Connie writes in: I don’t see how saving money really works for a family making minimum wage. Let’s say you have two people who make minimum wage at home so they only bring home about $15,000 each. If the family spends $1,000 a month on housing and $500 a month on their automobiles and $500

When I first graduated from college, when people asked me about my future, I would fire off a few vague statements about what I wanted. I wanted a great career! I wanted to have kids! I wanted a nice house! All of those ideas were nebulous and vague. Sure, they echoed sentiments that I held

For the last few years, Sarah and I have established a very simple goal. We live entirely on the larger of our two incomes and sock the entirety of the other salary into savings. So far, we’ve basically been able to pull this off. Why do this? There are three big reasons. First, it establishes

I’ve messed up many, many times along my financial journey. I’m willing to bet you’ve messed up a time or two as well. I’ll spend too much. I’ll forget a bill and have to face the consequences of the lateness. I’ll try to adopt a new positive habit and then find myself slipping in my

All of us face stress from our financial situation at some point. For some, the stress might come from not being able to make our bills. For others, it might come from suboptimal returns in our retirement accounts or money loaned to a relative who’s clearly not going to pay you back or a spouse

“Why would I want to live in misery just so I have a few more dollars when I’m old?” This is an exact quote from a recent reader email, and I hear variations on the theme all the time. I completely understand where the question is coming from, but the question is based on a

One of the most powerful factors in turning my financial situation around was the impact of the other people in my life. My wife, Sarah, is first and foremost in that. She’s at least as committed as I am to keeping spending under control. We talk about financial concerns all of the time and are

Financial meltdowns often start with a small thing – the figurative straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’ve read stories from readers about the many small things that have caused them to start reassessing their lives. They had a credit card rejected at an inopportune moment. They didn’t have enough cash to pay for the

I consider an emergency fund to be an essential part of financial preparedness for every person. If you or your family doesn’t have one, you need to start building one now. Let’s start off with the basic idea of what an emergency fund is. I like Dave Ramsey’s definition of an emergency fund: An emergency

Almost five years ago, I posted an article on the idea of the “fulfillment curve.” For those unfamiliar with it, the “fulfillment curve” is an idea presented in the book Your Money or Your Life which says that there’s a sweet spot for anything that maximizes the fulfillment you get out of it. In fact,

A few hours ago, my wife and I were sitting out in the yard watching our three children playing together. I looked around me and saw all that I have. I have a wonderful, intelligent, and witty wife who chose, for some reason beyond my comprehension, to marry me. I have three curious, passionate, and

Let’s say you have three choices for your work commute. Option A will cost you about $2. It will get you outside your office in forty minutes, but you won’t have to be doing anything during that time other than just sitting there. Option B will cost you $12. It will get you outside your

Sarah and I are very close friends with a couple who are dog lovers. They have two Saint Bernards in their home. I quite like their dogs. One of them has awful breath, so I somewhat avoid him, but the other one is a charmer. I’ll pet them and play with them a bit every

Sometimes, when you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Take an emergency fund. What do you do in a financial emergency if you don’t have one? Let’s say your car breaks down and you’re facing a $1,000 repair bill. Ouch. You’re probably going to ask the repair place if they have

I tend to view life as being something like a high wire act at the circus. We balance ourselves on that high wire and attempt to walk through life. We’re carrying a lot of weight to make the balancing act even trickier – children, marriage, and other responsibilities. Eventually, something happens and we fall. Something

Sometimes, bad things happen. A promotion is given to someone else. A pink slip is found in our locker. A business doesn’t work out and needs to close. A hoped-for inheritance turns out to be a mirage. A relationship ends before you want it to. Everyone experiences failure in life. No one has a perfect

I came across this very interesting video about how incomes are distributed in this country. We could have discussions until the end of time about whether the issues raised by this video are noteworthy and what potential solutions might be if the consensus is that there are problems raised by this data (and, ideally, that

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with an old friend of mine. She was telling me all about her winter trip to Bolivia (I think that’s where it was, anyway) and seemed really passionate and excited about all of it. After telling me, though, she paused for a bit and then said, “The

Last night, I sat down and did a forecast of where Sarah and I will be financially over the next ten years. If our income continues at its current pace, our spending continues at its current pace, our investments continue at their current pace, we have only one autombile cycling between now and then, and