Strategies & tactics to get ahead financially & in life
Robo-advisors have been around for years. Betterment, one of the oldest, was founded over ten years ago in 2008 and has $13.5 billion in assets under management (as of March 2018). It still pales in comparison to Vanguard, founded in 1975 and has $5.1 trillion in assets under management (as of January 2018), but it […]
When I was younger, I loved going to the street markets in Taiwan because it was a masterclass in negotiation. Only tourists paid the price written on the placard. In fact, this is true in a lot of places outside of the United States. People are more comfortable negotiating and it’s just part of the […]
Do you read blogger net worth reports? Do you enjoy a little peek into the finances of some of your favorite bloggers? One of my favorite reports is J. Money’s monthly net worth updates, a feature he’s had for over ten years. What I enjoy about his reports is the report has everything you would […]
The first few years I filed my taxes, I used Intuit’s TurboTax. Back in the early 2000s, there weren’t too many options. There are almost no free options. TurboTax walked me through all the questions, imported my payroll data, and checked my federal tax return for common mistakes and errors – all for free. I […]
When I started working after college, I went from earning a few thousand dollars a year as a college student, mostly doing crazy side hustles, to earning $60,000 a year as a software engineer in the defense industry. It was a fortune. (it still is!) I was earning a full-time salary but I still had […]
Are you looking to open a new brokerage account but aren’t sure which one? Many brokerage firms compete for business by offering new account bonuses based on the assets you can transfer to their platform. While the bonus shouldn’t the only consideration, it can be a big one since the dollar amounts are so large […]
Earlier last year, we replaced our clothes washer and dryer. Both appliances were old, nearing the end of their useful lives, and, more importantly, we were renovating our pantry area after a burst pipe and flooding incident. We were only a few years from replacing them and, using a small surplus of insurance money, we […]
Last year at Fincon, I was invited to meet with the folks who created Twine. This happens a lot at Fincon because companies are always looking to promote their new products and services and I tend to only go to the events where I think the company is interesting and if my other blogger friends […]
Aspiration doesn’t sound like a name for a financial institution. It sounds like a self-help site that shows photos of the author on top of a mountain near Machu Picchu. You know the photo I’m talking about. 🙂 But it is and I think what they are hoping to accomplish is something many other financial […]
Taxes are complicated. They’re not hard, they’re complicated. They’re complicated in the same way that old computer systems are complicated. As a software developer, it’s not uncommon for you to update old code to perform new functions. What often happens, especially in poorly designed systems, is that you just update the code. You don’t redesign […]