Search results for financial planning
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Posted
Aug 17 2009, 06:17 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly.
Money is more about mind than it is about math -- that's a core piece of my financial philosophy.
If you improve your self-esteem, if you improve your mental attitude, if you improve your knowledge, you will improve your finances. To this end, it's important to avoid negative messages about money. But it's difficult to improve your mental attitude when you are besieged by financial trolls.
What are financial trolls? Steve Pavlina writes:
Financial trolls strive to sabotage your financial pursuits. These trolls can be internal or external. They're the people who make comments like, "Wealthy people are so greedy. They only care about themselves and will take advantage of anyone to make money." Financial trolls are also the internal voices that say, "If you make too much money, people will judge you harshly for it. They'll assume that's all you care about."
In order to be successful with money, it's important to learn how to face -- and fight -- these financial trolls. If you can defeat them, you'll have a better chance of meeting your financial goals.
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Posted
Aug 10 2009, 04:52 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly.
Kris called me at 7 the other night, just as I was sitting down to write the Friday "Ask the Readers" post. I was sorting through the week's questions when the phone rang.
"Are you busy?" she asked. "Can you do me favor?"
"Maybe," I said. "It depends on what it is."
"Ryan's car broke down," Kris said. "He's stranded here at the lab and can't get home. Can you give him a ride across town?"
"Sure," I said. But I did the mental math: The trip would take me a couple of hours. Because I hadn't yet started on the morning's post, I knew I'd be up late.
I drove to Kris' office to pick up Ryan. Ryan's a young man, just out of college. He did some temp work in the construction industry before getting a job as a scientist. He and his girlfriend are getting married in two weeks. They rented a house together and were supposed to have moved out of their apartment by tomorrow. With Ryan's car in the shop, that was going to be difficult.
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Posted
Aug 07 2009, 01:52 PM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Trust us. Monevator is not your run-of-the-mill personal-finance blog. "The Investor" can deal with rather high-brow topics like "the uncomfortable truths" of quantitative easing.
His ruminations on whether to buy an iPhone -- plus his analysis of his analysis -- probably exceed the mental energy some people expend before buying a house.
And this UK blogger has never had consumer debt. "The closest I've got to the D-word was in my second year at university, when I borrowed money from a friend between grant cheques to buy a stereo," he writes.
So, we were delighted interested to read that The Investor has made some money mistakes, just like the rest of us. But his are not typical.
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Posted
Aug 07 2009, 11:52 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
What's life like for professional poker players, particularly those who earn their living online? An anonymous pro sheds some light on the occupation in a guest post at Budgets are Sexy.
It's a fascinating read, and enough to convince us we'd rather work at Wal-Mart than embark on multi-table tournament play. Too much stress. Too many possibilities to go broke going for broke.
Oh, and did we mention that while the legal status of online poker appears to be somewhat murky, the people who really count -- those at the U.S. Justice Department -- insist it's a crime?
According to The Associated Press, the Poker Players Alliance is lobbying Congress to pass a bill to license and regulate online poker, and return $30 million in poker winnings the government recently froze in the accounts of payment processors.
Here are some of the highlights from "Confessions of an online poker player":
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Posted
Aug 06 2009, 01:15 PM
by
Teresa Mears
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Here's a chance to get some free financial advice from the National Association of Personal Financial Planners, a group that normally charges a fee for its services.
The group is launching a series of 12 free webinars -- seminars on the Web -- on personal finance for consumers. The first session, Aug. 7, is about the basics of personal finance.
The Consumer Webinar Series will be done live online once a month at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Each session will last an hour, with a 40-minute presentation and 20 minutes for questions from viewers. If you can't watch the live sessions, they will be archived online so you can watch them later. You have to register on the site to participate.
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Posted
Aug 06 2009, 05:57 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.
A while back, I wrote about my best friend (besides my wife), John. John doesn't spend money on frivolous things at all. He spends way less than he earns and is really careful with his money, saving up for the future. He lives in a very small apartment in a poor neighborhood, bicycles to work, and doesn't engage in any expensive hobbies.
Until recently, he had been socking his money away in an ordinary savings account. He bought a few certificates of deposit along the way to increase his savings rate, but he was (and still is) pretty risk-averse. He had no interest in putting his money at risk.
Several months ago, he shocked me by announcing he had purchased 20 acres of undeveloped land within driving distance of Des Moines, a pretty serious investment. Given how risk-averse John was with his money, the purchase really surprised me. He never struck me as a real estate developer.
Recently, he invited my family down to the land to camp for the weekend. He had wanted to "clean it up" some before we checked it out.
We were really impressed.
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Posted
Aug 03 2009, 05:24 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly.
Forbes recently published an article about all the ways your laziness is costing you. As a semi-reformed layabout (Kris would say I haven't reformed at all) I read the article with interest. I recognized some of my old money habits -- and some I still have.
Author Daniel Adler writes:
These days countless businesses make hay by taking advantage of our collective indolence -- everything from not bothering to spend 15 minutes surfing the Web for a better rate on a savings account to not taking half as much time to mail a $50 rebate on a new laptop computer.
Here are some of the ways Forbes says laziness can cost you money. (The bullet points are from Forbes, but the rest of the text is from me.)
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Posted
Jul 31 2009, 04:41 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Mr. ToughMoneyLove at Tough Money Love.
Recently the Tough Money Love blog had its first anniversary. To help me celebrate, I invited my blogging colleagues to tell us about a personal-finance lesson he or she learned the hard way. Many responded with their own versions of the hard truth.
I encourage you to read every one of their contributions for their entertainment and educational value.
Patrick at Cash Money Life writes:
I learned about high mutual fund expenses the hard way when I made my first mutual fund purchase. The fund was front-loaded and came with a 1.5% annual expense ratio. It gets worse. The fund basically mimicked the S&P 500, so an index fund with an expense ratio of 0.20 or less would have been a much more efficient way to go. It was an expensive lesson, but I learned that brokers do not always act in your best interest. Since then I have taken it upon myself to learn as much as I can about the basics of personal finance and investing.
Pinyo at Moolanomy shares his story about falling into vending machine hell:
The worst one I made was going to a "free" business opportunity seminar. This one was about candy vending machines. Got all pumped up about the opportunity without doing any research whatsoever. Then fell for the classic "buy your equipment today for half off -- a one-time-only deal." Well, you know how the rest of the story goes.
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Posted
Jul 14 2009, 08:38 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
There is no correct answer to the following question: Would you rather be rich but hate your job or poor and loving what you do every day?
But your answer says a lot about your goals in life. This is worth thinking about.
We're not at all surprised that J. Money, who raised the question in his "Would you rather?" series at Budgets are Sexy, picked rich, even if the job ranked right down there with telemarketing timeshares or cutting out the tongues of codfish (two jobs he didn't mention here but did describe in a previous post about weird jobs). No disrespect intended, J., but your name is not J. World Peace.
Money, he writes, can be used for your own good and the good of others, and not having money "is enough to drive a man crazy."
But that's just him. He adds:
But if you find yourself leaning toward the "poor with an incredible job" side of things, ask yourself this: What's stopping you? If money isn't as important deep down, why not get out there and start looking for (that new job)?
What do you think? What his readers said will likely interest you. They are real people with realistic concerns, and some of them face or have faced difficult choices on this front.
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Posted
Jul 03 2009, 09:21 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from J. Money at Budgets are Sexy.
A question stood out in an e-mail I got from AskMen.com asking if I wanted to participate in a survey.
Now, normally I just glance over and then delete/archive, as my ADD brain can only take so much. But seeing how it was the "Great Male Survey of 2009," who am I to turn it down? OK, in reality they were smart enough to bold some of the financial questions in the e-mail. While most of them got my brain thinking, there was one question that really got my attention:
How do you measure your own financial success?
Good one! First, each of us should probably define what "financial success" is. Is it money? Job title? How big your house is (better not be)? Everybody has their own thoughts on it.
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