Strategies & tactics to get ahead financially & in life
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 […]
When I was looking to buy our first house, back in the mid-2000s, I was surprised to learn that there were so many different types of mortgages. I’d heard about 15-year fixed and 30-year fixed mortgages. But then you had jumbo mortgages. And adjustable rate mortgages. And interest-only mortgages. Then FHA and HUD and VA […]
Package theft is a huge problem around the holidays. It’s so huge that police in New Jersey have teamed up with Amazon to deliver “fake” packages with real GPS transponders. They’re doing it areas with a lot of package theft and it’s designed to catch “porch pirates.” Porch pirates are thieves who steal packages off […]
When I started by business, I researched business credit cards. I was hoping to find one with juicy sign up bonuses. Alas, credit cards weren’t as generous as they are today. Many offered cash back with slightly higher percentages on business related charges. Those included travel, office supplies, and telephony bills (cell phone, internet). I […]
Every New Years, we rent a vacation house with friends from college. We get one of those big 12-bedroom vacation homes, fill it with food, games, adult beverages, kid beverages, and then we spend 3-4 days celebrating another year gone by. When we started, there were no kids. Now there are close to a dozen! […]
Diamonds are forever. Especially if you don’t buy it the right way and saddle yourself with a heavy debt! We all know diamonds are overpriced, supply is artificially restricted, and don’t serve all that practical a function when secured to metal and displayed the way we tend to display it. But we also go to […]
An engagement ring is a big step. It’s also a big purchase. Maybe you have enough cash on hand if you tap into your emergency fund. Maybe you don’t. There’s no arguing that when you buy an engagement ring, diamond or otherwise, it’s best to pay cash. If that isn’t you, or at least not […]
Twenty years ago, people were worried about typing into a chat box online. Today, people are meeting their life partners online with dating sites like Match, OKCupid, Bumble, and Tinder. Twenty years ago, buying a book online made people nervous. Today, it’s nothing to buy a car online. (I bought my first two cars on […]
As much as possible! Just kidding. It’s 2 months of your salary. Or is it three? Six? Turns out we can thank a major diamond company (hint: rhymes with “The Beers”) and their marketing department. They came up with those benchmarks. We can thank marketing for “diamonds being forever.” We can even thank them for […]
I love Southwest Airlines. We live about 20 minutes away from Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI), one of Southwest’s “hubs,” and the vast majority of our flights are on Southwest Airlines. When it comes to an airline’s rewards credit cards, I’d argue that there are few cards are generous as the Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit […]