I’ve noticed that my life goes through an annual intensity wave, with the peak seeming to always come in March and the low point in August or thereabouts. This seems to happen year in and year out, even with the specific events varying year to year. Strange. Here are a few personal finance articles of

One major part of being financially responsible is to have the proper mindset, and to build the proper mindset can often be quite challenging. Just like anything else, being financially fit requires work, and most of that work goes on between your ears. Here are ten mental exercises you can do any time to strengthen

One of the best resources you have for saving money and at the same time saving the environment is in your trash can. That’s right, a lot of the stuff we throw away can easily be reused for something worthwhile. Lately, I’ve been making a conscious effort to examine the things I throw away and

Five Minute Finances is a series of tips on how you can save significant money or reorganize your financial life in just five minutes. These tips appear Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on The Simple Dollar. This is a tip that my parents discovered the hard way after I moved out, and it simply works. When

I spoke on IM with an individual a few days ago who has a six month emergency fund (actually post-tax; it is equal to half of his annual salary) and has also paid off all of his debts. He currently is putting the full amount into his 401(k) and is receiving employee matching, plus he

As an investor with Vanguard and an occasional visitor to the Vanguard Diehards forum, I’ve been looking forward to reading The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing for a while now. It’s a guide to how to invest your money written based on the principles of Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard. Is it a good read

The excitement is palpable around here as the NCAA tournament is about to begin. Yesterday, I revealed that I picked Georgetown to win it all. What will happen? Who knows! And that’s most of the fun of it! Here are some personal finance posts. Deconstructing My Credit Score After 0% APR Credit Card Arbitrage Credit

This isn’t really personal finance advice, but I felt compelled to post this because of the ongoing NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the prevalence of office pools. If you’re not interested, feel free to skip this post; this is merely an extra posting to fill people in on the details of a strategy for filling

Yes, the rumors are true: there is another addition to The Simple Dollar family coming in September. On that note, my wife and I were digging through the closets to evaluate what baby stuff we had that was actually worthwhile. Here’s the stuff that’s headed to the yard sale, even with the knowledge of another

Over the last few years (especially since reading The Conscience of a Conservative), I’ve slowly been getting more and more involved in local community events, including local politics. For many people, this seems incredibly boring: I go to city council meetings, school board meetings, and all sorts of other community events. To me, though, it

In today’s review of the first eight chapters of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, I mention the importance of calculating your own net worth, and in the past I’ve mentioned how to calculate it. But why is knowing your net worth important? What value does it have? Here are five reasons why you should calculate

I’m a big believer of buying in bulk simply because of the savings you can earn on a bulk purchase. For example, let’s say that I like to buy a $10 bottle of wine each Saturday for drinking with dinner with my wife. However, I find out that if I buy it by the case

As an investor with Vanguard and an occasional visitor to the Vanguard Diehards forum, I’ve been looking forward to reading The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing for a while now. It’s a guide to how to invest your money written based on the principles of Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard. Is it a good read

Sometimes, I get disheartened about my own writing ability. I’m working on a special writing project right now and while it’s going well, tonight I spent two hours just shredding earlier stuff I’ve written and completely reprocessing it. Sigh. Here are some personal finance posts. How to Keep Your Car Running Longer – 10 Simple

Recently, I received a lengthy email from a reader who had a ton of basic personal finance questions contained within. I thought it might be interesting to start an irregular “personal finance 101″ series to answer and explain some of her questions. Many people out there make broad statements like debt is bad in order

Consumer Reports has asked me to eliminate the content of my summaries and any other references to the content of Consumer Reports. I have complied

Five Minute Finances is a series of tips on how you can save significant money or reorganize your financial life in just five minutes. These tips appear Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on The Simple Dollar. An average clothes dryer is a real energy hog; it uses 5,000 watts. Let’s say it takes 50 minutes of

My wife and I have been married for nearly four years, and we dated for six years before that, so it came as a surprise to some other couples this weekend that we do not combine our finances together. Instead, we each maintain responsibility for a specific set of our shared bills and our savings

As an investor with Vanguard and an occasional visitor to the Vanguard Diehards forum, I’ve been looking forward to reading The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing for a while now. It’s a guide to how to invest your money written based on the principles of Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard. Is it a good read