Blog

Musings on personal finance and more. Not written with AI since 2012.

How to create buckets in an Ally savings account

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Ally has just added the ability to create Buckets, flexible sub-accounts that allow you to save for particular goals. Here’s how to use them. I guess you could say that I’m a pretty big fan of Ally. Maybe it’s that … Read More … Read More

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Don’t let money be your excuse

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Not having money can make things more difficult, but you can modify your goals to be more achievable, once you know what your excuses are. I’ve long wondered whether you don’t really like to travel as much as you say … Read More … Read More

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Course review: How to Win the Game of Advanced Personal Finance

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I review “How to Win the Game of Advanced Personal Finance”, an online course by Ramit Sethi (from I Will Teach You Be Rich). A while back, I talked about purchasing a personal finance course. In response to the obvious … Read More … Read More

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How to determine if a purchase is worth deliberating over

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If you cut down on time spent making decisions on things that don’t matter, you will have more energy for the decisions that do. As you make more money, the way a certain amount of money will feel will change. … Read More … Read More

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I am not me: Capital One and the failure of Know Your Customer

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A frustrating experience trying to login to an account leads to a rumination on how Know Your Customer (KYC) fails us and our humanity. In the financial services industry, you need to be familiar with a procedure called Know Your … Read More … Read More

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Time to be intentional with your accounts

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Verifying your accounts will keep your funds all accounted for, and will help you to decide if it’s time to change servicers. It’s a new year, and with it the usual deluge of good intentions, lofty goals, and everything going … Read More … Read More

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Reflect on how much progress you’ve made

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Why and how to reflect on how far you’ve come, not just how far you need to go, so you can be stay motivated to continue. I moved to New York City in 2003. Life in NYC was hard, and … Read More … Read More

Year in review 2019: Top 10 posts

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The top posts of the year on Empathic Finance, including both my favorites and the ones readers viewed most. At the beginning of this year, I made a big change to this site. After six years of blogging on a … Read More … Read More

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Your income is not your value

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Our beliefs about income can be toxic. People who make more than you are not better than you, and they don’t have a higher value either. I’m a huge fan of older video games, the ones made before 1990. Some … Read More … Read More

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How would your life be different if you weren’t concerned about money?

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Your life may look very different if you weren’t concerned with making money. You should learn this now to help you be more intentional later. Most of us have aligned our lives around the acquisition and protection of money in … Read More … Read More

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