principal

I recently heard an interesting discussion on Dave Ramsey’s radio show about the length of time you need to live in a home in order for it to make sense going through the process and expense of purchasing it. It’s a rare occasion that I disagree with Dave Ramsey, but in this instance, I [...]

The following is a list of top online banks that offers high yield savings account, high interest savings account, or high yield money market account. All of these accounts are FDIC insured up to $250,000. Your principal is protected and you’re guarantee a positive nominal return on investment. For March 2010, the average interest rate [...]

The following is a list of the nationally available highest yields 12-month CD rates. In general, certificates of deposit (CDs) are great investments because your principal is protected by FDIC insurance and your interest rates are guaranteed. Moreover, you can use CD Ladder to make your CD savings more flexible and effective. You can open [...]

Before you buy a home, you should obtain a pre-approval letter from the mortgage lender that states how much you’re eligible to borrow. This provides you with two important information: (1) the price range that you should be focusing on, and (2) the starting point for your monthly mortgage payments calculation. You can use an [...]

While there are many different opinions as to how much debt is too much, the two ratios below are the most widely used measures of how much debt is manageable. These ratios are also known as debt to income ratios (DTI). Many of you are reading this and other personal finance blogs in an attempt [...]

Everyone knows that healthy personal finances requires debt reduction. However, paying down debt can become discouraging when you have a great deal of it, from a variety of sources. Paying a little bit extra every month on each of your debts doesn’t seem to make a dent, thanks to high interest charges. Instead, you can [...]

If you keep a lot of money in your checking account, moving your money to a high interest checking account may be a good move. Below is a list of nationally available highest yields checking accounts. All of these accounts are FDIC insured up to $250,000. Your principal is protected and you’re guarantee a positive [...]

I recently came across the How to Drive Free and Retire Rich slideshow on Dave Ramsey site via a fellow blogger Pat. The slideshow basically said the normal way thinking about car ownership is all wrong and there is a better way to go about this. Dave Ramsey proposes that you save your money first, [...]

In this article, I’ll break down the three components of saving, investing, and borrowing to accomplish your financial goals. Out of all the steps in Moolanomy’s Financial Success Plan, this step is without a doubt the most complex step. As such, I’ll keep this article at a high level, then later dive deeper into various [...]

If I have heard one resounding theme over any others among friends and family it’s that the possibility of a vacation is out for this year. In some cases, people I know have not taken a vacation in years! The number one reason: they can’t afford it. Well, at least they think they can’t afford [...]