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The way you lay out your budget, it's tough to find any slack, it runs pretty tight. The near $1400/month is painful. Is that 2% rate fixed till it's paid off? Do you have any old 401(k) or IRA mone …

If they made deposits 20 years ago, and none since, the S&P is up over 300% since then. i.e. a return of $40,000 on $10,000 invested. We wouldn't expect to see that full return, as a prudent mix of st …

Less so today, but there was a time that women played a smaller role in the household finances, letting the husband manage the family money. Women often found themselves in a frightening situation whe …

There are three reasons to refinance: To reduce one's interest rate To extend the term and improve cash flow To pull cash out for a worthy purpose. If her goal is simply to avoid a bad customer s …

The bucket concept. What ever works. Some people literally use envelopes, putting cash into each category for there upcoming bills. I prefer not to mix my long term investments. My daughter's college …

I'm of the belief that, long term, fees eat away at your performance. If you chose an ETF, say VOO, with its .03% expense, and a short term bond fund or money market fund, you are going be ahead, long …

With regard to PMI. You propose to put down 5% less, i.e. 15% instead of 20%. This is $12,500. How much is the PMI? You will pay interest on the $12,500 extra you are borrowing, but also stuck payin …

A Tweep friend asked me a similar question. In her case it was in the larger context of a marriage and house purchase. In reply I wrote a detail article Student Loans and Your First Mortgage. The lo …

I have never double-answered till now. This loan can't be taken out of context. By the way, how much is it? What rate? "Debt bad." Really? Line the debt up. This is the highest debt you have. But, y …

Decades ago I read a brochure put out by Vanguard titled "The Triumph of Indexing". It focused on the returns of managed funds vs a low cost S&P index. The concept to grasp is that if the index retu …

It really depends on the exact wording of that zero rate offer. Some specifically state they are to be used for paying other debt. Others will have wording such as "pay other debt or write yourself …

Let me start with something you might dismiss as trite - Correlation does not mean Causation. A money manager charging say, 1%, isn't likely to take on clients below a minimum level. On the other …

We had a similar question "how to calculate net worth", and in my answer I noted that for me, the answer would be different if the number was "retirement saving" vs "amount my kids will get when I die …

American Funds? Also look at their annual expenses. And this is from the AMCAP fund, a "growth fund" in their offering, the expenses over 10 years for a $10,000 investment: To put this in per …

There are two places to start, the spending side and the income side. Many (in the personal finance blogosphere) have pointed out that frugal has its limits. You can only live so cheaply, eat so littl …