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financial planning

Timeless Thoughts on Investing

Excerpt from The Money Game which provides timeless thoughts on the concept of investing, items we should all review from time to time.

Principles of Pollex: Investment Allocation

Looking at an age-old investment rule of thumb. What’s good about it, what’s not, and how you might use the structure for your own rule.

Organization, Efficiency & Discipline

Using these three pillars can help to guide you along the way to financial success, no matter what your goal is.

Maximize your Social Security benefits by changing your thinking

Changing the way you think may be helpful to maximize Social Security benefits – thinkng of them as insurance, rather than something else.

Your Retirement Plan and Where You Live

Where you live can have a big impact on the taxation of your retirement income. Some states don’t tax retirement income at all!

Principles of Pollex: Auto Purchases

A few rules of thumb about buying a car. Use these as a guide when you get ready to make that next auto purchase.

Tax Diversification for Investments

Reviewing the benefits of tax diversification among your retirement and other investment accounts. Timing along with your lifetime taxation.

Know Thyself

Understanding the limiting notions that we carry around can be helpful when facing adversity in our financial lives.

Social Security’s PIA – What is this?

Do you know what PIA means, with regard to Social Security? It’s a very important number, the basis of many if not all important calculations.

Wash Sale Rules

If you sell an investment at a loss, you need to be careful about how you re-invest the money so that you can avoid the wash sale rules.

Principles of Pollex: Debt Reduction

Eliminating debt takes organization, efficiency, and discipline. Learn how these three work in your favor to eliminate debt from your life.

Are You Really Diversified?

You may not be as diversified as you think. Learn more about correlation among various asset classes and how you can use this to your benefit

Social Security vs. Saving

Examining Social Security versus saving – a hypothetical exercise, answering if we’re better off with Social Security or saving the money.

Your Payback from Social Security

One of the big questions that many folks face with regard to Social Security benefits is – I’ve paid in so much, will I ever see it come back? I thought I’d show what a payback break-even might look like, in terms of the money you put into the system and what you’ll get back out of it.  I made an assumption in the calculations: Future COLAs were not calculated into the example, keeping things in terms of today’s dollars. COLAs would only confuse the calculations. Full Retirement Age In this first series I assumed the normal, Full Retirement Age scenario, with two options: 1) you earned exactly half of the wage base that SSA requires withholding for each year of your 35-year working life, and you’re now age 66 and 2 months, Full Retirement Age; and 2) you earned exactly (or more than) the maximum amount of money that […]

Book Review: Stacked – Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management

Review of “Stacked – Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management” by Joe Saul-Sehy and Emily Guy Birken.

What to do with a Year-End Bonus

Looking forward to a year-end bonus? See how we analyze the options for using a year-end bonus from a reader’s question.

The Richest Man in Babylon: Summary, Pt 9 of 9

Summary of the lessons from The Richest Man in Babylon book. Going over the main teachings that are covered in the book.

The Clay Tablets From Babylon: The Richest Man in Babylon, Pt. 8 of 9

Story from The Richest Man in Babylon, regarding how the camel trader documented his debt-repayment process.

The Camel Trader of Babylon: The Richest Man in Babylon, Pt. 7 of 9

A story of how changing your outlook from one of desperation to one of determination can be the catalyst to change your world and your life.