standard of living

Financial independence is a term typically used to describe a state where you have sufficient assets to live a certain lifestyle indefinitely without having to work or be employed.  Whether your income is derived from interest on savings, investment income, real estate income or something else, it really doesn’t matter.  The key is that you’re [...]

As the year is winding down, you may be considering some ways to lesson your 2009 tax burden. Should you take advantage of the federal tax credits Congress has provided certain energy efficiency expenditures? Well, maybe. This post is intended to help you understand these tax credits of energy expenditures and decide if they are [...]

We are inevitably going to be divided into two groups — the people who can’t live without their gadgets, and those who believe that the saturation of gadgets in our everyday lives has simply made things more complicated. However, we can all agree that there is a place in our lives for the gadgets which [...]

It’s easy to be down in the dumps these days. The economy is bad, and may or may not be improving. Unemployment remains high, savings account interest rates low, and the stock market shaky. It’s getting colder outside, which some people (ok, me!) may hate. And yet, there is much to be thankful for. If [...]

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 [...]

We’ve all heard the stories of lotto winners who win millions, think they’re set for life, and then go broke within a decade. Or people who inherit large sums of money and end up in financial ruin, family feuds, or both. The word “windfall” can mean different things to different people — if you’re young [...]

Many of us were not taught the importance of personal money management when we were young. We did not learn to save, invest, allocate, or how to make our money work for us. Many of us are in debt, have no idea how we got here and do not know how to start digging ourselves [...]

Up until about 10 years ago, there was one type of IRA, the traditional IRA which was deducted from your taxable income, grows tax deferred, and upon withdrawal, is taxed at whatever rate you find yourself. Its cousin, the Roth IRA is the mirror image, the money you put in is after tax money, but [...]

During the huge bull, too many of us got too caught up in considering the implications of the first important reality. If stocks offer better returns, then investing in stocks gets you to retirement faster. That really is so and that really is important. But to make investing choices that will work for the long [...]

“When should I take Social Security?” is the first question everyone faces when contemplating retirement. More than 50% of all men and women start taking benefits at 62. By age 66, well over 90% of all men and women are taking benefits according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
The Break Even Approach
The [...]