Why a House or Mortgage Payment Should NEVER Own You

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in Mortgage

I’m a strong proponent of buying beneath your means when buying a home, but never more so than right now. A few days ago we were hit with the stunning news that existing housing sales plunged 27% in July, a huge hit to a market that’s been reeling from weakness for the past three years. [...]

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Love or Money – Which Do You Work For?

August 26, 2010

Is it better to work for money or for love of craft? There was a time when I believed it was perfectly noble to pursue a career mainly for money, but life’s experience has changed that belief. Anything you’ll put in as much time as you will a career needs to be spent doing something [...]

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The Best and Least Expensive Kids Birthday Party Idea

August 18, 2010

When I was a kid, a birthday party was having friends over to your house, with cake and ice cream, balloons, hats, presents and—if you were big time—a piñata. Sometimes a sleepover followed, sometimes not. Birthday parties were simple and pretty standard so there wasn’t much concern with being behind the social curve. But as [...]

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Should You Relocate to Cut Costs & Decrease Living Expenses?

August 16, 2010

In an economy where people are experiencing what may be a permanent reduction in income, one of the more radical solutions is to pack up the family and the household contents and head for someplace where the living is cheap—or at least cheaper. If an income is lost or if it becomes a matter of [...]

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Can Cash-On-The-Barrel Get You Out Of Debt?

August 7, 2010

Debt settlement services are all over radio, TV, the internet. They seem like a shot at redemption for many people, but often the solution to our biggest problems can be found in the little things we do every day. Overspending is a classic cause of debt problems, but how we pay for products and services [...]

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The Fallacy of OPM – Other People’s Money

July 26, 2010

Can a phrase influence a person or even an entire society into destructive behavior? The analysis of debt woes is often presented as if it’s a math problem, as though people got too far in debt merely as a result of spending too much money over an extended period of time, and all that’s needed [...]

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Deal or No Deal – Take $198,000 or Go for $2 Million?

July 15, 2010

Though I don’t spend much time watching TV game shows, Deal or No Deal is one that I pay attention to when it’s on. Watching people make big financial decisions under pressure and in a short time frame is an interesting study in human psychology that’s way bigger than game shows themselves. They all involve [...]

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Time Is Money – What Are We Spending It On?

July 4, 2010

Creative avoidance. It’s an uncommon term used to describe an extremely common practice that most all of us engage in to one degree or another. It’s the time and effort we put into activities that will keep us from doing the ones that are really, really important—the kind that may even change our lives for [...]

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Will you outlive your retirement savings?

June 18, 2010
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An article appeared on Bloomberg last week that sounded the alarm on the very real prospect that millions of people will outlive their retirement savings. Lawmakers Seek to Prevent Americans Outliving Savings (Bloomberg, June 11, 2010) had this to say: “In 1983, 62 percent of workers had only company-funded pensions, while 12 percent had 401(k)s, [...]

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My Dad the Mole Hunter

June 16, 2010
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This is a story so important to shaping the person that I am today I have to run it again. I posted this before last Father’s day and since I had approximately 4 readers at that time I thought those coming later to the party should get a chance to share in the awesomeness that [...]

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