Who doesn’t like a blast from their past? Recently, Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Life has been in the press discussing the updated version of the 1992 classic Your Money Or Your Life.
For me, this book sparked my imagination and inspired me after reading just a few pages when I came across it in the library in 1997. Retrospectively, I realized how I missed this book when it first came out because we were pretty busy raising very young children while keeping a job that required overnight travel.
Bottom Line #1. I’ll cut right to the chase. Read the recent article on what all of this FIRE hubbub is all about.
Continue reading “Three Reasons To Read Your Money Or Your Life”
Going paperless offers convenience and flexibility when it comes to managing bills and financial statements. I remember the days of getting my monthly 10+ page bank statement in the mail and using it to balance my checkbook. At one time, before computers and scanners, the bank would actually send your canceled checks back to you to where you stored them and referenced them for your income tax preparation. I had a file cabinet for managing all of these paper statements that came through “snail mail” which used to include credit card bills, utility, mortgage, property tax etc. There used to be quite the paper trail. Today, going online eliminates the paper and more importantly allows one the option to monitor things in real-time. Here’s the downside: 
Every six months or so I prepare to negotiate what I am paying for my satellite TV and internet/phone service. When the previous “promotion” ends, the monthly rate will change, usually after 6 months. When that happens I would call up and politely complain that my price increased and ask, politely, to return me to the promotional rate. The professional agents would ask a few questions and reply that the specific promotion has ended and I am now going back to the regular rate schedule which is about 22% more. I would thank them for their time and asked to be transferred to the customer loyalty department which they will do, sometimes reluctantly. 
I had a couple of millennials on my team during my Manager/Leader years, and they are a completely different than my generation in the best possible way. The speed and efficiency with which the millennials can process complex technical information that boggles my mind. They are blank slates and their brains are like sponges that absorb all kinds of information and stimuli. We all have to be conscious to filter a few things that we say and do just a little bit, as most of us have twenty-plus years of experience and these folks have just three. They do take things at face value and yet don’t have the experience to read between the lines or learn how to filter some of the chatter that goes on. I’m happy to report, that this has not changed from the time some of us were twenty-somethings ourselves. I’ll leave working and training millennials alone for the moment as I’m still trying to develop best practices without sounding like a parent. There are exceptions though, and one of those topics that are covered in the theme of this blog. 
If you’ve been following this blog for any period, you may have noticed that I follow the mantra that planning is a process, not an event. Thoughtful planning is a skill that can be developed over some time using experience and the amazing plethora of resources at our fingertips. In our age of technology, planning can occur at a moment’s notice. I occasionally use
I enjoy reading many blogs that cover my FI hobby horse and learned that it is a good practice to open up my blogging venue to a guest writer. These opportunities allow me to fill a void or to reinforce topics that I covered along the way with a different perspective and a different voice. Today’s post is contributed by Amy Nickson, a passionate writer on finance. Amy is a professional blogger who has started her own blog Working Moms Word. Amy Nickson has some excellent posts on how to save to money and covers some very practical advice. Her piece on debt might provide a little leverage if you need to start making a change.
It has been exactly 30 years since we sold our townhouse in Skokie, IL, which we owned for less than a year, and moved to Massachusetts so that I could take a job in scientific sales & marketing. It was a significant risk for a “YUPPIE” couple that had been married for only a couple of years. mrsfromthebachrow quit her job for me to make the career leap to an area that would later become the biotech capital of the world. Did we comprehend the scale of picking up and moving in a very short period? Nope, didn’t have a clue, but the youthful exuberance and the quest to get out of a dead-end and toxic laboratory job motivated to act. After 30 years, I can now pause and reflect on parts of the experience since that risky repositioning. 
