People are always amazed when they find out how much money my family saves on travel. We flew to Hawaii for $56, traveled to New York City for $22, and saved a ton of money on our trip to Disney World. We even got a free hotel room in Indianapolis when we traveled down there to run the Monumental Marathon last weekend. However, when I tell people that we do this with the help of travel credit cards, they always have the exact same question: Doesn't opening credit cards hurt your credit score? The quick answer to this question is that opening credit cards does NOT hurt your credit score.
-
-
Just Sign Up For It
Sometimes, you need to signup for something even if you are not quite ready for it. This past weekend, I traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana with my wife to run the Monumental Marathon. We both ended up running great times in the marathon. Laura ran her best marathon time since 2012 and I had my best time since 2007, one year after my oldest son was born. Besides just running well, we also had a great weekend in Indianapolis, enjoying some of the great sights and restaurants throughout the city. For me, this marathon was an extremely emotional return to running. As I was running through the last quarter mile or…
-
Early Retirement: You WILL Need More Money Than You Planned
As many of you know, the FIRE movement stands for ¨Financial Independence, Retire Early.¨ And, for many people, the ¨Retire Early¨ portion of FIRE is the most intriguing. After all, wouldn't it be great to spend your time learning new things, pursuing hobbies, and hanging out with friends and family without having to worry about that 9-5 job? Even if you absolutely love your job, you are probably slightly intrigued by the concept of retiring early.
-
How to Start Investing
Investing is not necessary. This statement used to be true back in the mid to late 20th century. People would work for a single company for 40 years, retire at the age of 65, and live quite well financially. Not only did they have Social Security to rely on, but many people also had a nice pension that they earned throughout their working career. However, times have changed. In most industries, pensions are going away. Social security isn´t going away, but its benefits will continue to shrink. The three-legged retirement stool of investing, pensions, and social security is getting weaker. And even though investing didn´t used to be necessary, it…
-
I Feel Like an Imposter
One of my most vivid memories in my life occurred when my oldest son, Nathan, was 2 days old. We brought him home from the hospital and set him on our bed. As we were standing there looking at him, I suddenly realized that I did not know how to take care of a child. ¨So what do we do now?¨ I remember asking my wife. They didn´t give us a manual on how to raise a kid. As a matter of fact, they didn´t even check my work over when I buckled him into the car seat. Even though my wife and I read all of the parenting books…
-
Entering the Pain Cave at the Run Woodstock 100k
How do we know our upper limits unless we push through the limits that are already in place? As humans, there are physical limits on what we can do. However, since the earliest days of our species, Homo Sapiens have always tried to push through these boundaries. During our hunter and gatherer days, we pushed through these boundaries in the search for food or while trying to avoid our enemies. In the book Born to Run, Christopher McDougall even hypothesizes that we used endurance running to track down prey, literally running animals to death.
-
Today’s Decision Becomes Tomorrow’s Reality
As part of a marathon training plan that I am following for the Monumental Marathon in November, I am doing interval running workouts called "strength workouts." These workouts involve running mile repeats at a pace that is a little bit less than my projected marathon pace. Since I am optimistically projecting a marathon pace of 7:10 per mile, my strength workout involved running 6, 1-mile repeats at 7:00 per mile. On a normal day, this is something that I can do. It's not an easy workout, but I can usually complete it. However, yesterday I completed a CrossFit style workout that involved 84 "thrusters." For those of you that have…
-
How to Use Balance Transfers to Pay Off Debt
Guess what? If you want to pay off debt, I have a really great guide that will help you. In this guide, it will tell you that getting out of debt involves a ton of hard work. There is no magic pill that will automatically get you out of debt. Balance transfers are NOT a magic pill that will get you out of debt automatically. However ... if you have high interest credit card debt, balance transfers can be a great way to help get out of debt. I've even used them to make sure that I was paying low interest rates as I got rid of over $400,000 in…
-
You Don’t Deserve This
You work hard. I know that. I work hard too. You and I both deserve happiness, peace, freedom, and safety. But guess what? We don't deserve a new car ... We don't deserve a brand new wardrobe ... We don't deserve a huge house with a swimming pool ...
-
9 Extremely Easy Ways to Become a Millionaire
In last week's article, I wrote a bunch of lies. Instead of focusing on becoming rich, we should focus on frugal analogs to wealth (whatever that means) and finding happiness through our relationships with others. What a bunch of crap! You and I both know that we really just want to become filthy, stinking rich. We want a solid gold fountain in our front yard, a 400 foot long yacht, and 12 homes on 4 different continents. Who cares about relationships? Once we are rich, we will have thousands of "friends."
