Helping A Teenager Take The First Steps Towards Financial Freedom
Yesterday, I had a very long IM conversation with a young cousin of mine who is in high school and has a pretty lucrative lawn care business going on right now. Most of my younger cadre of cousins and...
View ArticleBig Dreams, Small Income: Financial Planning Without A Large Salary
Recently, Fred wrote in outlining his situation: I’m 35. I make $30K a year. I lose about $4K of that every year to child support. A divorce (and student loans) has placed me about $20K in debt. The...
View ArticlePets and Money
Earlier today, I opened a can of worms by suggesting that, if your budget is overly tight, you may wish to consider looking for a new home for your pet. My mention of this issue was extremely brief...
View ArticleWalking Through A Financial Horror Story
Every once in a while, I receive a story of a person who has slowly backed into a desperate financial situation. Usually, it’s pretty easy to root out the cause, so I often don’t share these horror...
View ArticleThe New Person At Work Is Getting Paid More Than I Am! How Can I Handle It?
Bea wrote in with the following story: I work at a small office and we have lost two employees this year….one left for more salary and benefits and another because they were moving out of state. While...
View ArticleA Wedding Dilemma: I Can’t Afford To Reciprocate!
What do you do when you can’t afford to reciprocate the generosity of others? Jane writes: I’m 26 now, and it seems that everyone I know is getting married (including myself). The problem is that my...
View ArticleTaking The Leap Into Entrepreneurship: Where Is That Financial Safety Net?
I’m a big advocate of entrepreneurship and I truly admire people who take the plunge. Here’s a question from a brave reader who went forward with his dream. I’ll call him Walt, for fun, after a...
View Article(Just Like) Starting Over
Over the last day or two, I’ve been going through the piles of email that have built up since the birth of my daughter and found a few stories worth sharing, which I’ll be sharing today and (maybe)...
View ArticleStarting Out And Overcoming A Financially Disastrous Background
Another financial story that really intrigued me recently was this one, from a person who wishes to remain anonymous (so we’ll call him/her Anonymous): My parents are immigrants/refugees from Vietnam....
View ArticleSeven Pieces Of Financial Advice For A High School Student
My niece is a wonderful young woman – a good head on her shoulders, decision making as strong as you could hope for in a high school sophomore, and an entrepreneurial spirit. My only concern about her...
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Making A Major Life Change: Is It Time For Kathy To Abandon The City?
A reader who I will call Kathy wrote to me with a rather long but quite compelling story that really struck a chord with me. When I read the story, I saw so much of myself and my wife in it in the...
View ArticleShould Men And Women Receive Different Personal Finance Advice?
A while back, my wife was leafing through a copy of David Bach’s Smart Women Finish Rich when she asked a very astute question: is it really necessary for men and women to receive different personal...
View ArticleThinking About College After High School? Four Points of Advice That You...
When I think back to my high school years, I realize that I didn’t have the faintest idea of what I wanted to do with my life, nor many of the options really available to me. I had a sense that I...
View ArticleWhere Do You Get Your Financial Advice?
Some of my most faithful commenters have personal finance blogs of their own, and one of them, Mrs. Micah, asked a question that really got me thinking: where do you get your financial advice? The more...
View Article52 Books, 52 Weeks: 10 Fundamental Personal Finance Ideas
As I read personal finance book after personal finance book over the last year, I came to realize that a lot of concepts in various books were exactly the same. In fact, there were a handful that were...
View ArticleWhen All Hope Seems Lost…
No matter how careful you are, there may come a time where enough bad events happen that you simply cannot afford your bills any longer. While there are certain things you can do to protect yourself...
View ArticleTap My 401(k) or Borrow From Family?
A while back (actually, almost a year and a half ago now… how time flies…), I talked about using a 401(k) to pay off credit card debt. I largely viewed the decision as one that makes terrible sense on...
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Desperately Seeking Advice
Quite often, when people write to me asking for specific financial advice, I respond to them encouraging them either to seek a lawyer or a financial advisor, but I also make a point to tell them to lay...
View ArticleLife Advice to a Graduating College Student
A long time reader that I’ll call “Samantha” wrote to me with the following question: I’m a senior in college and will be graduating in May. I’m extremely blessed in that I will be graduating with no...
View ArticleDecluttering and Your Money
Connie writes in: You write a lot about how there’s a deep connection between less clutter and financial success. I don’t get it at all. I think the opposite is true because when you clear out a...
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