Category: Financial Goals

The Financial Basics – Where to Start

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In my last post – What is Your Why? – I discussed a systematic approach to discover the root reason driving each of us to strive toward improving our financial lives. What will be the guiding principal to focus on while traveling the path toward achieving financial goals? In today’s post we will take the first step on the path to gaining full control over our finances. First, we must determine our present location – where are we starting from? Continue Reading →

What Is Your Why?

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As you may have gathered from my previous blog posts, I am passionate about teaching financial literacy to others – particularly the next generation, which includes my daughter. One of my outlets for this is teaching a financial literacy class to high school seniors at our local public high school. We cover many key topics including tracking spending, calculating and monitoring net worth, discussing various assets and liabilities, understanding interest and compounding, appropriate insurance coverage, personal income taxes, etc. It Continue Reading →

Learning the True Value of Financial Independence

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Over the past five months, during which I have been absent from posting on the blog, I have had a number of significant life experiences. My father passed away after a long battle with cancer, my daughter graduated from high school and then went off to college – my wife and I are now “empty nesters.” Experiencing these life changes has caused me to reflect on the value of financial independence. When my wife and I originally embarked on our Continue Reading →

Slay the Debt Dragon

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One of the biggest demons my wife and I faced after getting married was our combined credit card and student loan debt. Fortunately, my wife had a relatively small student loan balance and I had none, but we had collectively amassed quite a bit of credit card debt from paying for our wedding and honeymoon, dining out, my habit of purchasing music CDs, as well as a seasonal ski vacation rental home (and its associated monthly costs) which completely put Continue Reading →