Invest in Yourself – Think Long Term / Act Short Term

If you have children the best method to raising them might be to think of the type of adult you want to release on the world 20 years from the birth of your child. This is a way of thinking to set a goal of 20 years down the road, then have to think of the steps it takes to get there.

Short Term Goals Feed Long Term Goals

What if you think of the long term goal before anything else? I think it would be possible to make your life easier. The longer the term of the goal the longer the planning of the steps (and possibly more steps.)

College Degree without the Debt

College degree debt is the newest big debt trend that sinks people after mortgage debt, vehicle debt, & credit card debt. In the past the debt ratio to return on investment was lower then it is today. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so looking for way to prevent college debt is better than trying to pay off the debt…

Losing money at zero percent financing?

Recently I’ve looked into purchasing a car to get a more reliable vehicle to get to and from work. I travel 66 miles round trip a day for work so a reliable car is needed to protect my ability to get to work and ultimately my livelihood. When you talk to the salesman often they make you think you can afford anything.

Of course going to some salesmen of cars for financial advise is like going to some stock brokers to ask about buying cars.  They have some idea of what they are talking about but, it isn’t their specialty.

The tactic I have seen employed the most from the salesmen in my area is just talking about the payment per month. The total cost does not even enter into the conversation. Don’t get me wrong most salesmen are great guys and are doing their best to place you in a car; which is why you go to a dealership in the first place. Knowing the total cost “out the door” which includes tax, title, extra dealer charges is important.

Purchasing a car is like purchasing a pencil; only more expensive. The car like the pencil has a job to do and depreciates in value over time. Eventually they both can’t fulfill their purpose and are gotten rid of.

Tweeking The Baby Steps – Part II

Radio host Dave Ramsey has a debt elimination framework he calls Baby Steps. It seems to work well from the people I have talked to who have used it. I often think many frameworks can be improved. This is just a not so quickie article on what ways I would tweak the Baby Steps to “improve” it. (In fact it is part II because part I started to get long)

Welcome to Part II

Tweaking The Baby Steps

Radio host Dave Ramsey has a debt elimination framework he calls Baby Steps. It seems to work well from the people I have talked to who have used it. I often think many frameworks can be improved. This is just a quickie article on what ways I would tweak the Baby Steps to “improve” it. (Humbly I don’t know if I could but, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.)

Wonder Woman Budgets

A few articles ago I analyzed the budgets and profits of Mockbuster movies. That got me thinking about what is the profit margin for big studio blockbusters and how does overhead effect the film’s success.

Depreciation Applied

In the past I did a WAVE-B Drive Free project. The starting car was a Ford Windstar Mini-van which was sold for whatever I could get for it. That money plus my small nest egg of $3,500 was used to buy a 1994 Honda Accord. One year and a half from then I sold it for about what I purchased it for and added that to the money that was saved to purchase a 2012 Honda Accord cash. The purchase price for the 2012 was $15,000 + registration, fees and tax ($17,000 total). The miles on the car was 26,000. The question I have is: what was the depreciation of this car to this point?

Do Nothing

Do nothing and nothing happens. Do something and something happens.

 

The power of action is not something that can be taken likely. Procrastination is the opposite of progress. Progress can only be made when action is taken, even if the movement is backwards you are a step closer to move forward. Sometimes a bad action is needed to get started on anything. Sometimes writing these articles I have a loss for words. The way I bust through it is to just write about anything and eventually I come up with something I like. Sometimes what I write is so-so in my eyes but, It gets me to move forward on something I really want to say.

Procrastination is Opportunity’s Assassin

~  Victor Kaim

Iron Sky Or Nazis at the Center of the Earth which has better ROI?

I like to look at things through a financial perspective because it is easier for me to try and value anything. Money no matter what the currency ultimately is valued by labor. It is all relational. To make bread you have to factor the ingredients, the labor to make it, and the production tooling. The ingredients are a factor of labor by themselves as well as the manufacturing of the tooling. So all money is wealth which is a representation of labor.

Deeper Dive in The Rule of 72 Part III

In the first two parts of the deeper dive the positive side of the rule was explored. Now I’m going to do a quick look at the dark side of the rule of 72…