Beware the Cone Zone + MORE

Have you noticed that most personal finance advice is written for people already in a financial mess? For example, one of the most popular personal finance books of all time is Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. While that book has helped millions, it’s helped those who have made poor financial decisions…

I have nothing to blog about, because I am getting farther and farther away from regularly blogging.  In Colorado I had a lot to complain er talk about, but now it seems like I have nothing to say.  It isn’t like … Continue reading →The post Nothing to Blog About appeared first on Financial Black Sheep…

Good morning Dinks and happy Friday. I hope you all had a nice 4th of July weekend last week.  Nick and I had a great vacation in Niagara Falls and if you read Dinks Finance earlier this week you know all about it.
How did you spend the 4th of July?  Some couples spend all of their vacations the same way – with family and friends…

Today, I have a post from my friend Holly who writes at Get Rich Slowly and Club Thrifty. Enjoy!
When venturing out into the online world of personal finance, you’ll find a diverse mix of blogs and websites espousing different types of financial advice.
First, there’s the “earn more” crowd of bloggers who praise the virtues of investing and career advancement…

Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) are unique investments that offer high yields and diversification into commodities.  Simply put, MLPs are publicly traded partnerships.  Just like stocks, they are completely liquid investments that are bought and sold on the major exchanges.  Many MLPs also have a solid history of consistently raising dividends, making them great additions to a dividend growth portfolio…

I’m actually writing this post on Thursday night and scheduling it for now because I have a late day at work and I have to go straight to the in-laws house for dinner. This week has been a poor week for me in terms of search volume, it looks like the big G has taken a disliking to something on my website as my rankings for a couple of my best search terms have dropped in the last week or so…

Walking on Coronado Central Beach

One of our absolute favorite places in the world is San Diego. To me, it is the perfect city. The weather is great, downtown is fairly safe, and there are tons of things to do for all ages. If it wasn’t so expensive, and if the traffic wasn’t crazy in SoCal, we would certainly consider living there…

Anybody that knows me — either through this site, or in real life — knows that I love to save money. I think it’s one of the best feelings in the world to know that I have a stash of cash at my disposal. I’m a firm believer of paying myself first which is the process of saving/investing just after getting paid instead of waiting until the end of the month when money might be tight…

Image via Flickr
This is a public service announcement. With this post, I am trying to save lives. I encourage you to share this message with everyone. Please be safe out there!
I’ve written several times about my job in the road construction industry. I’ve been trying to help provide basic tips for driving through construction, but the message just doesn’t seem to be getting through…

If your credit score is not as high as you think it could be, but you don’t have any major problems on your credit report, there are a number of strategies that you can employ in order to boost your credit score.
First and foremost, make sure that there aren’t any major issues on your credit report, such as late payments, missed payments, or overdue bills that have gone to collections…

Taking out a voluntary excess as part of your insurance can have a significant impact upon the final cost of a premium. Voluntary excesses involve agreeing to pay an extra contribution percentage for a claim above what’s already been set by an insurance company as a compulsory excess. Mostly relevant to car insurance, voluntary excesses …

Credit card bonuses are something I chase after to earn some extra money with almost no extra effort. In fact, a little more than a year ago I signed up for my biggest credit card sign up bonus ever, the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.
At the time Chase required you to spend a few thousand dollars in the first three months to get 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points…

As a software engineer, I have to come up with innovative ways to solve problems in the code that I write.  Sometimes that creativity leads  to patent applications.  One of the perks of my job is that my employer gives us a monetary award for each idea that is deemed worthy of a patent application by the legal team…

 

I hope you all had a great week back after the 4th of July.  I had a fun time in Ohio even though it was a lot of driving.  We estimated that we drove for 40 hours and covered about 2,500 miles (through 9 different states).  Just our luck, it rained like 5 of the 8 days we were down there and was absolutely gorgeous up here in Minnesota (or so I heard)…

I was a little late posting my May goals, so if this post feels like it’s coming too close to the May update, my apologies. Here’s what I’ve been up to over the past month:
Personal Goals

Cook 1 new meal per week- In June I made shrimp fried rice, and chicken taco using kits I bought at Fresh Direct…

Happy Friday everyone! For those of you in the States, how difficult was it to come back to work after a four day weekend? If you’re like me, it was a bit of a challenge, but I was thankful to get some down time – especially in light of my fireworks mishap on the 4th of July. Now that we’re sort of back in the swing of things, I thought I’d get back to covering a quirky news story from this past week…