Money Lessons

It really is possible to pay off your cars - and it puts you at a huge financial advantage!! These are the steps we took to pay off our cars…

1. Save money before buying something, if you don’t have the money, you don’t get it

Dave Ramsey has made his living by re-teaching adults this simple lesson that many of them have seem to have forgotten. As the Proverb says, “The eyes of man are never satisfied.” We live in a nation (maybe even a [...]

This is one of the easiest ways to get a great return in your 401k during a recession (or anytime)…

Money doesn’t solve money problems… I know it sounds absurd - doesn’t it? But the truth is that just like an alcoholic doesn’t break free from the addiction by drinking more, our money problems don’t go away with more money either. The reason it sometimes appears that they do, is because it can cover them up - for a while.

Right now, you may be wondering why you should invest in a Roth IRA if you currently have a retirement plan (401k, 403b, etc.) with your employer. The Roth IRA has many benefits that other retirement plans don’t have, and chief among them is the fact that your investment earnings may accumulate tax-free. In other words, your Roth IRA has the opportunity to grow without incurring any taxes and can be distributed to you tax free, if some certain conditions are met.

“Make it a habit to have more money coming in than going out. You may need to drive the clunker a bit longer or postpone that trip to Europe.” Good advice. It is the simple 3rd grade math problem that is the ONLY way to wealth. If you can start the habit now, you will be in great shape for the rest of your life. If you don’t, you will have to face the music sometime and the longer you wait the more difficult it becomes.

I found a good video from Dave Ramsey that goes over the basics of his plan for getting your finances in order. It is pretty funny to watch him try to squeeze everything from his book Total Money Makeover into a 5 minute video.

What do we mean by the words deficit and debt? The deficit reveals whether the government has balanced the budget in any year. Our federal government is addicted to deficits. The federal government has spent more on programs and services than it has collected in taxes thirty-one out of the last thirty-five years. But, don’t be fooled by any news headlines boasting about balance the budget. Simply balancing the budget, although it helps not to add to the overall debt, will not solve the long-term financial problems of Social Security and Medicare.
The debt of the federal government reveals how much money the government has borrowed in total.

The Bible says that Solomon was the richest man who ever lived and also the wisest ever to live (1 Kings 4:31). I think that makes him qualified to give some financial advice

Everyone knows they should save, but a lot of people say they can’t find the money to start  saving. They get their paycheck, promise themselves that this time they will save whatever is left over and sure enough two weeks later nothing is left over to put in savings. Have you ever been there?
So how [...]

I found a series of videos from a talk Warren Buffett gave to MBA students at the University of Florida. I have a strong appreciation for Warren Buffett and his wisdom on business, investing, and life.

You just finished your degree and you are probably looking for your first “real” job. This is the perfect opportunity to decide how you would like your financial life to be. You have the choice to spend and buy whatever you feel like which will likely put you in heaps of debt.

Do you need an emergency fund? Well, I used to think of an emergency fund as robbing myself. Thankfully, I learned how beneficial an emergency fund is to my long-term financial well being.

Life is about managing risk. People often associate risk with investing, but it actually applies to all areas of our lives. From the amount of insurance coverage we purchase, to the decisions regarding our health, to the area of town that we choose to live in, everything has a level of risk.

4 steps to retirement savings

Due largely to the lending frenzy of the recent real estate boom, many mortgage companies are feeling the squeeze. American Home Mortgage (AHM) recently filed for bankruptcy due to “extraordinary disruptions” in the markets that support the mortgage industry. A slow housing market and many payment defaults scared investors away from mortgage debt, including bonds and other securities backed by home loans.

Click here to download my personal balance sheet (Excel). The simple personal finance definition of this would be: Assets - Liabilities = Net Worth | It probably wouldn’t take you more than an hour to get it set up in an excel spreadsheet, and even less to update it every year.

There is a tendency in our modern, “gotta have it now” culture to try to get things before the proper season. I believe that God has laid our lives out with a nice disbursement of blessings all along the way.

If you want to be a millionaire, act like one. Wealthy people become that way because the “do” certain things. If you “do” what they did to become wealthy, you will get the same result.

“Well done is better than well said.” -Benjamin Franklin
One of the biggest challenges we will face in life is to DO the things that we know we should when we do not FEEL like doing them.