Debt sucks, yet people go into debt like they’re the ones earning the interest!!! Think about it for a moment. Financing purchases means paying interest to a creditor in order to acquire things. Whether it’s buying the latest flat-screen TV or acquiring a vehicle or upgrading one’s wardrobe or taking a vacation, a great many […]
This most excellent advice came to me from a highly trusted source – my mother. While we were on our most recent vacation together, I asked her what she believed was the most important lesson to learn about money. In four words, she summed up the cornerstone of every personal finance blog I’ve ever come […]
After my obtaining my undergraduate degree, I took a year off before going back to school. I got a full-time job in a bank, and boom! My financial education really began. Despite the good example set by my parents, working in a banking institution is where I really learned about banks and how to use […]
Based on my own experience and decades of observation, I am convinced without a shadow of a doubt that priorities guide how we spend money. To paraphrase Paula Pant at www.affordanything.com, every spending decision you make is based on priorities because choosing to spend on one thing means that you’re not spending on something else. […]
Anyone who knows me also knows that I hate debt. I particularly hate credit card debt because most cards carry usurious rates of interest if the balance is not paid in full. So this post is for people who pay their monthly credit card balances in full EVERY SINGLE MONTH!!! If you carry a balance on […]
I love talking about money…and the word is spreading at the office. I have two very close friends at work and they have patiently listened to me talk about money for years. One of them has a young assistant who was looking to buy her first house with her fiance. My friend told the assistant […]
I got my first part-time job in grade 11. Every two weeks, roughly $137 was plopped into my bank account via electronic deposit. And every two weeks, I would go to the bank machine and manually transfer $50 from my chequing account to my savings account without fail. It was simple and easy. When I […]
One of the smartest things I’ve ever done with my money was to learn how to separate today-money from tomorrow-money. Today-money is the stuff that gets you from one day to the next – it’s the money for groceries, for your shelter, for your transportation, for your charitable donations. Tomorrow-money is the money that you […]
On February 22, 2018, the Atlantic put out the following article about elderly people living in poverty because they had insufficient retirement savings. It’s one of the saddest articles I’ve ever read. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/pensions-safety-net-california/553970/ The reason why I found this article so sad is because I think it’s terrible that people can work so hard for […]
That’s right – I don’t spend my $5-bills. Many years ago, I heard a story on Oprah about how one of her guests never spent the change in his pocket and would empty it into a little jar by the side of his bed each night. The coins added up to rough $700 in a […]