Income & Career

Easy Money Makers You Can Do Right From Home

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Making money and building your wealth doesn’t always come easy. In fact, the road to financial wealth is often long and for most it’s the road to Neverland. A not-so-fun fact is that when it comes to making more money or accumulating wealth, things often take time.

Woman sitting on her sofa with laptop doing easy money makers

You can work really hard at your job and maybe get a promotion and then earn more. Or you start your own side hustle that can require months of effort before you receive any payout. Even if you start some great financial habits or develop some insightful investing or budgeting skills, it requires patience, persistence, and time. Sometimes, you just need quick and easy money makers and there’s no way around it.

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Frugality, More

How More New Delays and Price Hikes for Mail Will Affect You

You remember mail, don’t you? It was the way that people communicated with each other for centuries when people actually sat down and wrote cards and letters to each other. Well, while those days are gone now, the postal service will soon cost you even more than ever to use it, for everything.

Mailboxes outside the post office where mail prices and delivery times are going up

With inflation rearing its ugly head again as an excuse and mail delivery problems, starting October 1, 2021, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will implement new service standards for first-class mail and packages as well as raise prices while lengthening delivery time for about 30% of its volume.

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Retirement, Saving & Investing

Don’t Screw Up Your Retirement Plan! 10 IRA Mistakes to Avoid

IRAs are the biggest places that people park their money for retirement in the country. In addition to direct contributions, a lot more money also comes from retirement assets from employers’ 401(k) accounts. According to the Investment Company Institute, Americans have over $35 trillion dollars socked away in total retirement assets right now. But here’s my warning: Don’t screw up your retirement plan with these IRA mistakes!

Money tree representing retirement assets and the 10 IRA mistakes to avoid

How Can Something So Simple Be So Dangerous?

Opening an IRA account seems like it’s a fairly simple thing. You go to a bank or you can pick a brokerage firm or a mutual fund company (even online), fill out a few forms, and then move some money into the account.

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Personal Finance

Why Being Average Is a Horrible Strategy for Your Finances

Mr. or Ms. Average (or Mx. Average for you non-binary folks), is that you? Congratulations if you live in the world of average income, drive an average car, and even have an average of 1.93 kids (which actually might be tragic even though it’s the average for families right here in the good old USA). Being average is, well, average.

Man reclining on seat, just being average

But here’s the thing, despite what Seinfeld said when he said “not that there is anything wrong with that”, being average isn’t a very good be all end all goal for anyone to have, is it? Even those who are currently at the bottom of the scale financially speaking shouldn’t shoot for average. Average is not full human potential. Average is not the final stage 5 place you go to die. Average is non-distinct and is a horrible financial strategy.

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More, Personal Finance

The Inflation Rate Slows, But Is It the End Yet?

I have been talking and writing about the inflation rate in the U.S. (and around the world) for a year now and I am worried about it. That makes me a little different than say Jay Powell over at the Fed who keeps saying that inflation isn’t quite a “real thing” and it’s “transitory”. If you don’t know what that means, it means that it’s just a fad and isn’t going to last. If you believe that one, well there’s that proverbial swamp land in Florida that I’d like to sell you.

A roller coaster at sunset, representing the wild ride the inflation rate is taking us on

The inflation rate has been climbing at the fastest pace in over a decade, as Americans pay more for gas, groceries, and many other items. The rate of inflation has slowed over the past few weeks, but don’t get too excited by that news. Inflation will be hanging around at high levels for quite a while longer: this year, next year, and even beyond that. If inflation were a stock, I’d say invest in it. It’s guaranteed to be going up!

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Personal Finance

Women and Personal Finance: How Women Can Boost Their Financial Power

Women and finance. It’s not a secret and we all are well too aware of it: Women lag behind men when it comes to their finances. Sadly, despite some of the glass ceilings that have come down over the recent years, financial inequalities between men and women continue to be a hot spot of major concern. I guess on the surface it may be puzzling for you to hear a man say it and that he would write about such a subject or even care about it. But I do care. It’s an important subject to understand and to make it change. So the discussion today is about how women can boost their financial power.

Woman holding hundred dollar bills representing women and finance

The Basic Facts

Many women try to do it all. They care for the kids, for aging parents, and even for their partners. With all these responsibilities, they try to earn money, be a great wife, and in the end, get totally stressed out along the way there. It creates an enormous amount of pressure that women didn’t face as recently as just 50 years ago. Ironically, the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s may have ended some problems, but invented new ones.

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Food

Pandemic Profiteering Raising Meat Prices? You Better Believe It!

Have you been confused about the rising inflation rate and wondering when this cycle is going to end and “normalcy” will return to your world? Have you just been wondering about it? Or did you figure that inflation comes and goes? And given the way things have been affected with COVID-19 it’s just no wonder that inflation came along now due to high demand and the difficulties in both getting workers and the supply chain issues? Did you just figure that is the way it is and resign yourself to it? Well there is also that other thing that is affecting you and your wallet too. It’s pandemic profiteering and it’s raising your meat prices!

Man looking at high meat prices in butcher case as a result of pandemic profiteering

Don’t Be Naïve About the Profit Motive

Profiteering is a tough subject for me personally to deal with. That’s because I spent so many years in the retail world and I’d like to think that what I always did and the companies I worked for did was to do the right thing for themselves and the consumer. I’d like to think that, but I know it’s not the truth.

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Insurance

Preparing Your Life Insurance Beneficiary: 3 Steps to Handle Now

I have written several blog posts over the years about insurance of all kinds. Insurance is so important to have for many reasons, but it is also a very unpleasant thing to think about, discuss, and to shop for and buy. That’s mainly because you are hoping you never really need it, but yet you know that you will or just might someday. That’s why you pay for it so grudgingly. It’s protection for you and your assets for the things that your fear will happen.

Grieving loved ones who were prepared to be your life insurance beneficiary

With things like a house, a car, or a boat, well, they are all just things. When it’s just a thing, insurance can cover it and even replace it so you’re as good as new…well almost. Just ask anyone who just experienced Hurricane Ida and all of the damage done to property for example. But with your life insurance policies it’s a little bit different.

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