For the past week and a half I’ve been in the middle of the desert, far removed from internet access, mobile phone service, electricity, running water or sewage. (Sorry if I haven’t responded to your comments yet!) Regular readers to this blog might notice I’ve taken a huge number of trips this year: I spent…
Yesterday I learned a colleague from my newspaper was found dead in her Colorado apartment. I learned the news, ironically, by stumbling across her obituary while I was reading the same newspaper for which she and I both wrote. It struck me, for the first time, that the final consequence of working at a newspaper…
Anyone with a pulse – your co-workers, your neighbor, your third-grade teacher – is fretting that stocks nosedived this week. Actually, “nosedived” is an understatement. It plummeted. Plunged. Tumbled. Crashed. You get the picture. From the Associated Press: Gripped by fear of another recession, the financial markets suffered their worst day Thursday since the crisis…
What if the most common strategies to repay debt are wrong? Two popular methods are used to repay debt. One focuses on the interest rate; the other focuses on “small wins.” I recommend reading this post if you want a solid understanding of these two methods. Here’s the executive summary: the “Debt Stacking” method says…
What would you do if reason says one thing but your heart says another? That’s the predicament many people find themselves in as they search for the best strategy to repay debt. Reason says you should repay the debt with the highest interest rate first. Your emotions say to — well, really, they say to…
I just returned from 10 days in the Caribbean, where I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. This wedding felt surreal because the bride and I were together when she met her future husband. They met three years ago. She and I were trekking in the Himalayas. My bum knee was slowing me down, so she reached…
Recently, Ben — a nice-looking fellow who works on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico — wrote a detailed story about how he and his wife repaid $90,000 in debt. Their debt didn’t include a mortgage: it consisted of car loans, credit card balances, student loans, and a $10,000 bank loan to pay…
Every major city I’ve visited — New York, San Francisco — has blown me away with one amazing aspect: its main park. Whether I’m in Central Park in Manhattan, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or Lumpini Park in Bangkok, I can’t help but notice a few common threads: these spaces are gorgeous, centrally located,…
Do you run a small business? Are you self-employed? If so, there’s a strong chance you’re among the thousands of small business owners who make this critical accounting mistake … … and thanks to this one simple error, they never realize how strong or weak their business is. Yikes! No, it’s not a mistake that…
Yesterday I read three great posts all on the same topic: what would I do if I won a million dollars? One blogger says she’d pay off debt, save for retirement, take a vacation and remodel a home. Another blogger would “stare in sheer disbelief at the balance in my bank account.” And a third…