A long time reader named Bobbi sent me an email recently. The email contained a list of 45 lessons that life taught Regina Brett, a 90 years old resident of Cleveland, Ohio. The list inspired me to share my own list of lessons, but from a personal finance perspective.
Of course I’ve learned far [...]
Last Friday, I was informed that the wife of a friend I work with passed away in her sleep unexpectedly. She came home from work not feeling well, went to bed and never woke up. It reminded me of just how quickly your life can be taken from you. The article below is an article [...]
A few weeks ago, I shared with you a great service I found for creating a financial plan. I also shared the importance of having a plan and how if you didn’t you were basically driving around without knowing where you’re headed. Having a financial plan in place can make a significant difference in whether [...]
A few pictures from my reef tank
One of my hobbies is maintaining a 75 gallon saltwater reef aquarium. I’ve mentioned this a few times before in some other articles I’ve written. A number of you have written asking me about my aquarium and saying you’re in the hobby as well. So I thought I’d share [...]
Solomon most famously wrote the Book of Proverbs. Thoughts about money are prominent in both Proverbs and his other book of wisdom entitled, “Ecclesiastes”. We might even say that King Solomon was the first “personal finance blogger”.
My pastor recently spoke on the following passage from Ecclesiastes 11:
Cast your bread upon the waters, For you will [...]
Ever get up one morning and decide you just want to take off somewhere?
“Honey! Kids! Come on, we’re going somewhere!”, John yelled as he looked for his keys finally finding them on the small table by the door. “Where are we going?” his wife and kids all yelled back unanimously. John was ready to go, [...]
Last week, I listed some some of my poorer financial decisions. Unfortunately, the picture that I inserted into the post seemed to give the impression that I viewed having children as a poor financial decision. That was not the intent and I took a little heat for that decision. But the discussion did start me [...]
I’ve been talking about the benefits of having an emergency fund for a while now. As a matter of fact, my 7th article here on Gather Little by Little introduced the concept as step 5 of my Getting Your Finances Under Control series.
When I first heard Dave Ramsey talk about the concept it was in [...]
I wrote about a using a firewall account with ING Direct sometime back. Using a firewall account is a concept I use to insulate my ING savings and ING checking accounts from the outside world. Any income I receive comes to my ING firewall account and then I transfer it to the appropriate [...]
I enjoyed reading the M-network answers to the question posed by Leah last week. There is a lot of good information in the M-network responses and you will find an argument for almost every viewpoint in the comment thread. I have discovered that the comment threads here at Gather Little by Little are a great [...]
I have a great fascination for the great philanthropists in our history and the great spirit of philanthropy that permeates our culture. Did you know that Americans give more money voluntarily than the citizens of any other country? We give seven times more money to charity than the citizens of Germany for instance. Another example [...]
In the financial world, we often talk about investment diversity and how important it is when investing to not place all of our eggs in one basket. Why? Risk mitigation. If one area “flops”, chances are other investments won’t.
People with even the smallest amount of investing experience recognize this strategy and practice it. What amazes [...]
Do you ever feel financially overwhelmed? Over the past two weeks we’ve had to pay property taxes on our rental home, home owners association (HOA) dues for our current home and rental house, our car registrations came due, a few bills were due, and another misc expense.
Under normal circumstances, none of these issues should have [...]
A survey done in 2006 by Entrepreneur magazine revealed that “70% of Americans say they are good or excellent at managing their finances.” Did that statistic shock you? It did me. Statistics from a 2006 government survey show that “96% of all Americans will retire financially dependent on the government, family, or dependents.”
“It isn’t what [...]
I’m currently out of town on business. I don’t travel often, but when I do for some crazy reason a few days before I always begin to think through the question: “How easy would it be for my wife to pick up our finances if died?“ I’m not really afraid of flying and I’ve flown [...]
