Whoever told you “looks don’t matter” lied. + MORE

What to Do if You’re Having Trouble Paying Your Student LoansWe’ve all heard it said that student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so what do you do if your financial situation is a wreck – or if you’re unemployed – and simply don’t have the money to repay? There actually are a couple of ways to manage the situation even if the bankruptcy option doesn’t exist…

Continue Reading On moneysmartlife.com »

Dirty Money Spends Faster

– libertyinvestor.com

If you’re looking for a creative way to save a couple of bucks each day, perhaps you should consider separating the crisp, new bills in your wallet from the older, more weathered ones. A recent study indicates that people spend bills that appear to be old and dirty more quickly than new money.
The research, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, indicates that consumers spend more worn bills than they do crisp, new bills…

Continue Reading On libertyinvestor.com »

Cheap Ways To Renovate Your Home

– prairieEcothrifter.com

Cheap Ways To Renovate Your HomeHome is where the heart is, but there are times when home is where the cost is. After years of wear and tear, there comes a point when your home needs a renovation whether for maintenance or to maintain its aesthetic value. Here are some tips on how to renovate your home cheaply.
The Bathroom
1. If you can, keep the location of the plumbing intact…

Continue Reading On prairieEcothrifter.com »

Net Worth Update: $364,600.94 (Up $12k)

– budgetsaresexy.com/

A good good month! And tons of money transfering around too.
If you recall from earlier in the month, we finally filed our taxes and deposited a huge chunk into our SEP IRA so that we can avoid paying the gov’t a cool $9,000 😉 Which explains that ginormous hit on our cash reserves as you can see there (as well as our giant increase in SEP money – woo!)…

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How to Protect Your Credit Card Number
A few weeks ago, my wife and I had an unpleasant call from Visa cardmember services. They informed us that our credit card number may have been stolen and that we needed to call them immediately. After being connected, the representative asked me if I had made any purchases in Mexico recently. I replied that I hadn’t and told him I found the whole situation pretty crazy…

Continue Reading On moneyning.com/ »

Save Money by Saving Energy

– onecentatatime.com

Save Money by Saving EnergyThis is how our monthly energy bill looks like. We do not have separate gas connection for heating need. Our bill is abnormally high during the summer months. We finally nailed it to the old air conditioning system, which is consuming a lot of energy. Our landlord will soon replace the AC system, before the summer really kicks in here in Florida…

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Monetizing The 1%

– canadianfinanceblog.com

Monetizing The 1%1% of anything, by definition, is not very much. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the 99% and the 1% that made so many news headlines last year. The purpose of the movement was to show the world just how unequal the distribution of wealth in the United States. Canada is not much different, unfortunately, but there’s not much that we can do today in order to resolve that larger issue…

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March 2013 Goals and Finance UpdateMarch Highlights and Lowlights

2013 Financial Goals: Not much progress in March. I’m waiting for some pullback before adding money to baby RB40′s 529 account. Let’s take a look at how we are doing on the year-long goals below.

Generate $18,000 in passive income: In Q1, we generated $4,220 of passive income from peer to peer lending, rental properties, dividend and interest…

Continue Reading On retireby40.org/ »

The Most Reliable Stock Market Indicator You’ll Ever FindLast week, I smashed every investor’s go-to crystal ball — corporate insiders — into a thousand little pieces.
As it turns out, they can’t predict the market’s next move, particularly downturns, with any more consistency “than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when the Huns would attack,” as Peter Lynch liked to say…

Continue Reading On libertyinvestor.com »

Decorating Dilemmas: Small Bedroom Ideas

– financialhighway.com/

Decorating Dilemmas: Small Bedroom IdeasAnyone with a small apartment or starter home has needed some helpful small bedroom ideas at one point or another. Storage, cleaning convenience and the avoidance of clutter are all common concerns. This list of helpful suggestions will help get you pointed in the proper direction. (See also: 5 Cheap Ways to Avoid a Full Bathroom Remodel)
Beds
The space under the bed is typically underutilized in most bedrooms, but particularly in those of a reduced size…

Continue Reading On financialhighway.com/ »

Whoever told you “looks don’t matter” lied.
Yesterday I let Girl Ninja paint each of my nails a different color (don’t worry, I still found time to wrestle a pack of wolves and shave my chest hair with a rusted butter knife in between fingers). Check out the finished product…That’s right. I’m reppin’ the light blue, sparkly gold, hot pink, dark purple, and glittery blue nail polish combo like a straight gangster…

Continue Reading On punchdebtintheface.com »

This is a post from staff writer Robert Brokamp of The Motley Fool. Robert is a Certified Financial Planner and the adviser for The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement service. The financial media world is all abuzz with U.S. stocks — as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 — surpassing where they were in October of 2007, right before the Great Recession and a more-than-50 percent plunge…

How to Save Money on Home Décor

– youngadultmoney.com/

How to Save Money on Home Décor
After you move into a new home or apartment, the cost of decorating can quickly add up. If you are on a tight budget or simply do not want to spend a lot on home décor, there are 5 main ways that you can save money on decorating your home:
1) Do It Yourself (DIY)
With so many websites and blogs out there providing ideas for various crafts and DIY projects (Pinterest anyone?), you can create just about anything simply by finding directions online…

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Investment Oasis

– libertyinvestor.com

Investment OasisWhen looking for the right stocks to buy for your retirement, it makes the decision process so much easier if you start with a successful economy.
Right now, most of the traditional leaders of the globe’s economies aren’t faring that well.
The United States has seen its economy slip back again…

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How to Make Money at the Department of Motor VehiclesThe Department of Motor Vehicles.  There are few places in this world that are more dreaded than the DMV and last Thursday, I had an expired out of state registration that needed updating and I was forced to make a visit.  Just moving from Florida to Connecticut, I’ve had to go to the DMV a few times; each time worse than the previous…

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I am a serial budget-maker. The number-crunching, the spreadsheets, the organization – I’m absolutely addicted. However, over the years, I’ve nursed a love-hate relationship with my budget. I love how it organizes my funds, but I hate actually having to adjust my spending to meet what a spreadsheet tells me…

Continue Reading On moneycrashers.com »

Who Needs a Budget?

– consumerismcommentary.com/

Who Needs a Budget?There are a number of excuses for ignoring the concept of budgeting for one’s own personal finances. Budgeting has a poor reputation. It’s not fun, it’s time-consuming, it’s depressing. While budgeting can be one of the most important steps for beginning a journey towards financial independence, there’s a tendency to ignore this in favor of jumping into the stock market, saving for retirement, paying off debt, or even prescribing to the belief that owning a house is big positive step…

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Last time we discussed the Maximum Transfer Value (MTV). As you may know, we are in the midst of a pension crisis in Canada – employer sponsored pensions are becoming the exception rather than the norm. If you’ve been with a single employer for your entire career and your pension plan allows you to transfer the commuted value at retirement you should be a lot more concerned about the MTV than an employee with a modest defined benefit plan who has been with their employer for less than two years…

Continue Reading On milliondollarjourney.com »

Credit Card Fail

– solvingthemoneypuzzle.com/

Credit Card FailI am still simmering with anger from writing the post  http://solvingthemoneypuzzle.com/2013/03/31/how-to-pick-a-good-rewards-credit-card-when-the-banks-dont-want-you/   about how my low income effects what credit cards are available to me.   I don’t qualify for great credit card rewards programs because I make less than the required 60K per year that they have randomly set as the magic number for high rewards…

Continue Reading On solvingthemoneypuzzle.com/ »

Here’s an email I recently received from a reader:

I am divorced and about 6 years ago I bought a 20 yr term life ins. policy for my son (now 17) so I would have something to leave him if I died unexpectedly.
I just re-married and my wife and I are shopping life ins.  She has 3 grown children and 1 age 14…

Continue Reading On freemoneyfinance.com »

One of the biggest reasons I enjoy spring is the lengthening days. Rather than the sun creeping above the horizon at 7:15 and disappearing at 4 in the afternoon, we now have days where the sun starts to peek up at about 6:30 and then disappears at about 7:30. As the spring wears on, the days will get longer and longer and longer…

Continue Reading On thesimepledollar.com »

20 Delectable, Frugal Pineapple Recipes

Pineapples are in season, which means it’s spring! (See also: Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, by the Month)
It also means you’re going to be seeing a lot more of this exotic, fragrant fruit in the grocery store, so I’ve compiled a few recipes below to make the most of the tropics…

Continue Reading On wisebread.com »

We’ve got real estate tycoons and we’ve got stock market tycoons. We’ve even got wealthy bond investors such as PIMCO’s Bill Gross who pulls in over $100 million a year, but let’s forget about bonds for now. Now that everything is heading up, I’d like to have an open discussion on which asset class provides the the most amount of wealth over the long run…

Continue Reading On financialsamurai.com »

9 Ways to Put the Brakes on Car Insurance BillsIn 2010, the last year data was available, American households spent an average of $1,010 for car insurance, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.That’s a lot, but there are loads of ways to save on car insurance. In the video below, Money Talks News founder Stacy Johnson offers a few ideas. Check it out, then read on for a bunch more…

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