Radical Finances

The best stock tip you’ll ever receive

  I’m not usually in the business of talking about stock advice, but every once in a while, I make an exception. Many people charge hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to get access to certain people’s stock tips, but I’m … Read MoreRead More

How to plan for Social Security

  Here in the US, we actually do have a small safety net for the elderly and disabled. It’s called Social Security (technically called “Old-age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance” or OASDI) The idea is that when you reach a certain … Read MoreRead More

Why I like the Roth IRA (though it’s not why people think)

  So I hope you’ve done your taxes for the year. I used a certain online program to do my taxes, and one of the questions asked was “Did you contribute to an IRA [Individual Retirement Arrangement] this year?” If … Read MoreRead More

Taxes, or the opposite of simplicity

  Each year for me, tax season goes pretty much the same way: I fire up one of the big online hosted tax programs, enter in my info, take the Standard Deduction, get something approximating zero dollars back (I try … Read MoreRead More

How to plan when you fear the worst

  I think investing is fun. I mean, you put some money aside, sit on it, and then after a while, you get more of it. Couldn’t be easier, right? All you need to do is spend some time setting … Read MoreRead More

The one category in your budget that you don’t want to forget

  One of the tasks you do when starting out budgeting for the first time is to come up with spending categories for your expenses. These are things like transportation, groceries, clothing, things that you spend money on throughout the … Read MoreRead More

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