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Blog

Musings on personal finance and more...

Gold lights

Are you investing or just speculating?

The economics of the household aren’t great. Not only do you need to keep a reasonably good-paying job for at least four decades, but also you need to plan for a period of your life, say the last third of it, … Read MoreRead More
Frozen twig

Maybe don’t freeze your credit just yet

Since the Equifax dumpster fire breach, I’m still on the fence about freezing my credit. Perhaps this is surprising. After all, now that my information, along with 143 million others, has likely been taken by who-knows-who for who-knows-what purpose, it … Read MoreRead More
Space trail

Get your credit reports all at once or spread them out?

If you’ve been thinking that I’ve been silent about the Equifax breach because I haven’t cared, you’d be wrong. Instead, I’ve been feeling a mix of fear and despair, not unlike what I felt on November 9th this past year, … Read MoreRead More
Seam

Why signing up for promotions you don’t think you’ll use is a good idea

I’m not into extreme couponing. I find that I don’t need 27 cans of tomato sauce or 40 boxes of cereal. I live in a relatively small place, and I barely can rationalize a Costco membership, much less having a second … Read MoreRead More
Limbo

Why a new job might be best treated as an emergency

I just got a new job! (Don’t worry, I’m not shutting down this site.) Getting a new job is an exciting and terrifying time, one of the big life transitions. As it’s not a stretch to say that we spend … Read MoreRead More
Target Red Card

How store credit cards foreshadow the retail apocalypse

In my last post, I mentioned how I had once had an Exxon credit card given to me by my mom to use for emergencies. It made me think about those specialty credit cards. How quaint I thought. A credit … Read MoreRead More
Exxon

Emergencies are the worst time for using debt

Not long after I got my drivers license, my mom gave me an Exxon card to carry around with me. “For emergencies, in case you run out of gas and are stranded.” I never used it. It’s not that I … Read MoreRead More
Hoagie

Can someone please explain to me why there is so much wage disparity?

I worked in retail for many years. I sometimes have nightmares that I’ll have to go back to it. And yet, I think my retail experiences were relatively tame. A department story, a toy store, a gas station, Kinko’s. I … Read MoreRead More

If you’re not wealthy, is it your fault?

I’m troubled. I was listening to a program on the radio (which I’ll leave unnamed for reasons you’ll see soon). It was one of the 27 various programs on financial wellness that seem to pepper the AM dial at any … Read MoreRead More
Dawn field

Does frequent travel conflict with financial well-being?

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you’ve no doubt seen me periodically talk about my quest to see one new country a year. You might find this topic potentially a diversion, even perhaps antithetical, to much of … Read MoreRead More

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