Pimp Your Finances

I’ve been making better choices since I decided to turn my finances around, but I’m not perfect by any means.
Case and point? I recently chose not to participate in a medical flexible spending account, because I didn’t want to be hassled with a small amount of paperwork.
I call this falling for the laziness tax. It’s [...]

How many times has this happened to you?
Depressed by your bank account, you decide that a change is in order.
So you sit down to work out a budget. You pull out a piece of paper (or open up a spreadsheet), and write your paycheck on the top line. After that, you diligently list and subtract all [...]

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the 10 Financial Commandments for Your 20s.  Within a week, it become my most popular post.
Kiplinger’s Starting Out wrote the original list, and they just published the sequel – 10 Financial Commandments for Your 30s.
Just like I did with the last one, I’m going to share their list with my [...]

Kiplinger’s Starting Out recently published a list of 8 Ways to Boost Your Income.  The site is aimed at people in their 20s and 30s, but I think this article applies to all ages.  I want to share their list, and also my thoughts on their advice.
 
1. Sell your junk
I haven’t done this yet, but it’s [...]

If you haven’t checked it out, Kiplinger has a great section for young adults called “Starting Out”.  They recently featured a list of 10 Financial Commandments for Your 20s.
Being 27 years old, I have experience in this area.  I want to share their list, and also some insights about how well I’ve followed their instructions.
 
1. Plan [...]

Bankrate.com recently published a list of 16 ways that real people grow their wealth.  Some are good ideas.  Others, not so much.  The key take away is that anybody can do these things.
Here is their list, along with my comments.  Their list is in bold, and my thoughts are underneath.
1. Grow your own food
While I’ll grant [...]

In last week’s Market Share Battle, “Review of Free Online Money Management Tools“, we compared 3 free web-based money management tools: Mint, Wesabe, and Yodlee.  This week, we review 3 more web-based tools for managing your finances: Quicken Online, Geezeo, and Buxfer.
The services are all free, and consolidate information from a variety of sources to give users a [...]

This post marks the first in a new series called “Market Share Battles”.  Every so often, we’ll do a side-by-side comparison of some finance related products, websites, or services.

In this week’s Market Share Battle, we review free web-based money management tools including Mint, Wesabe, and Yodlee.  These products summarize financial data from multiple accounts, and offer helpful features designed [...]