They say that saving your first $100,000 is the toughest. Or saving your first $1,000,000. Or your first $10,000,000. Or any other impossibly large number of dollars that wealthy people like to talk about. I completely agree with them. Personally, my wife and I have a net worth between $100,000 and $1,000,000, so I would say something stupid like “Saving our first $100,000 was the toughest. Each additional $100,000 wasn’t as bad!” Although what I just said is completely true, it doesn’t help people who aren’t in my situation. Maybe it doesn’t help you if you are living paycheck to paycheck or if you are in huge amounts of debt…
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Elon Musk and SpaceX: An Ambitious Goal
When we were at a family party a few weeks ago, my wife brought up the following question: “Who would you have dinner with if you could have dinner with anyone in the world?” After clarifying the rules of the dinner (no family members, no dead people), we started by listing some of the usual suspects: Barack Obama, J.K. Rowling, Lionel Messi, Oprah, George W. Bush. We all agreed that it would be interesting to have dinner with people who are famous as well as former presidents, no matter what our political affiliations are. We also thought of some people who were not quite as well known, but were famous…
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The 10% Solution
When many people are looking to make a change in their lives, they often make a huge change. Some people go from a completely sedentary life to working out for one hour each day. Others may vow to cut their spending budget in half as they try to get out of debt. Still other people may quit their jobs as they try to gain control of their crazy schedule. We often go all in when we try to make a change in our lives. And honestly, this can be a good thing! Sometimes the best way to make a change is to make a big change. However, we don’t always…
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Maybe We Shouldn’t Have a Side Hustle?
As you may know from reading this blog, I absolutely love working side hustles. Not only do they provide me with a little bit of extra money that I can use to pay down large amounts of debt, but I also just enjoy doing them. I love taking side jobs that allow me to learn something new or share my knowledge and experience with others. I also enjoy that I can usually do them from the comforts of my home while the kids are over at a friend's house, my wife is out running, or even early in the morning. It's really cool to be able to say that I made…
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You Can Actually Save Money Shopping Online with Ebates
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that we’ve been inundated with ways to make money. Also, I’ve noticed that everyone says that these are easy ways to make money. Complete surveys while you are watching TV! Start a side business in your spare time! Sign up for this website and you can become rich! Everyone seems to have something that they are trying to market! Of course, I am guilty of this too with some of my recommendations. I think that credit cards can be great for their travel hacking possibilities, that Capital One 360 is a good place to stash your emergency fund, and that Fidelity and Vanguard are…
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My 6 Financial Mentors
No matter how good we are at something, there was a point in our lives when we weren’t as knowledgeable or good as we are now. In order to get better, we often had a mentor or a guru that has advised us and helped us to be better. In youth sports or academics, our mentors were probably our parents, coaches, and teachers. Not only did they teach about a sport or a certain subject, but they also pushed us to be the best version of ourselves when we were out on the field or in the classroom. Mentors are extremely important to have. For me, I have always had…
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How Much Electricity Does a Space Heater Use?
I never really asked the question, “How much electricity does a space heater use” when I owned my first house. The house was energy efficient and relatively new, so electricity was pretty cheap. However, after my wife and I purchased our second house, we quickly found out that it wasn’t very energy efficient. I discovered this when I was fixing a hole in the wall and found newspapers that were acting as insulation. Needless to say, our heating bills were pretty expensive! Besides the newspaper acting as insulation, the other reason that our bill was expensive was the window in our front room. It didn’t really close well and it…
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4 Non-Sophisticated Things That You Should Do With Money
There are many sophisticated things that we could do with our money. We could: Create a CD ladder for money that we want to save. Use tax-loss harvesting to save on taxes when we invest. Convert our IRA to a Roth IRA by using a backdoor Roth conversion. Each of these sophisticated financial techniques could save us anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars throughout our lives. Because they are so valuable, I definitely encourage you to become educated about each of them and see if you can use them either now or in the future. While each of these are very valuable techniques to save money, they…
