Frugality can only get you so far

Last week there was a post at Shark Investor on saving more vs. earning more. I agree with him. If you want to build wealth, you can’t do it just by being frugal. For example, my wife and I spend about $3500 per month. If we eliminate all unnecessary spending, we could probably cut that [...]

A Frugal Saturday – Baking Bread

I had an enjoyable weekend – my mom, the best cook in the world, came over to help me bake bread. We used the recipe that was one of my favorites when I was growing up, poppy seed bread. It’s a little more work than baking “regular” bread, but the results are well worth the [...]

A $100 Hour – Sell Vegetables at a Farmer’s Market

Yesterday I was talking with a friend who likes to garden. He grows a lot more than he can use himself, so he gives some away and sells the rest at the local Farmer’s Market. I’d always known about this, but I never realized how much money he makes. It turns out he net a [...]

A Working Vacation

Starting next Thursday, I’m taking vacation through October 5th. Eleven whole days of nothing to do. Except for spending 3 days in paradise, I hope to get a lot of stuff done, so it’s really going to be a “Personal Finance” vacation. I hope to accomplish several things:

The Wisdom Journal has a great list of [...]

Better than a CD and still FDIC Insured

After reading a really good article on using CD’s to ladder an emergency fund on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, I decided to check out CD rates. When checking my Credit Union’s web site, I found a deal even better than a CD – they are offering 5.0% APY on checking account balances up to $50,000. [...]

Yours, Mine, and Ours – Update

Last month I talked about my wife and I dividing our money in to several different accounts (hers, mine, and ours). Since that post, I’ve modified my plan a little. We are keeping one account to pay bills from and one for savings, retirement, etc. Our personal spending money will just be cash, because I [...]

Take a Deep Breath

Housing prices continue to slide. Some of our largest financial institutions are failing or being taken over by the government. The stock market is on a roller coaster ride, with an emphasis on steep dives. Unemployment in the USA is at or near a 5 year high. It’s time to… sit back and take a [...]

A $100 Hour – Recycle Aluminum Cans

Isn’t that what homeless people do? Isn’t it a waste of time? Isn’t the money you can get from recycling cans minuscule? No, I haven’t lost my mind. Recycling aluminum cans is, in fact, a viable way to make $100 or more in a relatively short period of time. How do I know this? When [...]

A Really Nice Site

I’ve been looking at tons of blogs lately, most have at least some useful information, none I would actually criticize, but today I happened upon one by chance that has a really clean design and good content. The author says he is 23 – I wish I had as much sense as he seems to [...]

God, Gold, Guns, Girls and Green

In a recent post on I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi takes a blast at a thread on patrick.net about where to invest money. One of the replies is to invest in God, Gold, Guns, Girls and Green. Maybe it was meant to be funny, but actually, it makes a lot of [...]

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