Debt

Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

Breaking Up With PocketGuard: Why Quicken Simplifi Won Me Over

9 Comments / Spending, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

Well, I’ve gone and done it again… I switched personal finance apps in my quest to find the right one for what I needed. I thought PocketGuard was the one, but it turns out I was wrong. I only used PocketGuard for about 6 months but it had some shortcomings that just didn’t work well for me… so I decided to bail on it. Fortunately, I think Quicken Simplifi will be the answer I have been looking for all this […]

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My Game-Changing Spreadsheet to Track Upcoming Credit Card Bills

My Game-Changing Spreadsheet to Track Upcoming Credit Card Bills

8 Comments / Spending, Debt / /

Once upon a time, I decided that I wanted to be a little more “hands-off” with our finances once we became early retirees. This didn’t mean to push down the major planning or big moves but rather just the day-to-day spending. For years, I was spending my life inside Quicken instead of taking a step back, handling the big picture, and not worrying so much about all the smaller details. So, I let Quicken go after almost 20 years of

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Why I Chose PocketGuard as the Best Mint Replacement for Me

Why I Chose PocketGuard as the Best Mint Replacement for Me

10 Comments / Here's Why I'm Liking..., Debt, Investments, Product and Service Reviews, Saving, Spending / /

If you haven’t heard, Intuit decided to shut down the Mint personal finance site/app on January 1, 2024. They made this announcement on October 31, 2024, giving users only about 2 months to decide what they were going to do. All I can do is shake my head at how disrespectful this is to their loyal customer base. UPDATE: I just I received an email from Intuit on 12/17/2023 stating that I can continue using Mint until March 23, 2024,

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The Surprisingly Boring Career Path That Brought Us to Financial Independence

The Surprisingly Boring Career Path That Brought Us to Financial Independence

23 Comments / Motivation, Debt, Education, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Real Estate, Saving, Self-Employment / /

There tends to be a stigma in society that you need to own a company, become some big real estate mogul, be a celebrity, or just come from money in order to find your way to financial independence. So then we like to come up with excuses reasons as to why we can’t do that ourselves… “If I was in that position, it would be easy! No way I can do that because of xxxxxxx [insert whatever rationalization you want

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You Gotta Spend Money To Make Money, Right? Our Monster Travel Experiment

You Gotta Spend Money To Make Money, Right? Our Monster Travel Experiment

49 Comments / Travel and Vacation, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Life in Early Retirement, Road Trip, Spending / /

We all know the saying “You gotta spend money to make money.” I’ve never bought into that but with this major change we’re making, I’ve really got my fingers crossed that it’ll run true. You see, my family and I made a big decision not even a month ago. We’ve decided to wrap up the lease to our apartment here in Ohio later this summer, put our stuff in storage, and travel around the country with an RV travel trailer

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Boost Your Child’s Credit Score With This Simple Trick

Boost Your Child’s Credit Score With This Simple Trick

Leave a Comment / Kids, Debt, Spending, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to give my daughter the hook-up on her credit lately. Yes, Faith’s only 12, but that’s even more of a reason to work on it now – this will put her on the right track so she’ll be starting out strong. A few weeks ago, I discussed Freezing Your Child’s Credit: Why It’s Critical and How To Do It. This was the first step I wanted to do to make sure she

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Freezing Your Child’s Credit: Why It’s Critical and How To Do It

Freezing Your Child’s Credit: Why It’s Critical and How To Do It

10 Comments / Consumer Protection, Debt, Kids / /

If you haven’t frozen your credit yet, I’ll be harping on why you need to do that shortly. However, this article is about freezing your child’s credit and why it’s just as important, if not more important, than freezing your own. Lisa and I have had our credit frozen since 2017. It wasn’t hard to do (it’s even easier now) and it’s quick and easy to thaw it temporarily when applying for new credit. That last part’s important because we

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Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio

49 Comments / Investments, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), Saving, Spending / /

Ah, how time flies! In February 2019, I wrote a post called The Breakdown of Our Net Worth Savings & Investments that detailed our investment portfolio at the time. As you’d expect, it broke down all our assets and liabilities and gave a good snapshot of our financial picture. This was just a couple of months after I had retired from the corporate world so it gave us a pretty good baseline to start our retirement. But holy schnikes –

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3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money

3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money

12 Comments / Spending, Consumer Protection, Debt, Investments, Saving, Taxes and Financial Planning / /

A financial aggregator is sort of a broad term that generally refers to software or services that can pull all your financial data into one place. We’re talking about balances and transactions for your bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, and more. You might already be familiar with some of the older players in the game like Quicken, which is still a huge competitor. I used Quicken from 1999 until 2019 (20 years!) until I switched to both Empower

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Why Not One More? Transform Your Life!

Why Not One More? Transform Your Life!

12 Comments / Motivation, Debt, Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE), General Thoughts, Health and Fitness, Investments / /

I realized something while working out recently – something important to understand. There’s one thing that keeps many of us from achieving extraordinary things in life. It’s the difference between average and exceptional – just two simple words… One more. Imagine lifting a set of dumbbells and you plan to do 12 in your set. When you get to 12, what’s stopping you from doing one more? It might not sound like much, but if you consistently raise the reps

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