Radical Finances

The Debt Math Throwdown (or testing the debt snowball)

  In my discussion about how to pay off your debt, I mentioned how there were primarily two schools of thought: pay off the highest interest rate first, or pay off the smallest debt first (a.k.a. “the debt snowball”). The … Read MoreRead More

How to figure out which debt to pay off first

  If you’re like most people, you have a few credit cards here and there, maybe a student loan payment, and perhaps a car payment. In addition, maybe you own a house and have a mortgage payment. That’s a lot … Read MoreRead More

Forget your credit score (but learn from it)

  I consider myself pretty hard to incite, but our collective focus on our “credit score” can be very frustrating. I think we focus way too much on our credit score, and it leads us to make decisions for the … Read MoreRead More

How to spend money

  You grab the items off the shelf and bring them to the counter. You hand them to the cashier, who scans it and then tells you how much it costs. The cashier then looks at you, expectantly. How do … Read MoreRead More

Why would anyone buy loaded mutual funds?

  One of my first rules of investing is: don’t invest in anything that you don’t understand. As we all need to be investing experts, this carries a certain weight with me. And while the answer to “what should I … Read MoreRead More

Beware of induced spending (or the perils of credit card travel benefits)

  I read lots of travel hacking blogs, as I’ve mentioned many times. And because sometimes travel hacking blogs seem more like credit card sales pages, I ingest many marketing messages on a regular basis. So when I was writing … Read MoreRead More

Year in review 2013: Your top 10 favorite posts

  This site is as much about you as it is about me, so coming off the heels of my top 10 favorite posts for the year, I thought I would also highlight your top 10 favorite posts. As I … Read MoreRead More

Year in review 2013: My top 10 favorite posts

  With the year closing out, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of my favorite posts from this year that you may have missed. With two posts a week, that’s over 100 posts, so I’m sure new … Read MoreRead More

How the handle the stress of budgeting

  I last talked about bare-bones living, and how it requires extra attention and care. But when you’re living so close to the edge, you’re dealing with a lot of stress as it is. So it can be tempting to … Read MoreRead More

How to live on a very tight budget

  I talk a lot about various ways to get your financial life in line. This isn’t because I think that money is the most important thing, or that we should spend a lot of time on it in our … Read MoreRead More