The past few weeks, my mortgage company has been sending me increasingly urgent e-mails, telling me that the feds are going to be raising rates shortly and I better hurry and refinance my loan! Side note – yeah, they want me to refinance my 2.75% mortgage into something higher. Oh, and take out tens of […]
Saving
Using Your Bonus and Raise To Break The Golden Handcuffs
Your job – how’s it going? Is it just pretty good, but not great? It pays the bills, but you wish you could make some changes at work. Maybe you disagree with some policies, think your boss isn’t making the right calls, or feel frustrated that you can’t accomplish what you want. But you’re down […]
Use Your Latte Factor to Snowball Your Way to Millions
If you’re into personal finance and investing like I am, you’ve likely heard of “The Latte Factor.” This is the concept first made famous by David Bach, the bestselling author of “Smart Women Finish Rich” and “The Automatic Millionaire.” The examples he uses in his books are of people who usually pick up a latte […]
Your Tax Refund is Not a Reward
This past weekend I was driving my three boys to a family birthday party. We were listening to Pandora in the car-specifically the Final Fantasy music channel (why yes, we’re a family of video game geeks. Don’t judge). Since I’m too cheap to spring for the ad-free version of Pandora, we were also treated to some […]
Everything’s Free! All the time! Come on Down! or My Love of the Library
When I was a kid, I can distinctly remember going to the library all the time. I was a voracious reader and would take out many, many books each time – finishing them very quickly. I can remember learning how to use the card catalog (the actual one, with cards, in a giant filing cabinet! […]
My Quarterly Net Worth Process
I remember sitting in my condo many years ago, creating an Excel spreadsheet of all my accounts. A few months later I was so excited to update it, convinced that riches would soon be mine. But no – I think it had gone up by a few hundred dollars. Then again a few months later […]