December 29, 2011
For most of us, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is often a quiet time and a very good opportunity to sit back and reflect.
Ted’s Blog
Timely updates and reminders on personal money management. Seeing to it that you always have the up-to-the-minute information you need to win the game.
December 15, 2011
If you're over 50 without a retirement plan, you may be saying to yourself, "OMG! I'm all grown up with almost no retirement savings. Now what do I do?" They say that 90% of the solution to a problem is understanding how it happened. So let's start by examining how most people got into this mess.
December 7, 2011
Don’t let a moment of Christmas buying bring you a New Year filled with buyer’s remorse. The brief "feel good” benefit of spending more than you plan to will be totally wiped out by the additional stress and problems you’ll have to deal with when the bill comes. Get back to the basics. Stick with your spending plan, spend time with your family and friends, and celebrate what really matters most in life during this holiday season.
November 30, 2011
The game of long-term financial planning has changed. There are many reasons for this change: the inevitable impact of our government's massive debts, the high likelihood that the stock market will continue its ten-year-plus underperformance for at least another decade or more, also that the economy will be weaker than normal for a long time to come, that the current historically low interest rates cannot be maintained, and that the dollar will unavoidably become much weaker at some point have all combined to change the game.
November 17, 2011
I hate being sick. I’m not good at it. I have had the good fortune to be very healthy for almost all of my 70 years, but I had a bit of a bad run lately. Thankfully, it appears that I'm going to be ok. I’ve learned through the years that nothing, NOTHING, else matters if you are not healthy. I was lucky enough to figure that out early in my life, and have always gone out of my way to take really good care of myself. Unfortunately, many people have not done this and so often it is the pursuit of money that is at the root of the problem. Money Rule #8 says it well.
November 10, 2011
It looks to be another roller coaster week in the stock market amid ongoing fears that Greece will soon default on its debt and that the situation in Italy is worsening, with no easy out in sight. Of course there are other factors that create volatility in the market now, but the European debt crisis magnifies the ongoing issue we have with debt in this country and in our own personal finances. What can we learn from this expanding global problem?