Baby Step Three – 3-6 Month Emergency Fund

Welcome back to my continuing break down of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps.  These are the steps he teaches in his books, and radio and TV shows to millions willing to listen and follow his advice. I personally find these steps simple and easy to follow but also elegant and effective. In previous installments I covered: Baby Step 1 – $1000 Emergency Fund Baby Step 2 – Pay-Off Debt Smallest Balance...

Views of Money – Part 1: Objective Setting and Simple and Advanced Cash Flow

Money is important.  It is the lifeblood of our society.  It is our economy.  In the context of our modern culture it is a requirement for our day to day living.  If you doubt this notion, imagine yourself penniless for the next 30 days. Money also is dynamic.  It is huge in the context of government spending programs or corporate initiatives.  Equally so, it is small measured against our next...

Baby Step Two – Pay-Off Debt with the Debt Snowball

Welcome back to my continuing break down of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps.  These are the steps he teaches in his books, and radio and TV shows to millions willing to listen and follow his advice. I personally find these steps simple and easy to follow but also elegant and effective. In previous installments I covered: Baby Step 1 – $1000 Emergency Fund Today, we’ll examine Baby Step Two. Baby Step...

Dollars Spent

The other day I was about to grab lunch at work.  Lunch at work for me is a boring affair.  On Sunday evenings I run a sandwich making assembly line which churns out 5 identical turkey sandwiches for my daily noon time feedings. On this particular day I thought about the pattern I was weaving and I realized that it has been several weeks since I’ve spent money on lunch.  My guess was that it...

Baby Step One – Starter Emergency Fund

Today I’m launching a new series. Actually it is the very first installment of what I envision as an ambitious 3 series set in which I plan to cover some personal finance basics from different angles.  Call it a “Back to the Basics” bundle if you will.  I expect this series to take shape over the next couple months so stay tuned.  I hope you’ll enjoy and engage the discussion. In some ways...

Wake Up Call

A read an article the other day from a pretty well respected icon in the blogging game.  Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits has about 160,000 readers – an insane number when you’ve been doing this long enough to know what that really means. His article was about changing habits and the easiest way we too often derail our efforts to change and improve. The idea was as simple as it gets.  So simple...

Mortgage Interest Is Tax Deductible, So What?

A couple weeks ago I was exchanging emails with a friend – and reader – and during the exchange he shared from a discussion he was having with a co-worker about tax deductible debt – think mortgage.  It seems that his co-worker – a CFO, trained in the ways of finance – was in favor of maintaining a mortgage for the purposes of the tax deduction rather than paying off the debt as quickly...