circumstance

We in the personal finance blogosphere love to fill the internet with ideas on how to save money and discuss everything under the sun that you should not spend money on. Well, today, I’d like to discuss a few things that I believe are acceptable purchases.

Understanding the many tax deductions can be nothing short of a minefield, and many taxpayers are unaware of the many deductions that can be used to legally reduce your tax bill. This article highlights just a few of the tax deductions that you can claim if your circumstances lend themselves.

Standard Deductions
A standard deduction varies depending [...]

Welcome to the Best of Money Carnival, a weekly listing of the top 10 personal finance posts. The carnival gathers submissions from some of the best personal finance and investing bloggers on the web, and permits the hosting blogger the privilege of choosing his or her top ten favorite articles. Below are the ones I [...]

The mortgage market was in doldrums following the subprime mortgage crisis. More and more borrowers were defaulting on their mortgage payments due to the liquidity crunch. Such was the condition of the mortgage market in United States that the government had to intervene and rescue the mortgage market from further upheavals. To address the needs [...]

There are plenty of people telling you to flee the stock market right now. There are also those in the crowd that says now is a great time to buy. If you have a very long-term perspective, I tend to agree with the latter. In this post, I’d like to discuss not if you should [...]

First, let me start off by saying that there are several advantages of investing in mutual funds and I do use mutual funds in my portfolios.  However, there are several disadvantages of investing in mutual funds that may not be obvious to new investors.  In this article, I’ll review some of the problems with mutual [...]

In “Determine Your Retirement Needs In 3 Easy Steps,” I demonstrated a way to estimate retirement savings need. When I discussed this with my wife, she asked, “what if we don’t save enough?” After giving it some thought, here are some ideas on how to retire with less money.

Adjust your lifestyle now — If you [...]

I have a secret desire to be a professional financial planner one day (well, now it’s not so secret anymore). Of course, this would take me in a completely direction from my current career. Because of this desire, I jumped at the chance to interview Ciaran McKeever of Chance Favors who is a Certified Financial [...]

Lynnae at Being Frugal recently reviewed her 2008 financial goals. She shared some successes and failures, and asked other personal finance bloggers to review theirs. In particular, she referenced my goal to reduce my household utility bill by 10% or $35 a month, and asked, “Did you reduce your bill in January?”

Photo via moregueFile
The short [...]

With the recent stock market volatility, I am sure many of you are having second thought about the stock market. Some may even ask, “Should I get out of the stock market?” or “Should I take my money out of the stock market?” The answer is it depends. Personally, I am holding steady and continuing [...]