There was a time, not too long ago, that serious financial planning for young professionals was something almost impossible to find. Experienced financial experts gave advice and created financial plans for people, sure — but they only served older people on the brink of retirement, who were already wealthy. I’ve always thought this was a…
You Don’t Need Life Insurance Until You Have This
I’ll be honest with you: I’m not a big fan of life insurance. It’s a product you pay for with hopes that you never have to actually use it. It’s also a product that gets pushed hard by salespeople who often try to use guilt and fear to give into their pitch. That kind of…
Managing Lifestyle Creep: A Real-Life Example of Keeping Expenses Low (Even As Incomes Rise)
The term lifestyle creep describes what happens when you spend more money as you earn more money. You might also hear this referred to as “lifestyle inflation. It means the same thing: you inflate your lifestyle to match your income. There’s never much of a gap between what you earn and what you spend. If…
Don’t Have Specific Financial Goals? That’s Okay If You Have One of These Instead
It’s hard to plot out every goal you want to accomplish in your long life — especially if you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s right now. You have decades of life to live ahead of you, and these are the prime years in which to experience and enjoy some major life milestones and changes….
Saving for College: What to Consider and What Tools to Use
Worried about saving for college and having enough to fund your kid’s education? Then let’s start with the good news: there are so many ways to pay for college. You have a lot of options to explore. Now for the tricky part: you have a lot of options. There are a lot of variables and…
The Biggest Challenge in Creating Your Financial Plan: Finding Balance
It’s certainly not easy to find the perfect middle ground between saving and investing enough to secure your future goals while allowing yourself to spend enough to truly experience all the years in between now and then. Most people tend to fall on one end of the spectrum or the other. Either you’re more inclined…
Upcoming IPO? Take These 3 Financial Planning Steps Now
An upcoming IPO at your company presents you with a huge opportunity to make a massive leap of forward progress in growing your wealth. With the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars — or even millions of dollars — on the table for you, it’s not an exaggeration to say this is a high-pressure…
Money Is a Tool, So Stop Treating It as the Goal
“I want more money.” “I need to save more money.” “I wish I had more money.” I hear these phrases all the time — and I’m guilty of saying them myself, too. While it’s natural to think this way about finances, doing so only creates more stress around money. Why? What’s wrong with “more money?”…
Make Little Money Details Add Up to Big Financial Impact
The next time we go out to eat, we’ll get $20 off our meal just because we have a habit of making reservations. We use OpenTable to book spots at restaurants when we plan to eat out. Even if we know we’ll get somewhere at a slow time when there won’t be a wait, like…
When to Start Financial Planning (and What to Think About First)
A lot of people I talk to aren’t sure of when to start financial planning. Do you have the same question, about when you should start? I could really sum up the entirety of this blog post with a single-word answer: Yesterday. That was the best time to get started. The second best time, of…