I had to fire an employee today. I’ve let a number of people go over the years and it’s never something anyone enjoys… not me as the manager and certainly not the employee. But, it had to be done. His performance was definitely sub-par and it was affecting relationships with customers and hurting morale with good employees. Here’s the thing, though – it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that it went as good as it could go. It doesn’t matter that he knew […]
A good friend of mine at work recently said he’s struggling on his month of trying not to spend money on non-essentials. He said he’s already had to spend $250 on a plumber and $200 to renew his identity theft protection for the year. Ok, well that makes sense— wait, WHAT?! $200 for identity theft protection?!! Holy mackerel!!! First of all, I’ve always wanted to work the phrase “holy mackerel” into a post, so mission accomplished. Since that’s out of
Sometimes I can’t help but shake my head that we as a society feel compelled to buy crap just because we feel we “need” it. There are millions of people here in the U.S. that, although not by choice, manage to live on $2 a day. But when it comes to the middle class, even with increasing salaries, most families buy and buy and still feel like they need more stuff. Why? Why do people love to waste their hard-earned
If you’ve been working long enough, you’ve probably been a part of or know of a company that has needed to layoff some of its employees at one point or another. It’s never a pretty situation for anyone – obviously, the employee doesn’t like ’em, but most managers and bosses hate having to go through this ordeal as well. In Sam Dogen’s book, “How to Engineer Your Layoff,” he talks about how to take a grim situation like a layoff and actually
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When I used to think about disability insurance, it used to be a “yeah, yeah…” subject for me. In fact, if you asked me a year ago if I should buy disability insurance, I would have told you that I was already covered. Here’s the problem… I’m really not. I’ll talk about the “why not” part shortly, but first, let’s dig into what disability insurance is all about… What is disability insurance? Disability insurance is intended to help cover you in
Well, we’re making it happen… we just finished booking our Panama vacation. I’ve heard all kinds of good things about the country for retirees and it’s really piqued my interest… enough so that we’ve been digging into the idea for quite a while now. We’ve learned quite a bit more about the country since I wrote my post “Is Panama the Right Place to Retire?“ a year and a half ago. We’ve been reading everything we can find out about the country
Why in the world are you finding a post on long-term food storage on a blog that focuses on finances? Isn’t this a topic you would only find on the survival sites out there? Possibly, but I want to shake things up a bit. And here’s why: planning for your financial future should take into consideration the pitfalls of life that can hit you at any time… and that includes the possibility of running into a situation where food and water become a
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So, you’re going down the right path on the road to financial freedom slowly but surely, but you want to make sure that you’re protecting your assets in the meantime? Well, hopefully, this post will help you with some ideas! I’ve noticed that as I’ve started to build up my assets, my needs have started to morph as well. I now have rental properties, multiple LLCs, and growing and expanding savings, investment, and retirement accounts. And, as the accounts continue to grow,
Once upon a time, there was a guy who wanted to save money and heard that buying in bulk would help him with that. So he bought a Costco membership to reach that goal. It was glorious! He saved a ton of money, enjoyed loads of free samples, and took advantage of all the amenities it had to offer. There were unicorns, pixies, pots of gold, and all sorts of other wonderful things that don’t really exist anywhere but here. All this
Well, it’s 2017, which means it’s time to take stock of how your previous year went, but more importantly, you should set your sights to the future and get your personal and financial goals put in place for the year. Here are my plans for the year… My 2017 Financial Goals Buy another rental property Buying rental property is an important stream of passive income that I’m working on building. Currently, we own a couple of rental properties – a single-family house and
