:33 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
The Dough Roller 's financial assets weren't inherited. What he got from his upbringing was an appreciation for a dollar and what life is like without a sufficient supply of them. His candid account his stepfather's bad financial decisions (DR lived with his mother and stepfather) and their impact on the family contains many stark lessons about money and life . We'll share this detail from his post: The death of his father in a car crash entitled DR to Social Security benefits, which were used to pay his stepfather's bills and avoid bankruptcy. The post ends with DR's summary of insights he gained. Among them: "We are the sum of our circumstances multiplied by our choices. Each of our circumstances differs but they almost always involve struggles. From those struggles, we can learn and we can choose."
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Posted
Nov 13 2007, 12:39 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Retiring at age 65 (or 66 or 67 , depending on what year you were born) is "so 1990s," The Dough Roller writes. Why wait until then if you can ease into it? he asks, and introduces the concept of slow-motion retirement . Start by working those 40 hours in four days to have a three-day weekend, and then begin a transition to telecommuting. Eventually shrink your work to part time. DR notes that some people have to be at work to work. ("Peyton Manning has that kind of job. So does a firefighter," he observes.) You also may find it difficult to earn less money or to convince your boss to allow you to work from home. He proposes solutions for those potential problems, and recommends you read his companion post, " 5 steps to achieving the 24-hour workweek (which beats the 4-hour workweek )."
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Posted
Nov 21 2007, 07:49 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller . Congratulations! You've just made a change in your cable service that saves you $8 per month. Or you've sold some clutter on eBay that netted you $50. Where did that extra money go? If you can't answer that question or the money went to buy more clutter, then you, my friend, are a fritterer. Harsh words, to be sure, but some situations call for tough love. It is easy to become a fritterer. Small savings are easy to spend because they don't appear to make a big difference in your finances. Yet, like the power of the pawn , these small savings can make a huge difference given enough time. The consequences of being a fritterer can be even worse for people like me. Why? Because I'm not all that frugal to begin with. I watch my money, but I have no interest in clipping coupons, having a garage sale, or figuring out 37 ways to save money in the (fill in some part of the house here). But I do watch my money closely when it comes to monthly expenses
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Posted
Nov 28 2007, 09:01 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller . If I could write just one thing about achieving financial freedom, it would be this: Spend less than you make. Like all habits that lead to financial freedom, spending less than you make is simple to understand, but hard to follow. For some reason, we always want more. At times in my life I've made very little, and other times I've made a lot, but at all times I've wanted just a wee bit more. I find it just as difficult to live below my means today as I did 15 years ago making about one-third of what I make today. The problem isn't about how much we make. We are the problem. This is critical to understand because until you identify the problem, you can't fix it. If you think the problem is your income, you'll spend your energy trying to make more money. While there is obviously nothing wrong with making more money, I speak from experience when I say that making more money will not make spending less than you make any easier. So what will
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Posted
Dec 05 2007, 06:37 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. I hate budgeting. I've tried using envelopes, Quicken and fancy spreadsheets, and the results are always the same. I start off strong, but within a few weeks I lose interest in the time-consuming chore that budgeting can be. The problem is that I still need to manage my money. I confronted this problem about a year ago, and asked myself the following question: How do I effectively manage my money in as little time and with as little pain as possible? To answer that question, I came up with a money-management plan that doesn’t require me to track all of my expenses all the time, and requires a relatively small investment of my time each month. In this post, I’ll share my plan with you.
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Posted
Dec 12 2007, 05:27 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. Recently I wrote about how to develop the habit of spending less than you make. To continue that topic, here are some practical and painless tips to help you save money each month. (Be sure to read to the bottom of this post, as tip No. 51 is bound to spark some discussion and debate.) 1. Combine your cable, Internet and telephone service. Companies now offer combined services that not only cost less, but offer the convenience of a single bill. 2. Slow down your Internet service. I went to the slower Internet service option with my cable company and saved $15 per month. And I haven't noticed a difference when surfing the Net.
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Posted
Dec 19 2007, 06:12 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. Are you struggling to spend all of your money each month? Do you get to the end of the month, only to learn that cash is just sitting there in your checking account? Well, if you've got this problem -- and who doesn't? -- here are 10 surefire solutions: Stop tracking your spending. When I see a family with excess cash each month, nine times out of 10, the problem is they're keeping track of what they spend. So turn off that spreadsheet and uninstall Quicken. And while you're at it, go ahead and disable the check-engine light in your car. Buy more house than you need. Buying a monster house and financing 100% of the purchase with a first mortgage and one or two equity lines of credit is a great way to rid your bank account of all that excess cash. Oh, and make sure the loan comes with a variable interest rate and interest-only payments. You may spend less at first, but don't worry, in a few years money will by flying out of your checking account like chili out of a drunken sailor.
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