I recently wrote, “Endless PF Debates, Wrong Context” where I discuss some of the endless debates in the investment community about how to invest. I also wrote that I would write about other debates in a future date so that day is today. Spend Less Than You Earn vs Earn More Than You Spend Another…
The Gold Bugs, Like Cicadas, Are Out of Hibernation
In case you didn’t know, billions of cicadas are supposed to be out and about this year and coincidentally so too are gold bugs out touting now is a good time to buy gold! There are also reports that Costco keeps selling out of gold bars in minutes as soon as they go on sale….
Personal Finance and Data Security
I’ve been an AT&T customer for a while now and a few days ago I received a notice that my personal data was compromised. There is a news story here about it but this is why companies shouldn’t collect data that they don’t need but that’s a story for another day. As a precaution AT&T…
Spain Taxes Are Worse Than We Thought
In my post, What They Don’t Tell You About About Retiring Overseas, I wrote about how my wife and I are avid travelers. With one of our kids now seemingly living in Europe on a semi-permanent basis it makes a great deal of sense for us to consider buying a home somewhere in Europe to…
Endless PF Debates, Wrong Context
As I mentioned in my post, Do You Have The Right Personal Finance Community, I wrote about how I spend a great deal of time surrounding myself with like minded investment class people and while that has helped me learn and grow it doesn’t come without some aggravations. Those aggravations are in the form of…
Which Investment Broker(s) Do I Use?
Over the course of my career, I’ve collected a cornucopia of brokerage accounts. During that time frame, many of these brokers began buying each other out. For example E-Trade got swallowed up by Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade is now Charles Schwab. Fidelity is probably one broker that hasn’t been swallowed up or changed names over…
Why Are You People Buying Bank CDs?
I really don’t get why people buy bank certificate of deposits where there are many different options out there. The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled, “How High-Yield CDs Turn Into 0.05% When You’re Not Looking” and it boils my blood to see how people get cheated but cheating the customer isn’t something new…
The Best Two Debit Cards for International Travel
I just got back from a week long trip to see my son living in Europe and I wrote about my expenditures here but I didn’t go into detail about a significant challenge I had while traveling from city to city there and how I overcame some of my issues. Payment With Credit & Debit…
I Owe Uncle Sam $15,000
With April upon us the tax deadline is looming and I decided to sit down this past weekend to work on our taxes. My go to tool is TurboTax and I have a love/hate relationship with this software but that’s a story for another day. After going through dozens of documents and forms the software…
$1.5 Million To Retire Comfortably?
The Wall Street Journal has an article (paywalled) out stating that the new number to retire comfortably in the United States is $1.46 million. The article didn’t state if that is per individual or couple but do you think that is correct? It Depends Many of these articles are often fairly useless because there are…