In managing your finances there are 2 sides of the equation – income and expenses. We often focus solely on the expense side. In the personal finance world, it seems that all you ever hear are things like deferred gratification and living within your means.

But, it can be discouraging cutting expense after expense to try and make ends meet or to try to get ahead.

When your means aren’t much it’s difficult to live within them.

But there is a whole other side to the equation – the income side. Instead of trying to cut $500 of spending, why don’t you just make $500 more each month?

That’s easier said that done right? You can’t just pull $6,000 per year out of thin air. Or can you? Continue Reading »

For all of you U.S. based folk, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I ate way too much (was probably the 6th piece of pie that pushed me over the edge.)

I have to admit that I felt a bit guilty after pigging out so Thursday evening my dad, my father-in-law and I went for a 6 mile guilt jog. After that, I came back and did Insanity. Surely that took care of  at least half of lunch.

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Ok so this is pretty awesome. xkcd has put together one of the most amazing infographics that I have ever seen.

You need to see this if you have ever wanted to see a comparison between:

• The cost of Starbucks Coffee
• A one gallon jug of loose change
• The annual cost of owning a rabbit
• The average cost of dinner for a family of 4
• Per capita income of Germany
• The value of a 1933 Double Eagle coin
• The cost of Obama’s inauguration
• The value of a solid gold toilet
• The the net worth of Bill Gates
• The US GDP
• All of the tea trade in China
• The cost to buy the Amazon Rain Forest
• The Apollo moon landing
• World War II
• Size of the derivatives market
• Total economic production of the entire human race
• And about 1,000 other things (seriously)

Here are a few highlights: Continue Reading »

The decision of where you are going to live isn’t one many people take lightly. It’s usually both a big financial and emotional commitment. Since it is such a huge decision, most people want to make sure they make the right choice.

Before you even going though the process of finding a house, you have to make a bigger decision. Should you rent or should you buy? On the surface it seems that the right decision should always be to buy. I mean, when you’re renting a house – you’re just throwing money away. Right? If that’s what you’ve always thought then you may be surprised to find that there are cases in which renting is a better choice by far. So what are the advantages and disadvantage of renting a home vs buying? Continue Reading »

Holy cow what a rough week this has been. Our washing machine kicked the bucket on Wednesday. Under normal circumstances I can survive a few days without doing laundry. However, we use cloth diapers for our two boys. And cloth diapers suck when you don’t have a washing machine….

So tonight I get to put on my handy man hat and tear the washing machine apart to see if it’s fixable.

So while you’re enjoying this weeks roundup send happy thoughts my way. I tend to get in a bad mood when I have to fix appliances.

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This following is a guest post from John Papa, president of Diversified Planning Strategies. More information about John can be found at the bottom of this post.

Those looking to pass on their hard earned wealth by way of an IRA often fail to account for the potential tax ramifications of required minimum distributions for inherited IRAs. Even someone that does not need these distributions to live is required by law to start taking them at age 70.5.  If they don’t, Uncle Sam can become an unintended heir.

By marrying a few financial tools though, portfolios can avoid being sabotaged by the IRS and offset the tax implications of these distributions. Continue Reading »

11-11-11 – It only happens once per century! I’m celebrating by…doing nothing. I need to think of something creative to do.

Maybe I could come up with way to revamp our tax code. I’ll call it the 11-11-11 plan. I’ll have to work out the details on that one.

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One of the hardest things for me has been sticking to a grocery budget. I kinda love to eat. Well, there is no ‘kind of’. Me and food have this thing. Everyone has their vice. Food is mine.

That leads to problems in the grocery budget. I can easily make a “milk run” to the store and end up spending $75.

So this month, I’ve implemented a new set of guidelines to make it easier to stay within our grocery budget. This has sort of worked out as a guide on how to grocery shop on a budget. Continue Reading »

During the 1930′s John Maynard Keynes unleashed an economic storm that revolutionized government economic policy much of which is still being practiced today.

Keynes recognized that markets do not work perfectly and that businesses do not always make decisions that are economically efficient. This can cause an economy to operate below its natural gross domestic product. When this is sustained for a period of time, supply exceeds demand.

When the demand for goods and services is insufficient, unemployment increases which decreases demand further which eventually leads to a recession.

The most severe of which, The Great Depression, was when Keynesian economic theory began to gain ground. Continue Reading »

Happy November and happy Friday! It was a crisp 28 degrees this morning. Finally time to pull the coats out of the closet.

I love winter for about 2 weeks. I’ll probably be nice and chipper in this week and next week’s roundup. After that….I’ll probably be complaining about the cold.

Enjoy it while you can!

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