August 23rd, 2010
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. GTD for stay-at-home moms
2. Loaning money to parents
3. Prepaying property taxes
4. Emergency fund or debt repayment
5. Starting a Roth IRA
6. Small business encouragement
7. Thinking ahead for college
8. Out of college, ...
August 19th, 2010
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Switching to joint checking
2. Transferring a Roth IRA
3. Accounts and goals
4. Which debt goes first?
5. Using HELOC to repay debts
6. Gift card arbitrage
7. Debts or further property buying
8. Getting Things ...
August 18th, 2010
This past weekend, I had an hourlong interview on the syndicated Your Money Matters radio show, hosted by Marc Pearlman. You can listen to it on his site or listen to it in iTunes.
Also, I’ve recently written a few articles for OPEN Forum that you may want to read that focus on frugality and small businesses.
Building Success Without ...
August 10th, 2010
This is a question I hear all the time from readers who are parents – and it’s a question that comes up in our own household as well. Should our children have life insurance policies?
I’ve done a lot of research and soul-searching on this topic. What follows are the conclusions I’ve come to on the issue. ...
July 30th, 2010

No matter how much solid financial planning we put in, life cannot be reduced down to complete predictability. Indeed, there are always unexpected expenses, large and small, that can crop up. And, you never know when something catastrophic, like a major illness or a job loss, will happen. The reality of unexpected financial situations should be enough to help you ...
July 28th, 2010
Along my financial journey in life, I made a great number of mistakes. In this ten part series which runs from July 19 to July 30, I’m going to focus on ten of my worst mistakes and the difficulties and successes I’ve had in overcoming those mistakes.
I treated my credit card as my emergency fund.
In late 2004, the brakes ...
July 14th, 2010

One of the best ways to avoid dipping your fingers into your savings (especially your emergency fund for non-emergencies) is to automate your savings accounts so that your money flows through your personal economy without much interference from you. When you automate your savings accounts, you can force yourself to practice financial discipline — and work toward financial freedom.
Photo via ...
July 7th, 2010

Like anything else in life, business ownership comes with ups and downs. But an entrepreneurial spirit can help you see ways around obstacles and reduce downsides of owning your own business. Entrepreneurs see opportunity where others see risk — often because they take steps to manage risk or because they define risk in different ways. If you’re considering entrepreneurship, you ...
June 30th, 2010
I’ve officially decided to start clippering my hair very short – and doing it at home. I used to do this in college, but since then I’ve had my hair somewhat longer. Does anyone out there have a recommendation as to hair clippers for home use that are economical and foolproof?
11 Creative Ways to Avoid Becoming a Workaholic ...
June 28th, 2010
What’s inside? Here are five word summaries of the questions answered inside this mailbag. Click on the number to skip straight to that question.
1. Co-signing with bad credit father
2. How many people read TSD?
3. Removing stains from cloth diapers
4. Percentage for emergency fund
5. Personal loan for adoption
6. Gloom, doom, and e-funds
7. Difficult job search
8. Frugality, clutter, and hoarding
9. ...