From the category archives:

Cornerstone Series

How to Buy Mutual Funds

How to Buy Mutual Funds

So it’s time. You’ve decided you want to start investing, either for retirement, your kids college, or merely to start making your money work for you. The first question is how do I actually buy a mutual fund? Well hold on, let’s back up a bit and first look at briefly what is a mutual [...]

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The Single Most Important Financial Step

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Here it is the secret to untold success with your personal finances and it involves only one step: starting. Frankly this is the secret applies to so much more than you finances such as your job, your weight loss plan, your spiritual health and your education. It’s so easy to focus on the the things [...]

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We’re Debt Free!

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That’s right, this is the post I’ve been waiting to write since before I started FiscalGeek. We just sent off our final payoff to Wachovia Dealer Services on our VW Sportwagen. In just over 11 months we have managed to pay off $63,535.65 of credit cards, credit lines and two vehicle loans. Yes we still [...]

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Emergencies are Assured So build your Own Emergency Money Fund

Emergency Fund

If you are considering any steps at all for getting your personal finances in order your first step should be to establish an emergency money fund. It’s a guarantee that life goes wrong or unexpected. Appliances fail, cars break down, kids get sick, Uncles get incarcerated. You get the drift. So what do you do when life throws you [...]

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Cash Envelope Budgeting: Why Your Bank Hates It

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In a recent article by the New York Times they estimate that Banks will make over $27 Billion dollars off of consumers overdrafts from checks and debit cards. Let’s just say that you are expecting a $400 check to be deposited on Friday, it’s Friday so you go out to lunch with your coworkers $13.65, [...]

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The Debt Snowball Saved my Marriage: Spreadsheet Tell-all

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For those buried under an avalanche of credit card, car, and personal debt you’ll never find anything as useful as the Debt Snowball or it’s many variants. A debt snowball is simple. You take all of your outstanding debts: credit cards, personal lines of credit, bank loans, student loans, car loans, 2nd mortgages, home equity lines of credit, overdraft credit lines (yes that’s debt too) and order them from the smallest amount owed to the largest amount owed.

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Calculate the True Cost of Debt

As my wife and I head towards debt freedom working through our debt snowball I use a variety of methods to keep us motivated. For me that has included looking at what our debt is costing us as it relates to our future. It’s simple, every dollar you spend on interest to your lender is money that could be working for you.

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Zero Based Budget Part 3 The New Beginning

Welcome back to our conversation regarding Zero Based Budgeting.  This will conclude our series and we’ll cover some of the tools you can leverage to help you with your budgeting life. I personally use You Need a Budget and it has helped immeasurably to keep our family on the same page with our finances and [...]

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Zero Based Budget System Part 2

In part 1 of our series we talked about the high level aspects of budgeting, let’s get under the hood a little more and look at some real world examples and tools for making your life infinitely easier. But first I would like to talk a minute about communication. ”Dude FiscalGeek what’s your problem, give me the [...]

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A Zero Based Budgeting System

Zero Based Budgeting

I honestly believe if you could pick only one personal finance tool to take with you on a desert island it would be the zero based budget. Why would you need a budget on a desert island? I don’t have time for these ridiculous questions. We’ve got some learning to do. There is tremendous power in budgeting, glamorous no, empowering, yes!

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