Taxes and Financial Planning

Your Money, Your Choices: Why Personal Finance Is Deeply Personal

Your Money, Your Choices: Why Personal Finance Is Deeply Personal

Personal finance is such an interesting facet of life. It’s a part of every one of our lives whether we like it or not and most of us think we know what’s best for ourselves… and everyone else. But the reality is that while we can learn as much as we want about the subject, we really should only focus on what’s best for ourselves. Why is that? It’s because, funny enough, personal finance truly is personal. You might have […]

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Boost Your Child’s Credit Score With This Simple Trick

Boost Your Child’s Credit Score With This Simple Trick

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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ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I'm All-In on ETFs

ETFs vs Mutual Funds… Why I’m All-In on ETFs

In my last post, Opening the Books to Our Investment Portfolio, I broke down our entire portfolio. This included every holding and the values of each (rounded slightly just for security). This turned out to be a pretty popular post and generated a little bit of fun discussion – both in the comments and through email several email conversations I had with readers. One fair comment was about why I choose to buy the Vanguard ETF VTI instead of the

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3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money

3 Ways a Financial Aggregator Can Help Save You Money

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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Is This Down Stock Market Problematic as an Early Retiree?

Is This Down Stock Market Problematic as an Early Retiree?

A down stock market? Is that true? Yeah, unless you haven’t been paying attention, the market’s been on a not-so-fun ride lately in the direction that most folks tend to fear. Most of last week was a stressful week for investors. By the end of the day Wednesday, 02/23/2022, all gains in the S&P 500 since 06/21/2021 had been completely erased. Thursday and Friday produced a pretty big uptick but not enough to compensate for the downward spiral the beginning

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Doing Your Own Taxes and Planning… or Die Trying!

Doing Your Own Taxes and Planning… or Die Trying!

I’ve bounced back and forth over the years in preparing my own taxes or having a CPA handle the job. If you’re using TurboTax, H&R Block’s software, TaxSlayer, TaxAct, or some other software when doing your own taxes, you’re already familiar with how they’re relatively easy to use (except when they’re not). But if you’re trying to do financial planning along the way that might affect your taxes, running solo can be a struggle if you don’t know the ins

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Using Your HSA for Retirement – How to Track It Easily and Efficiently

Using Your HSA for Retirement – How to Track It Easily and Efficiently

Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) have been around in the U.S. since the end of 2003. However, using your HSA for retirement has only been gaining popularity over the last handful of years. There’s no doubt that this is one very special account. Although designed as a medical savings account to be paired with a high-deductible health plan (HDHP), there’s a crafty way to make it even more valuable. In doing so, your money goes in with pre-tax dollars, grows tax-free,

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Investment Portfolio Changes I'm Making!

Investment Portfolio Changes I’m Making!

It’s time to make some changes to my investment portfolio! I wrote a post last month called We Have a Lot of Cash in Hand Now… Too Much! that discussed how too much of our portfolio is sitting in cash. Apparently, that’s not uncommon right now as I received a lot of feedback in the comments and replies back from my mailing list (which I recommend you sign up for on the sidebar!). So I decided to write a post

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We Have a Lot of Cash in Hand Now… Too Much!

We Have a Lot of Cash in Hand Now… Too Much!

Having cash in hand is a good thing. Whether it’s for an emergency fund or money you’re saving up for something short-term like a car, having money at your disposal is a good thing. But there’s a limit to that goodness and having too much cash in hand can absolutely be a problem. When you have money sitting in the bank, it’s earning a little bit of interest (a real little bit in this day and age!). However, that interest

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Owning Rental Properties Is Smart, but I’m Out, Jack!

Owning Rental Properties Is Smart, but I’m Out, Jack!

That’s right, folks – after owning rental properties since 2003, I’m now completely out of the game! In 2018, I sold the house I had bought as an investment property in 2003. And just a couple of weeks ago, we closed on selling the duplex we had purchased in 2015. Here’s the weird part – if you’ve been following my blog over the years, you know that I’m a strong advocate of owning real estate rentals. Each property can provide

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