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The Betterment Experiment

Making money through being lazy.

If you have any significant amount of money in a savings account you’re leaving a lot of free cash on the table.  You know you have to invest but getting started is a scary prospect.  That’s where The Betterment Experiment comes in.

I’m a lazy guy, I want my savings to make me money but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it.  My time is crunched as it is.  I’m looking for solid long term investments that kickass and beat the market average.

The good news is we’re at this sort of inflection point with technology and accessibility where tools and services that use to only be available to the elite few are now available to the masses.  A perfect example of this is Mint.com which I highly recommend using because it takes hours out of managing your wealth.

The investment vehicle we’re going to focus on here is Betterment.  I’ve already talked about Betterment a few times on this blog (here, here and here) and as I’m sure you’ve gathered, I think it’s an incredible tool to automate your investment efforts and build real wealth.  This difference with this post and the others is that I will be investing my own money and documenting the entire process so you can see how easy and painless it is to have your savings generate you more savings.

I use Betterment extensively with my own money because it’s incredibly easy to dial your risk up/down, the fees are almost non-existent (0.35% for balances under $10k) and you can transfer money in and out of the account as quickly as you can with a checking account (no transaction fees).

In the multi-step process of building wealth, Betterment can be used for the second and third steps.  Once you have the first step, budgeting, under control, the next two steps are to regularly pull money out of your checking account for long term savings and then invest those savings so they grow exponentially.  Betterment has you covered for both of those steps which we will talk about in a little bit.

First, lets talk about the parameters of this experiment and its goals.

  The  Experiment

Betterment provides a breakdown of what your money is invested in. It’s all about the transparency.

I put $500 into a new Betterment account  in July and have since been tracking the progress.  Starting on October 1st I will be depositing $1,000 a month into my Betterment account for a year.  At the end of this year I will have contributed $12,500.

My account allocation will be 90% stock and 10% bonds which is considered aggressive.  I’m 28 and am comfortable with a certain amount of risk.  I also strongly believe in the buy and hold strategy so while there may be some short term losses (month to month), I know that over the long run I will come out ahead.

The primary goal at the end of the year is to have at least $14,250 in my Betterment account meaning that I expect to grow $1,750 in one year purely though investment gains.

Betterment has a statistical model that they use to help you project future gains and risk and this calculator suggests that I have a roughly 35% chance of meeting this goal.  If I make the goal that would mean that my gains would be 14% year over year which is pretty impressive.  The market on average is 7% so that would mean we would not only make some solid gains but technically beat the market by a full year. That said, I will celebrate anything above 7% yearly, I would just rather shoot for the stars than the average.

The secondary goal is to prove that investing can be simple and easy.  Since there is barely any work involved in this process it’s hard to give an excuse like “I don’t have the time” or “I’m not knowledgable enough about the market“.  Most importantly I want to show the power of exponential growth and how a little bit of money over even a short period of time can generate significant gains.

  My Progress

In August I made $25.28.

The most important number to me is my monthly return.  This will help me gauge if I’m on track with my goal and give me an idea of how competitive my results are from Betterment compared to the overall market.

In order to meet my goal of 14% annualized return I need a consistent monthly return of at least 1.54%.  If you need help calculating the required monthly return to meet your goals you can check out this helpful article: http://financetrain.com/how-to-calculate-annualized-returns/

As it stands, I’m well ahead of target sitting pretty at a 4.9% monthly return.  I won’t count on having anything close to that in the long term but it’s a nice initial kick off for the experiment.

I’m going to use the S&P500 as the market average to compare my performance against.  I like this index because it contains more companies than the Dow Jones Industrial Average and it has a lot of modern tech companies in it which I really admire.

This month is incredibly spectacular because in August the S&P500 had a monthly return of -3.13% so the first month out of the gate we are beating the market average by 8.05%.  That’s amazing, I hope we keep it up!

  Choosing Your Risk

Adjusting your risk is easy.

Easily the most important decision you need to make is what level of risk you’re willing to accept.  With Betterment you get a convenient slider that seamlessly splits your investment behind the scenes between a variety of stocks and bonds with bonds being on the more conservative end.

Everyone will have their own recommendation on what is best and it definitely depends on your own situation but for me I see it as the following.  20 year olds should be 90% stock, 30′s are 80% stock, 40′s are 70% stock, 50′s are 60% stock, 60′s are 50% stock and so on.

This should be easy enough to follow and provides a sliding scale of risk so that when you’re older you are geared towards more steady returns and when you are young you have a bigger potential to make huge gains in your portfolio.

  Automate Your Savings

Even the best of us fall victim to overspending due to extra cash in the checking account. Sometimes the money just begs to be spent.  The best way to avoid spending your savings is to move the money to another account.

If you’re going to use Betterment, I highly recommend you set up a monthly auto deposit.  The whole point of Betterment is to make investing a zero hour a month project.  Let the system automatically save for you and invest it.  You can always withdraw if you need to but you’ll most definitely be making more money here than in your 0.8% annualized savings account.

Don’t worry if you don’t have enough money in your account on the day Betterment goes to pull money from your checking account.  If the money isn’t there, Betterment won’t take it and you won’t have any overdraft fees so there is zero risk with your positive intentions.

  Accessing your Betterment Funds

Investing is important but being able to access your money when you need it is even more important.

Normally when you invest you can buy your stocks/bonds same day with a transaction fee and when you go to sell it can take 4-5 days to clear and there is another transaction fee.

The reason I like Betterment is that I don’t have to individually sell any of the underlying investments and get hit with multiple transaction fees.  You still need to wait 4-5 days to transfer money out but that comes with the territory.

The only time you can expect to get an instant transfer is when you sacrifice all investment gains for something like a Savings or Money Market account.

  Next Steps

For me I’ll be detailing the growth every few months keeping you posted on how well the investments are doing. Really though, that’s it.  Auto deposit, set it and forget it with solid gains.  A perfect investment for my lazy self.

For you, I definitely encourage you to try Betterment and let me know how it goes. If you want to participate in the experiment or already invest with Betterment it would be awesome (and very helpful) if you could share your results in the comments.

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What's the Deal with Payday Loans?

You know you want a Payday, but is it really what you need right now?

If you’re looking for a shortcut to wealth, stop looking because there is no such thing. There is no replacement for hard work and dedication.

I get a lot of need money now related questions, hence The Need Money Now Strategy. Unfortunately it’s because a lot of people have gotten themselves into some degree of trouble. Maybe a mortgage payment is due and you’re short cash or you don’t want to be late on your electric bill. Whatever the reason, it’s important to note that I don’t condone payday loans.

That said, I suppose there is a time and a place where they could get you out of a serious jam (it better be serious).  What I want to do in this article is explain what a payday loan is, why they really aren’t so great and how, sometimes they can actually be useful.  I’m also going to give you some alternatives so if you don’t meet the narrow criteria for actually needing a payday loan (they accept most everyone) you can sign up for something less painful.

  What is a Payday Loan?

Simply put, a Payday Loan is a loan against your next paycheck.  It’s along the lines of a check cashing service where if you could just wait a few more days you would get the money you’ve already earned for free.  Of course, like any loan there is a cost for taking on the risk of lending another person money.

Like a check cashing service, the specialty of a Payday Loan is in immediate funds.  Almost every employed person will be approved and the cash could arrive in your bank account as soon as the same day.  Due to the nature of Payday Loans, if you are self employed you will almost always be rejected.  The main difference between a Payday Loan and a Check Cashing Service is that with a Check Cashing Service you pay for the convenience of not having to wait for your check to clear thus the fees are much lower than a Payday Loan which is a loan based on future earnings.

Usually you will have to repay the loan within 2 weeks (your next paycheck), however some services allow you to extend the loan up to 3-4 pay periods in the future.  However, this is extremely unwise.  A Payday Loan is already very expensive, extending the term even by a week can dramatically increase the cost.  If you think  you wont be able to pay back the loan within 1-2 pay periods I strongly suggest that you don’t take the loan.  On top of the fact that I don’t condone payday loans to begin with.

What are the costs?  Generally very high.  On the order of 20%+ interest.  So, if you were to borrow $300 for one pay period, it is likely that you will have to pay at least $360 back in two weeks or $432 in a month.  The interest rates on these loans are in the same ball park as expensive credit cards only the payments and interest arrive twice as quickly.  As such I think it is fair to say that Payday Loans are at least twice as dangerous as credit card debt.

  When is a Payday Loan Actually Useful?

All kinds of debt can be dangerous, even mortgages (housing bubble anyone?).  However most all loans can serve a purpose if used wisely.  How do you know if you’re using a loan wisely?  Easy, just answer two questions.  First question is, are you 100% certain that you can pay the loan back at the end of it’s term?  The second question is, are you using the loan for its intended purpose?  That of course begs the question, what is a Payday Loan’s intended purpose?

A Payday Loan is in essence an instance cash infusion for an immediately urgent expense.  Unlike a credit card where you may use it to buy every day items and accrue points, a Payday Loan needs to go towards a dire circumstance.

What is considered a dire circumstance?  A dire circumstance would be a few hundred dollars short on a mortgage payment, a final notice electricity bill to keep the lights on or an urgent medical bill.  You should not be buying anything new with a Payday Loan.

If you think you qualify under these rules of reason then you can get a Payday Loan.  However, you need to promise me it’s a one time deal and then you will start to save money!

I’d rather you go with a reputable company if you are going to get a Payday Loan so if you’re from the US you can go through National Debt Relief and if you’re from the UK you can go through Cash Window.  Both companies have great FAQs and strong customer support for if you have any additional questions not covered on their websites.

  Some Payday Loan Alternatives

Hopefully you’re realizing that you aren’t in a truly dire situation.  I’m sure that I’m not the first to tell you that there are other options as the internet is littered with ways to accumulate debt.

Lowest on the interest scale is a home equity loan.  With this loan you borrow against any equity you have in your house putting your home up as collateral.  Of course, if you fail to pay, you lose your house.  Also, not all of us own homes so this isn’t always the most viable option.

If you absolutely do need a loan that is either larger than a normal Payday Loan or not for truly dire circumstances (and you need the money today), I would recommend Prosper.com.  Prosper.com is a crowd funding site for personal loans.  I’m going to write about it in more depth in the future but if you’re looking for a loan between $2,000 and $35,000, it’s definitely a place where you will get a great deal.

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You're a Failure and It's a Good Thing

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take

This is my third attempt at writing this article.  Seriously.  You don’t see it because I don’t post every terrible thing I write but I just wanted to let you know.  I also want to let you know that I’ve failed at launching 4 startups.  Custom Web Development, Gift Card Trading, something just like Space Monkey a year prior and an iPhone app.

I also failed quite a lot of courses in college, many job interviews, almost all my relationships and I failed at quite a lot of friendships as well.  Any way you measure me, I’m a pretty hardcore failure.  I would go so far as to say that one of the few things I’m actually good at is failing.

Thankfully, 99% of failures don’t result in something cataclysmic.  Most of the time our failures have tiny consequences that we completely forget about not long after they happen.

If you look at my college degree it will not show you how many times I failed Calculus or Physics and it definitely won’t explain why I failed my college credit gym class “Walking” (long story).  What my college degree will tell you is that I successfully started and completed college and maybe gained some knowledge along the way.

I also really suck at job interviews and before I got my first job out of college I had sent out well over 100 resumes and failed at more prescreen interview phone calls then I’d care to admit.  However, what you might not know is that since my first job 7 years ago I’ve increased my salary by more than 250% and that the salary from my first job after college was 25% higher than the US  Household Median Income at that time.

The point is that success isn’t measured by how many times you didn’t fail but by what you learned from your failures and what you did with that knowledge.  Like Michael Jordan I’ve been ranting for quite some time on how I give all the credit for my success to my spectacular ability to fail.  Chances are you could say the same thing about yourself.

Children are terrific at failing because they just don’t care.  Think of how many times a child falls and hurts themselves in the difficult journey of learning how to walk.  Or the time they discovered that fire is hot or ice is slippery or that 2+2 does not equal 5.  Imagine if children were as fearful about failing as adults are.  If that were the case, none of us would be able to walk or talk, we’d be mostly useless.  Things like the internet and iPhones would never exist!

Of course you must be thinking about how much time gets wasted from your failures and recovering from them.  I would absolutely agree with you that failing is well, a huge waste of time.  That’s why you need to fail fast and fail often.

Don’t deliberate for hours on if you should do something, chances are you’re going to fail in some fashion anyway so why not just get it over with already?  You could dream about getting a promotion at work and never get it because you were not assertive enough.  Or, you could ask for a promotion and fail.  At least if you practice the Lost Art of Negotiation, next time you’ll be better at it.  Eventually you’ll get what you ask for because you got a lot better at asking.

Like the great all knowing Yoda once said “one attempted salary negotiation does not an expert make” (I may be paraphrasing a bit).  Yoda has a good point and as the cliche goes, practice makes perfect.  With that in mind, you better start failing at negotiation more often if for no other reason then you’ll get better at it over time.

But hey, you’re scared and who knows what’s going to happen when you fail, right?  I’m going to say that in most cases, probably nothing and absolutely a lot less than you imagine would happen.  Turn down that over active imagination of yours because seriously, what would really happen if you for instance failed to get that promotion after asking your boss?  You don’t get a promotion.  That’s it.  The funny thing is you started the day not having the promotion and you’re just ending the day the same way.  Not a big deal.

The good news is you’ll learn something but more importantly something that you didn’t consider might also happen.  Maybe as a result of your failure your boss will have a new found respect for you and maybe he or she will keep you in mind when there is a possibility for a promotion.  It’s highly unlikely that you’ll get fired or severely ridiculed just for asking.  Remember when you fail that you’re not the first person to try what you did and you most certainly won’t be the last.  Fail with pride and no regrets.

Finally, when you fail you not only need to pick yourself up quickly but you need to celebrate.  Maybe you don’t only go out to dinner for those rare occasions where you finally achieved something big.  Maybe when you put an honest effort in and failed you take everyone out to soften the blow and reward yourself for trying. You’ll only be a failure when you stop trying.  You pick yourself up off the ground you get back in there and try again because eventually you’re going to succeed.

I don’t know how you feel about luck but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your definition of it sucks.  The way I see it, luck is when opportunity meets preparation.  Nobody won the lottery without buying a ticket and you won’t get that promotion without getting out there and trying.  When something great happens to you maybe you shouldn’t write it off as luck because that cheapens all the hard work you put in along the way.

Remember, you’re gonna fail but it’s ok because you do it all the time, you just don’t realize it.  Go out there and give things a shot because who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky.

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Hacking Money the British Way With an ISA

Oh, and carry on too…

In America we get quite a lot of lip service on our financial tools and hacks but I think the Brits need some love as well.  Interestingly, some of the best financial strategies and incentives exist in the UK and not in the US.

Maybe it’s because the UK is a bit more progressive on many social issues as compared to the US or maybe the British have a much stronger saving for the future mindset.  Either way, we’re going to dig into how the British hack their savings with ISAs and why using they would be crazy to not make use of this excellent financial vehicle.

  What is an ISA?

Simply put the ISA is a British version of the IRA.  Or the IRA is an American version of the ISA.  Either way, they are very similar financial instruments but in a battle royale the ISA would most definitely come out the victor.

The ISA or Individual Savings Account carries a deceptively simple name as it is so much more than what comes to mind when you hear the term Savings Account.  The IRA or Individual Retirement Account however is better named as I think it more closely describes the goal of the account.

With an ISA or IRA you contribute post-tax money much like a normal savings account, however all of your future earnings on that money is tax free.  The savings on taxes alone is far and away a solid reason to contribute to an ISA, however it gets better.  Unlike the American IRA, the British ISA has no restrictions on when or how much money can be withdrawn.  No need to wait for retirement with an ISA, generate your gains tax free and then withdraw whenever you like without a penalty.

Now that’s what I’m talking about!  There is no such free money growth opportunities in the US unless you count withdrawing your hard retirement savings at the ripe old age of 65.  I plan to retire well before then so IRAs aren’t much of a help.  ISAs on the other hand are an early retiree’s best friend.

  The Cash ISA for the Risk Adverse

On this blog we talk a lot about leveraging the stock market to fuel savings growth but we rarely talk about the alternative – the savings account.  Why do we oh so cleverly ignore savings accounts?  We ignore them because generally speaking the savings rate is horrific.  The good news for the ISA is that again it blows American expectations out of the water.

In the US you would be lucky to find a bank that pays you as high as 0.85% interest.  No the decimal isn’t in the wrong place, the interest rate is really that low.  I call that interest level the “I want to be taken advantage of” rate because you’re not earning jack but the bank couldn’t be happier.

The Cash ISA on the other hand can earn you quite a lot more.  If you choose the best ISA in the UK from what I’ve seen, you can earn as much as 2.35% interest!  In case you’re not excited, that’s well over three times the US savings rate average plus you don’t pay any taxes on your gains.  If you’ve got a fair amount of cash and you’re very close to retirement and don’t want to take on much risk, the cash ISA is for you.

In the UK you usually get taxed at least 20% on your savings interest before you ever get to touch it.  Therefore in effect your savings will feel like a lot more like 2.8% and if you’re in the middle class paying closer to 37% of your earnings in taxes, it’s going to feel more like 3.2% interest.  These days that’s nothing to shake a stick at.

  The Lucky ISA Addition

Now, I think the ISA is a pretty solid tool to build wealth however the British still were not satisfied.  Not only did they want their savings accounts to be superior to the US options but they came up with yet another perk to make the ISA even more awesome.  What is this perk?  To encourage their clients to save, many banks also run a Savings Lottery.  What does that even mean?!?

The ISA Savings Lottery is just a lottery run by your bank where you may out of the blue win up to £250,000 in a monthly drawing.  That’s of course just a grand prize on the over £1,500,000 pounds given out each month for various prize tiers by each major bank.  When I discovered this I was speechless.  Not only is that a great perk for savers but it’s an awesome incentive to attract more savers, especially the lower middle class who usually wind wasting money on lottery tickets.

How does it work?  Just keep at least £5,000 in your ISA each month and you’ll be automatically registered to win.  I wish US banks were aloud to offer this.

  Did You Open An ISA Yet?

Obviously you can’t open an ISA if you aren’t from the UK but if you are, what are you waiting for?  Even if the Cash ISA isn’t for you and you would prefer to invest in stocks and bonds, you can still do that with a Stocks and Shares ISA account.  The only reason I can think of for you to not contribute is that you have no money because you’re not budgeting!

Go out there and maximize your savings, open your decidedly British ISA!

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Debt Relief for Dummies

Defeating debt can be a challenge

Debt is a serious problem, so much so that not too long ago it brought the global economy to its knees.  It’s great that we’ve finally realized there is such a thing as too much debt but I still think there is some confusion.

Debt is an emergency!  Being in debt is like seeing your house on fire, you need to take immediate and meaningful action to stop the damage before it’s too late.

That’s where Debt Relief for Dummies comes in. This guide is going to be slightly different than my other guide, Budgeting for Dummies in that I’m not just going to walk you through a free product that can assist you but I’m also going to provide you with a nice shortcut.

At the end of the day there is no wrong approach towards paying down your debt, it really depends on you.  If you’re a DIY guy like me you’ll appreciate the walk though, however if you’re extremely busy and just want things taken care of now I think you’ll jump at the shortcut (hint: It’s way at the bottom).

Also, I think it’s important to mention that both reading and implementing this guide will take you less than 30 minutes.  Take the time and set yourself up for a better financial future, stop procrastinating and get your debt under control now!

  Debt Relief the Guide Introduction

Since we agree that your debt is an emergency we’ve now got to destroy it.  There are a couple different debt relief strategies you can follow and we could debate the merits of each one but I don’t want to bore you to death.  We’re going to discuss the two most popular strategies which also happen to be the easiest to follow.  They are also great because they will quickly give you a feeling of accomplishment.

It’s important to remember that the biggest reason you’re in debt isn’t your lack of knowledge about debt but your behavior.  Since follow though is key to your success I’ve picked the two strategies you’re going to be most likely to actually do.  These two strategies are The Debt Snowball and Debt Consolidation.

The Debt Snowball was first popularized by Dave Ramsey.  Simply put, the strategy is to pay the minimum on all of your debts except for the smallest one which you will pay off as quickly as possible.  Once you clear that debt you will move on to the next smallest debt, and so on until you have one debt balance left which you will focus on paying down.

While mathematically it would make the most sense to pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first, we’re going to concede that you are not in this position because you can’t do math.  The problem is your behavior.  Understanding this, the Debt Snowball method focuses on getting small measurable results quickly so that we can feel like we are accomplishing something.

The second and my personal favorite strategy is Debt Consolidation.  I spoke about it briefly here but we’ll go into more depth in this guide.  The idea behind this strategy is that you take your multiple high interest debt balances and pool them into a single loan that is significantly lower interest.  This will help us focus our payments on one large sum that will grow significantly slower than if we would have left the interest rates alone.  Another side effect of this approach is that we may find some opportunities to shed debt free of charge though a consolidation and negotiation service like National Debt Relief, but we’ll talk about that later.

  Creating Your ReadyForZero Account

Total Time: 8 seconds

ReadyForZero will be our Mint.com equivalent for tracking and paying down debt.  It’s a great debt relief tool because it will track all of your debt, graph it over time, do all of our debt related math for you AND you can make payments though it.  Imagine a world where you log into one website to manage and pay down your debt.  Yup, that’s the ReadyForZero world.

First things first, we need to create an account, go ahead and do that by clicking here and filling in an email/password.

  Linking Your Accounts

Leave no stone unturned

Total Time: 5 minutes

Great, you’ve created your account!  Now it’s time to link up all of that debt.  If you have experience with an online budgeting tool (and I hope you do) then this step should feel very familiar.  Go ahead and search for all the different financial institutions where you’re keeping your debt and add them in.

Leave no stone unturned, in order for this to work we need to see the full ugly picture of your debt. When you’re doing adding in all of your accounts, be sure to click forward to the next step.

  Deciding On Your Debt Relief Plan

Decide how quickly you’ll be debt free

Total Time: 10 minutes

Here is where the real action happens.  Just move that slider to the sum of your minimum payments and you’ll see the world of hurt you’re in for if you don’t proactively try to destroy your debt.

However, I don’t think you would have read this far down if you didn’t intend to make a serious effort at reducing your debt so lets see how we can come up with the best number here.

Debt payments should happen with the money found in between the total you get paid after taxes a month and the amount you budget for your day to day expenses.  This savings rate should ideally be at least 30% of your take home salary.  If it’s a lot less, just remember, being wealthy is a choice.

One option is you could take your full monthly savings and put it towards your debt. That approach is definitely ambitious and doable but I’m going to recommend that we take a bit more of a conservative approach.  Things happen that we can never foresee so I think it is important to always have an emergency fund just in case.

Lets take 20% of our budget-to-income gap otherwise known as our savings rate and put that money into a low risk money market account like Betterment that will earn us some real cash.  The remaining 80% we’re going to use to pay down our debt.

Go ahead and shift the slider to the number you’ve settled on and click Show Me My Plan.  This number is what you’re going to pay every month towards your debt. ReadyForZero will not only tell you how long it will take you to be debt free based on this number but you can also have it automatically pay down your debt for you.  If you can afford the $4.99/month on top of the already free service I definitely recommend it.  Personally, I think the best approach is out of sight, out of mind.  Plus, it’s best to have the computer make the payments so it happens consistently every month, even in your moments of weakness (we’re all human).

  Setting Up Automatic Payments

Automate payment so you don’t forget

Total Time: 10 minutes

Hopefully you felt it prudent to upgrade for automatic payments.  By making regular large payments towards your debt you will undoubtedly save more than $4.99/month, plus you can save your valuable brain juice for other more important things like negotiating a raise or spending time with your loved ones.

The good news is if you sign up now you can actually get $25 off the ReadyForZero PLUS plan if you use the promo code payaccel50.

If you did upgrade your account, all you need to do is link your checking account in settings and boom, you’re done.  As you make payments towards your debt, ReadyForZero will keep track and update you on your progress via email.  Sweet!

If you didn’t upgrade your account, all is not lost and you can still succeed, it will just take a bit more of your time.  If you’re using the Debt Snowball method we discussed above then log into all of your accounts that have debt and set them up to automatically pay the minimum payment.  Then, log into your account with the smallest balance and set it to pay the remaining money you set aside for debt each month.

There you go, now your entire debt relief plan is automated.  If you didn’t automate with ReadyForZero just remember to keep an eye on your account balances.  Once you pay down the balance of your smallest account, you will need to log into your next smallest balance account and adjust the automated payment with the remainder of cash set aside to pay down your debt.  If you forget this step it can seriously derail your debt reduction efforts so definitely set up a few alerts so that you don’t forget!

  Celebrating Your Progress

A long journey is completed one step at a time

After automating your payment, I would say celebration is the most important part of his strategy.  Remember how debt is 80% mental?

You need to celebrate your success, especially with friends and family.  When you tell other people about your plans it will keep you motivated and it is more likely that you will stay on track (they can help hold you accountable).

Track your progress and get excited, it’s these small victories that slowly add up to big achievements.  The hardest part is just getting started!

  The Debt Relief Shortcut

Now lets talk about the Debt Relief Shortcut shortcut.  I wanted to save this until the end because the absolute most important part about getting out of debt is just getting started.  You shouldn’t let another day go by without taking action so I’m glad we got our ReadyForZero automation setup.

ReadyForZero is great and I absolutely recommend you use it however I also recommend that you take a tried and true shortcut.  For the sake of this article, lets give it a fancy name – Interest Rate Arbitrage.

Right now a significant reason why your debt is so big and will take so long to pay off is the interest rates you have to deal with.  If some or all of your debt is on a credit card, you’re likely getting killed on the rates which could be as high as 19%!  Just by following though on Interest Rate Arbitrage aka Debt Consolidation we could significantly reduce the time it takes us to pay back our debt before we pay a single dollar towards our debt balance.

The way it works is simple, say you have a $1,000 balance at the end of the month.  With a 19% interest rate, that means you pay $190 in fees for no reason.  If you consolidate all of your super high interest rate loans into a single loan though a debt consolidation service you may get a rate at around 7%. Effectively that cuts the time it takes you to pay interest into less than half of what it use to be.  Through that one step you could save years on your debt relief schedule.

One such excellent debt consolidation service is National Debt Relief.  Of course you will have to pay them a small fee to refactor your finances but you can easily save much more than the fee in just your first month’s interest payments.  If your repayment plan is going to take months or years you should seriously seriously consider a debt consolidation service.  If you don’t reduce your interest rate you will just be throwing money away for no reason.

An added benefit to partnering with a debt consolidation service such as National Debt Relief is that they will also try and negotiate with your creditors.  While nothing is guaranteed, there is a very good chance that they can reduce the overall total you owe which will again further reduce the time it takes you to pay down your debt.

  Crush That Debt!

There is nothing more important than paying down your debt, it’s an emergency!  You shouldn’t be spending money on entertainment or wine or cable if you’re in debt.  If you are, you’re effectively buying everything on credit and paying an 19% markup (your debt interest rate).

Stop the endless debt cycle, set yourself up with ReadyForZero and automate your debt relief plan.  You should even take it a step further and consolidate your loans under a much lower rate with National Debt Relief.  Stay focused, I think you’ll find that getting out of debt isn’t terribly difficult.  The hardest part was just getting started.

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Inbox Zero Will Save Your Life

In order to focus you must first remove the noise.

Technology has finally penetrated every part of our lives.  It’s no longer enough to just use technology for an edge because everybody does, you now must use it effectively.  It’s about time you let Inbox Zero save your life.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Oh great, another buzz word I have to remember”, however the best part about  Inbox Zero is that its primary goal is for you to remember less.

Here I’m going to tell you the philosophy behind Inbox Zero, what Inbox Zero is, why you should care and the free tools that you can use to get there.

  The Philosophy Behind Inbox Zero?

GTD is easy and effective.

Inbox Zero in its most basic form is about having zero emails in all of your email inboxes.  Achieving inbox zero as a philosophy is about a lot more than that.

It all started with David Allen and his amazing book Getting Things Done (GTD).  He noticed that he was continually juggling a million tasks that needed to be completed.  The worst part about it was that managing all of those tasks took the same amount of brain juice and time as actually completing the work, plus trying to keep track of it all gave him anxiety.  He knew there had to be a better way.

David came up with a very simple and intuitive system which allowed him to get task remembering and tracking out of his head. Simply put, he decided to classify his work based on the simple flow chart above.  You’ll have to read the book to get the meat of it but basically his approach is to process your tasks immediately so that they will be completed in an efficient manner.

More importantly, your tasks will not clutter your brain so you can use your brain for other more important things like getting things done or having fun.

  What is Inbox Zero?

Simplifying your life should feel Zen.

Enter Inbox Zero, a modern adaptation of GTD for your Email Inbox.  The problem is that the uses of email have evolved from when it was originally created.  Many of us receive tens or hundreds of emails a day and the majority of them are not just for reading.  Most emails require some sort of action.

To complete an email you may need to just reply in detail but often times it will require some more involved work on your side.  When you need to take an action on an email and you don’t have the time as soon as it arrives, that’s where you run into a problem.

Currently, email has no easy way for you to remember and step through your pending tasks. Sure you can use a combination of flags and labels/folders but it’s not quite the best fit, it’s complicated and it doesn’t solve the core goals of Inbox Zero.  The core goal of Inbox Zero is getting your tasks out of your head so you can focus on what you need to do now.

If you leave emails in your inbox and flag them, you still have to look though all of your emails to find the flagged ones.  Or, if you have a filtered list of only flagged emails, you still need to read though your entire list of flagged emails to find what you need to complete now.  That limitation causes you to waste valuable time and brain juice.  Remember, your concentration and focus is a limited resource and you should try has hard as possible not to waste it.

Inbox Zero is primarily a way to show you what you need to see but only when you need to see it.  Stop rereading the same email titles over and over.  When you have nothing you need to do at the moment, you should just see something simple like the picture above (Mailbox).

  Tools That Will Help You Achieve Inbox Zero

It goes without saying that you need to find the tool that best fits your style.  I definitely encourage you to try out a few of them out for yourself.  Blow are some of the popular Inbox Zero tools and I’ve saved my personal favorite for last.

GMail (free for all platforms) – Sure you’ve heard of it and it’s pretty likely that you use it too.  However, have you really used GMail?  GMail was the first major Inbox Zero tool on the scene. With their labels, archive and killer search it’s an extremely effective Inbox Zero tool.  When you’re done with an email just archive it.  If you want to throw it into a label based To Do List, you’re but a click away.  Forget about trying to find an email, there is no better email search tool out there.

All of my email accounts are on GMail, however I don’t use their interface or apps to manage my Inbox.  Why?  I like to schedule tasks to a specific time and I haven’t seen a great way to achieve that with GMail.  Also, I have many email addresses and GMail segments my inboxes.  Why can’t they mash it all together like they do in iOS?  Bah!

  Sparrow ($2.99 for iPhone, $9.99 for Mac) – I love this app and I used it for quite a long time as my all around email solution.  It’s a fantastic front end for GMail and the company was actually recently purchased by Google so I can only imagine the great things to come!   I’m sure you all don’t get super excited about email but I happened to really like their demo video (and the song that it plays to).  Take a watch so you get an idea for the app.

Overall Sparrow is an excellent tool and I still use it on my Mac to manage my email and achieve Inbox Zero.  Sparrow has an integrated inbox so you can get all of your inboxes to show in one view and you can easily archive email when you’re done to get it out of your way.  Plus Sparrow’s search is killer because it can search across multiple inboxes at the same time.  My only gripe is that you’re forced to look at all of your pending tasks and I want them out of my view until I’m ready to action them.  That of course leads me to the greatest mail client out there….

  Mailbox (free for iPhone) – Mailbox is everything I’ve ever dreamed of in an email client.  It sits on top of GMail and supports labels/flags but more importantly it takes a completely new and fresh approach to email.  The app gives you three core views of your email: emails to be processed, emails pending work and completed emails.  The views fit perfectly with the Inbox Zero philosophy and the interface is incredibly intuitive.  I’ve been struggling with keeping my inboxes under control for quite some time and Mailbox has finally forced my unruly inboxes into submission.  Watch the video below so you can get an idea of how you can easily manage your inbox and simplify your life.  Mailbox has done wonders for me and I highly recommend you at least check it out yourself.  Best of all, it’s completely free!

  Go Forth and Save Time!

Hopefully I’ve got you pumped about upgrading your email client so you spend less time looking at email and more time doing things that matter.  There are many more email clients that try to satisfy your Inbox Zero needs and I definitely encourage you to try them all – the above apps were just the ones that I thought did the job best.

Remember, you’re not toying with email clients because you like nerding it out and you have nothing better to do (although personally I do like nerding it out).  You’re spending some time trying to find the best tool for the job so that when you get organized already you’ll have so much more time to do the things you want to do.

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4 Ways to Automate Your Finances

This is what automating your finances feels like.

I understand, managing your money can be really time consuming and you’re just not that into it.  Between trying to live life and taking care of your family, playing with numbers can be decidedly unexciting and low on your priority list.

It’s ok to admit that managing money doesn’t excite you and the good news is that it doesn’t have to be exciting for you to be successful financially.  It use to be that you had to sit down at your kitchen table with your checkbook, a pencil and a glass of wine and work the numbers all night.  Now there are a ton of amazing tools on the internet that you can leverage to do the dirty work for you.

Luckily there are many ways for you to automate your finances!  We’re going to cover the four main categories you should be concerned with and the tools you can use to make things easy.

  Automate Your Credit

I think you would be crazy to not be concerned with your credit.  If you have debt, you should be particularly concerned with your credit rating as it will affect the rates you pay and ultimately the amount you owe in interest.  If you’re debt free (and I hope you are), you should still care about your credit rating.  If you’re buying a home, looking to start a business or even in some cases getting a job, terrible credit can come back to haunt you.

The good news is, there are a few awesome services out there that will not only help you track your credit but they will give you suggestions on how to improve it and in some cases go to work for you to challenge the negative marks in your credit history.

First and most importantly you need to monitor your credit history.  While there are plenty of pay services out there that will monitor your credit for you, I don’t think you should pay for this service.  I also think that beyond monitoring, you should get suggestions on how to improve your credit for free.

I’ve been using Credit Sesame to monitor my credit for awhile and their suggestions were pretty helpful in bringing my credit rating up ahead of buying my own condo.  Little things like closing accounts with a short history and lowering your debt utilization ratio though paying down debt or getting limit increases can go a long way.  There are a lot more suggestions and I definitely recommend you take advantage of them since they are easy to do and the effects are pretty impressive.

I would also suggest you get their iPhone app, I find that keeping credit ratings on the forefront of my mind helps me make better decisions when I’m feeling like splurging.  Maybe that doesn’t matter as much to you but you can at least subscribe to the push notifications so you at least know when you’re doing something that’s having a negative effect on your credit.

However, probably the most important tool is the one that fixes the existing negative remarks on your credit.  I think you’ll find that it really isn’t that difficult to give your credit score a facelift as nearly every item is open to being contested.  The problem is, we’re inherently terrible at contesting negative remarks because 1) We have no experience in it and 2) The credit companies won’t take you as serious as a professional third party.

While I luckily haven’t had a need for a credit repair service, my best friend from college did.  In college is was pretty immature and didn’t pay his bills, like any of them.  We told him he was crazy but I think he figured it wouldn’t catch up with him or wouldn’t matter.  Needless to say it did catch up and it does matter.

He used CreditRepair.com and they were able to clear quite a lot up on his report, it was pretty surprising.  Of course they didn’t get everything, if only it were that easy.  The service costs $89 so it’s definitely not cheap but I figure if you’ve got some skeletons in your closet, the price might not be so high to get a few of them removed ;)

  Automate Your Budget

Personally, I think automating your budget is the most important single thing you can do.  You really do need to be alerted when your spending gets out of control or a rogue purchase hits your account that you weren’t aware of.  Often times issues can’t be put off forever and it’s really hard to fix the “not having enough money for rent because you went out drinking last night” problem.

That’s where the killer free online budgeting tools come in.  LearnVest is great, it’s a new unique way to budget.  It’s pretty different from Mint.com, however I’ve found that most budgeting newbies warm up to LearnVest the fastest.  Since they’re both free I definitely encourage you to try out both to see which works for you.  The worst thing you can do is pick a tool that doesn’t fit your style and then you never use it.

Both of the tools have the ability to learn your spending habits and automatically categorize your spending for you.  As a result you really only need to spend maybe an hour a month planning your budget and LearnVest/Mint do the rest for you.  They’ll even alert you if there is weird spending going on.

They also both have iPhone apps so you can check your money and budget on the go.  Often times a quick 5 minute effort on your phone every week or so can keep you on track to save.  If you’re serious about being financially fit, you must budget.

If you want to learn more about how to budget or how to use a budgeting tools, check out my articles Budgeting for Dummies, Setting Goals for Big Purchases and Don’t be Cheap, Be Smart. Budget!

  Automate Your Bills

If you’re terrible at remembering to pay your bills then you’ve got to automate it.  Bill paying is one of the biggest reasons for destroying your credit and getting yourself into debt.  Beyond the obvious downsides to missing your payments I would ask you, why would you even bother trying to remember the dates you have to pay your credit cards?

I’ve got my AMEX bill, my VISA bill, my Target Card bill, my Amazon.com bill, my Macy’s bill, etc… and that’s not even the half of it.  If I had to constantly worry about remembering the dates for each of these cards my brain would be paralyzed   I mean, you’re eating up all your brain’s storage capacity on unimportant dates when you could be clearing your head so you can get organized and be productive!

Personally, I use Manilla to manage all of this madness.  Like most of the financial tools we discuss on this site, it’s 100% free to use and it will seriously improve your quality of life.  Get rid of the stress of remembering these silly dates and just use it already.  Be sure to thank me in the comments ;)

  Automate Your Investing

This is my personal favorite section and even if you have a bit of work to do on your finances, this should be your favorite part too.  Why?  Because even if you only have $100 in your savings, you should be able to let it sit for a few months and come back and find $110.  The banks won’t offer you that, based on current bank interest rates you’ll need to wait an entire year and then you’ll just find your account at $100.85.  That’s insulting!

The core belief of my No Effort Investment Strategy is that you should really just “set it and forget it” with your investments.  I don’t think that I have a deep enough knowledge of the markets to beat day traders and more importantly, I don’t have the time.  I’m too busy living my life and going on vacation to micro manage my finances.  I hope you feel the same way because honestly, who would choose staring at stock tickers over a margarita on the beach with your loved ones?

That’s where Betterment comes in.  I love it and I’ve been rocking some serious gains all year.  Sure I have it cranked up to a 95% stock allocation but we’re in a recovery period.  There are lots of profits to be had and I’m not one to miss out!  If you read my blog you’ll notice that I’ve mentioned Betterment quite a lot.

The reason is because that beautiful company is largely responsible for my current financial situation.  I think it’s very important to save money, it’s the core of any good financial strategy.  However, if you are only saving then you’re leaving quite a lot of free money on the table.

Imagine if you saved $1,000 every year and got an average 8% gain every year.  In 10 years you would have $15,346 and roughly 33% of that would be free money due to your investments.  You can’t ignore money like that!

  Put Your Computer to Work for You

Some people like being very hands on with their money.  If you have a lot of it and like numbers, I imagine it could be fun.  However, I think that if you spend so much time with your money it’s defeating the purpose of earning that money in the first place.  Money should be a tool that allows you to live your life as you want, not a time consuming nightmare.  I work to live and my goal is to live with work as an optional choice.  I want that for you as well and it’s really not that difficult!

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Being Wealthy is a Choice

Very few people get to wake up one day and just become wealthy. For those lucky few that do, becoming wealthy turns out be not as much luck as a curse. A large percentage of lottery winners wind up not only losing the millions of dollars they win but eventually losing everything they own after being buried under a mountain of debt. Why is that?

It’s because you can’t just become wealthy, it’s a conscious choice that you must make. Sure you can have a lot of money, but without the proper mindset you will eventually let it all get away from you.

There is a major difference between wealthy people and everyone else. The wealthy work and save to create freedom, opportunity and happiness in their lives. When you have “F You Money”, suddenly you don’t have to take crap from your boss, you can leave or take time off from work all together. The wealthy know this. For the wealthy, money gives them the power to choose, they do not have to report to anyone but themselves.

You’ll find that the wealthy don’t have fancy cars because that’s a terrible waste of money and they don’t need to prove to anyone how successful they are. In fact, you can usually tell a poor person based on how flashy they are and how much stuff they have acquired.

The wealthy didn’t get wealthy by spending their money. Most of them live comfortable happy normal lives no different from yours. That’s where the phrase The Millionaire Next Door comes from. See, the wealthy know that they don’t want to be enslaved, they want the freedom to make decisions based on what they want and what makes them happy, not what the bill collectors say.

The financially illiterate on the other hand see money in a whole different light. Or, rather they don’t really see or understand money at all. They are primarily driven to work so they can acquire more things. To get a better kitchen table, to buy a flatter TV, they let their stuff own them. Eventually their stuff become the shackles that hold them back and prevent them from being happy.

The worst part about the financially illiterate is that they don’t respect money, themselves or their time. A financially illiterate person may make $12.50 an hour or $100 a day, which is fine, however at the end of the day they may spend that whole $100 at the bar. In the matter of a few hours they drank away a whole days work. They might as well have not gone to work and stayed home.

This is the sobering truth about how most people spend their money and the irony is that most of these people aren’t stupid, they just don’t understand money and the value of their time.

There is this notion that you must work 5 days a week for at least 40 hours and maintain that level of dedication for nearly 40 years. That’s crazy! By the time you’re 60, you’ll be old and you won’t want to work. If you drink all you’re money away you’re basically screwing the older you of the future into working your life away.

Thankfully, there is another way but first you must sit down and decide for yourself that the past is the past and from today onwards you will work towards being wealthy. Until you make that conscious decision you’re doomed to be enslaved by your stuff and your job. You will work away the best years of your life and you won’t realize it until it is too late.

The first step to becoming wealthy is deciding to take responsibility for your financial future. Once you make this choice you can start the slow but rewarding journey of building wealth and becoming the master of your own destiny.

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Can't Pay Your Mortgage? Here Are Some Solutions.

Snail Foreclosure

Look, I understand, things happened that you didn’t plan for and now you’re in trouble.  Money is tight and you can’t pay your mortgage.  This is a serious problem as you and your family need a place to live!  While foreclosure does take awhile and you can pretty much live in your home rent free during that period, the time after foreclosure is a nightmare.

Foreclosure destroys your credit rating making it near impossible to find a decent place to buy or rent.  More importantly, foreclosure is a scenario where the only party who gets anything worth talking about is the bank.

It is also not unheard of for employers to run a credit check before they hire you.  Being in debt is a disease and it affects every area of someone’s life.

Enough morbid stuff, most of us know how bad things can get so we’re going to try and avoid foreclosure at all costs.  Here are some solutions to help you pay your mortgage and keep your home.

  Tap Into Your Existing Equity

Chances are you didn’t just buy your home yesterday because if you did, the bank would have been crazy to give a financially stressed person a mortgage.

Since you didn’t *just* get your mortgage, it’s safe to assume that you’ve made a few mortgage payments already.  From the first payment you made, you started building equity in your home – initially to the tune of roughly 30% a payment.  You also put in a down payment in order to get the home.

Depending on when you bought the home, you may still have equity.  Jump over to Zillow.com and find your home.  There are tons of fancy graphs and estimations on the value of your home there so be sure to do your research.  The main question you want to ask is how does the size of your mortgage compare to the value of your home.

If the difference between your mortgage and the value of your home is greater than 10%, you’re in luck!  You can stop reading this article and go get a Home Equity Loan!

  Lower Your Payment and Refinance Your Mortgage

Have you heard how low rates are now?  Getting a mortgage for the first time is a great idea right now and it’s an equally good idea for someone to refinance to a lower interest rate.

Quicken Loans has some killer deals on refinancing and they’ll even let you refinance up to 97% of the homes value.  While normally I would say you should aim to have at least 10% equity at all times, when you’re in a pinch for money it’s best you take care of debt before it takes care of you.

Not only is refinancing a great idea but you can also refinance at a longer term.  Say you have 15 years left on your mortgage, you can always refinance back to a 30 year term and make it easier for you to handle your monthly payments.  Yes you will pay more in interest over the long term but again, it’s better to stay afloat and do what needs to be done then to drown.

If you both refinance to a lower rate and reset your term to 30 years, you could stand to significantly reduce your monthly payments.  The key being that if you reduce your monthly payments, you’re much more likely to be able to make them in full and on time.

  Refinance Your Other Debt

Sometimes when you can’t pay your mortgage it isn’t because your mortgage payment is too much in relation to your income but your being strangled by other debt.  The evil credit card company type of debt.  What can we do about this?  We can refinance this debt too!

First let me just answer why you would want to refinance your debt.  Say you’re in a really tight situation and you’re trying to over pay your minimum credit card payments but you’re not getting anywhere.  The reason is because of your interest rate.

Credit card interest rates are way high, especially for people with poor credit.  We’re talking 18% is the average for a normal person these days and the best you might ever get with perfect credit would be around 12% (still terrible).  When you refinance your debt you reduce the snowball effect of compound interest allowing you get off your credit limit wall and free up some capital to take care of business.

I need to set some ground rules for you though.  You may only take out this type of loan if you intend to improve your debt’s interest rate, not if you just want to pile on more debt.  Adding more debt is a terrible decision and will only get you into more trouble.

That said, if you are ready to refinance your debt, you have a few options.  First, you can go with a company like Trusted Payday which will pretty much give you an instant no credit check loan probably within the hour.  Remember though, this is just a tactical fix until you can get out from your mountain of debt.

Your next and probably best option because of their competitive rate market is Prosper.com.  Prosper.com works a little differently in that normal people like you or me buy the debt of other people as opposed to banks taking on the debt.  This makes the rates a lot more competitive for the borrower, the paperwork is a lot less and you have a higher chance of getting a loan.

The reason you have a higher chance of getting a loan with Prosper.com is that an individual investor may be willing to take on more risk than a bank.  As such, you could be in a pretty terrible situation but someone may still be interested in giving you a loan.

There is also a near 100% chance that this loan will have a more attractive interest rate as compared to a credit card.  There is nothing worse than putting your debt on a credit card!

  Call Upon your 401k for Help

Not everybody has one but if you do, you’ve got a great option here.  There are two ways to do this, the good way and the painful way.

The good way is where you can access up to 50% of your 401k funds to get yourself out of sticky situations like when you can’t pay your mortgage.  There is no tax penalty and you can pay the loan back over a term specified by you.

When you pay back your 401k, you’re technically paying back yourself and all the interest that you pay on this loan also goes back to you.  The only downside here is that you don’t get investment gains on the money during the time you are borrowing it.  Generally speaking that’s fine though as long as your gains are not significantly higher than the interest rate you owe to your 401k company.

In a way this is like a free bailout/forced savings tactic since you will wind up with more in your 401k at the end then when you started.  You will slowly pay back the 401k over time much how like you contributed to it in the first place, garnished out of your pay with tax benefits.  Pretty good deal!

The bad way (but still a feasible way) is to withdraw from your 401k.  The extent to which this is bad really determines on how much money you have in there, how long it’s been in there, how much growth there has been and your tax bracket.

Basically withdrawing from your 401k is a taxable event where a large portion goes to the government (because your 401k was previously untaxed).  You also lose some if not all of your gains when you go this route.  That sucks.  Don’t do this unless you really need to.  It is of course preferable to taking on more debt though.

Just note that if you are borrowing against your 401k, you should be very concerned with reducing your 401k fees.  With a loan and high fees, you’re basically just giving your savings away where with reduced fees you at least have a fighting chance.

  Sign up for eBay

Tough times call for drastic measures.  You know all that stuff you acquired which put you in this terrible mess in the first place?  It’s time to cash in on it to fix your financial situation.

You would be surprised how much you can get for used or even broken stuff on eBay.  Everybody wants a good deal (eBay is global) and not everybody needs a complete working product.  See, some people go to eBay just for parts.  You know all those iPhone repair services?  They get a lot of their parts on eBay from broken iPhones ;)

If you’re in debt and about to get kicked out of your house, honestly you don’t deserve that fancy couch or that leather jacket.  You have bigger problems than looking cool with your expensive sun glasses or designer hand bag.  Sell your stuff, pay down that debt (and your mortgage) and save yourself.

If you let your stuff rule you, you’ll sink.  You’ll be homeless, nobody will lend to you and you’ll be the laughing stock of your non materialistic friends.  Selling your expensive crap is a small price to pay to keep your life from falling apart.

  Reduce Your Credit Card Interest Rates

What doesn’t really get discussed is that it’s in everyones best interest that you pay down your debt.  The credit card companies or mortgage companies make money off your interest but if you declare bankruptcy or foreclose, they get stuck with the bill.  They know this so they are more than willing to negotiate with you to help you keep your finances under control.

If you have the time and patience you can contact each of your credit card providers and talk with them about reducing your rate so that you don’t have to declare bankruptcy (even if it is a bluff).  You will absolutely get some traction here but you’ve really got to be a skilled negotiator to get the maximum rate (and possibly balance) reduction.

Alternatively you can go with a company that specializes in reducing your remaining balance and your interest rate.  One of the most popular companies in this area is Freedom Debt Relief.  These guys will go to bat for you and seriously cut your debt to pieces.

Under the threat of losing everything, you would be surprised how much credit card companies are pay.  In fact, you would be crazy not to apply online now and see how far you get.  Credit card companies pay for these losses with the interest payments of suckers who just keep paying.  Don’t be one of those people, take advantage of the credit card companies like they’ve been doing to you!

  Easy Life Style Cutbacks

Last but certainly not least we need to discuss your spending.  You should be budgeting, looking for how to save money every day and focusing on stopping blatantly wasteful spending.

Beyond that you need to make some tough decisions.  Do you need a cell phone data plan?  Is HBO really helping you solve your problems or is it more expensive than it’s worth?  Can’t you just watch football at your friends house instead of paying for it too (he’ll understand, you’re in a tough spot)?

The point is, you’re not going to get to the finish line following your current strategy.  For whatever reason, you’re having money problems and the hard truth is that you need to start taking real meaningful steps towards fixing it.  Life style cut backs should really be on the top of the list only if I put it up there you probably wouldn’t have read this far.  Sorry, the truth hurts.

Sure things may be bad now but you can fix it.  Get out there, smash debt, keep your house and when you’re done please come back here and brag about it ;)

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Tax Extensions are Quick and Profitable

Our regulators never miss!

Every year I’m surprised and frankly a little blown away at my tax bill.  At times I feel like I work for the government with the amount I pay them each month.  Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there, when I do my taxes I often still owe the government something.  It’s not that I don’t have any savings, it’s just that I would rather spend my money elsewhere than pay the government.

For example, I just bought a fixer upper condo because mortgages are so cheap right now.  I’m trying to save for my wedding and remodel the condo, the last thing I need is to give the government my hard earned savings!  The good news is, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t file for a tax extension!

  What is a Tax Extension?

I actually think filing for a tax extension is an excellent wealth building strategy (every little bit of free cash helps, right?).  Just to make sure we’re on the same page, let me fill you in on what a tax extension is.

A tax extension is when you fill out a bunch of paperwork for the IRS asking to let you pay the remainder of the tax bill you owe last year at a later date.  This “later date” is 6 months from when taxes are due: April 15th.

Tax extensions are free if you’re willing to fill out the paperwork.  They are also 99% guaranteed to go though provided you’re able to fill out all the forms completely and correctly.  Since I like to keep things simple, I file for an extension online with FileLater because it’s quick and painless and I know that the forms are going to be filled out correctly.  If you’re feeling ambitious and want to do this yourself, you can start with filling out the the IRS’s 4868 form.

  Tax Extensions are Interest Free Loans

Imagine if someone came up to you and told you that you owe them $600.  Then they said “You can pay me now or 6 months, whatever is best with you.”  What would you say?  I know I would say “See you in 6 months!”

It doesn’t matter if you’re in debt or if you have plenty of savings, you still want this interest free loan (tax extension) from the government.  Why do I say an interest free loan?  Since technically you owe the government money, you’re in debt to them and even though you’ll wait a month to pay them back (with no payments in between), they wont charge you a cent of interest!

If you’re debt free, all you need to think about is how much interest you can make from throwing this cash into your no effort investment strategy.  If you make just the market average for the past 6 months, 5%, you’ll come up with a free $30.  That’s way better than any credit card rewards you would get… on wait, you don’t get any credit card rewards for paying taxes.

If you’re in debt, the decision is even easier.  Use your money to pay for your own debt and save for 6 months until you have  what’s required for your tax bill.  Chances are the interest on your debt is above 15% and if you have debt problems you’re likely to be a lot closer to 20%.  Even if your interest was only 15%, you would still save more than $90 on $600 interest.

  You Don’t Need an Excuse

Before I learned about tax extensions, I always thought there had to be some dire reason for you to extend your taxes like declaring bankruptcy or being without a home.  As it turns out, neither are necessary.  All the IRS cares about is that you fill in your extension form fully and completely without error, then they contact you back letting you know that you’re approved.

I incorporated a business once on my own just filling out the paper work and that was a huge mistake.  I would up missing a few key files and it really threw my business plans off.  From then on I usually go to someone like LegalZoom for my governmental paperwork needs.  As it turns out though, FileLater is easier and cheaper than LegalZoom so I just went with them and I’ve never had an issue.

  Tax Extensions are Easy and Profitable

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Getting a Mortgage is a Terrific Idea

Mortgage rates will only get worse!

It use to be that getting a mortgage for a house  was a scary concept.  Now, getting a mortgage is a terrific idea!  See, when our parents were trying to get a mortgage they had to pay rates of 7% at best and now we only have to pay 3.5% interest.  The amount of interest you pay between the two is an incredible difference!

Low interest rates are one of many reasons why you really need to act now.  Don’t have enough money so you figure it’s not worth reading on?  Don’t forget that FHA loans only require 3% down on the purchase price.  You can sure count on that not lasting forever!

  Mortgage Rates are a Joke right now!

Mortgage rates were over 12.5% when I was born!

Just take a look at that graph on the right and let it sink in.  Right now, mortgage rates are the lowest they’ve been pretty much ever.  The 40 year average is above 8%!

When our parents bought their homes it was very likely that they paid more than 8% interest.  That means that a $300,000 would actually cost them $792,466 or $492,466 in interest payments over 30 years!  If you were to buy that same house today it would only cost $484,968 or $184,968 in interest.  The difference is enough to buy a whole new house!  If you were to compare payments with you parents on that same house, they would have paid roughly $400 more a month than you.

Sure you could wait to buy a home but you you should really consider the first graph in the post, the one focused on the past two years.  I found it off of Zillow.com and based on past interest rates and volume of homes purchased in the past few months, the rate is going to go up from here.  Especially now that everyone can see we’ve already passed rock bottom.

  Home Prices are Scraping the Bottom

Again, when you look at Zillow.com, check out their real estate research reports.  After viewing a few of their extremely detailed reports I think you’ll come to the same conclusion as me.  Home prices across the country are not dropping any further and in many cases, they are already on the rise.

There is one thing that many of the wealthiest people in the country have in common.  They’ve either grown their wealth entirely though the real estate market or they have many large investments there.  If Donald Trump could do it, so can you ;)

While land in the middle of Wisconsin may be highly available and show little growth, much of the land near the country’s major economic centers show lots of growth over long stretches of time.  Imagine land in NYC being devalued.  Sure for three years during the recession it was dirt cheap, however if you have a 30 year mortgage and dutifully make your payments, in three more years it will be likely be worth more than the peak. (accordingly to Zillow’s research).

  You will Reduce your “Rent” by a Third

Yes, it is true, the first few years the majority of your mortgage payment goes toward interest.  However, you need to put things in perspective.  Lets say you’re renting now and you pay $1,500 a month for a nice place that can comfortably fit your entire family.  Beyond renting you also need to save money for your future or emergencies.  If you saved $400 a month that would already put you at $1,900 in monthly commitments.

Now lets imagine you bought a $300,000 place, put 10% down and got an interest rate of 3.5%.  Your monthly payment would be $1,510.  What people don’t calculate in is the principle they are gaining on their house every month.  For your first monthly payment of $1,510, 28% of that is going back to you, into the value of your home.  That means you effectively are spending $787.50 towards “rent” and $424.92 is going towards your savings which you are storing in the value of your home.

Since you’re paying yourself every month AND you get to deduct your mortgage interest from your taxes, getting a mortgage is one of the smartest wealth building decisions you can make.

  Think about Getting a Mortgage

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The Lost Art of Negotiation

I’ll never be out debated by a chair!

In the US we’re all too spoiled with clearly defined prices.  Prices are set and advertised forcing all the companies selling an identical or similar product to compete on price forcing prices way down - Walmart style.  Companies complete and we the consumers win, right?  Usually but not always and because we’re so use to having companies compete for our dollar we sometimes forget to notice when we’re getting a raw deal.  That’s why we’re going to dust off the lost art of negotiation and make sure that you’re prepared to grab the savings you deserve.

I think it’s also important to note that you’re not always negotiating to spend less.  Sometimes you’re negotiating for more, like for a raise, a promotion or even to secure a job in an interview.  We’re going to go over when it’s appropriate to negotiate and how you should approach it.

  How to Apply The Lost Art of Negotiation

The first thing you need to remember is that negotiation is not about you ripping off the person sitting across the table from you.  Of course, you can try but chances are you’ll just piss him or her off getting you nowhere and maybe even torpedoing the negotiations before they even begin.  Your ultimate goal should be to reach a mutual agreement with the other person where you both leave the negotiating table feeling like you won. While there may be situations where you have “the upper hand” so to speak, you should rarely, if ever, let that be known to the other side.  Leverage can work but it wont always get you the best deal possible and it’s likely that you will not be able to make future deals with this person.

Before you utter your first sentence you need to assess the situation and come up with your strategy.  If negotiations don’t go as planned are you willing to walk away from the purchase or might you be able to find a better job?  What is motivation of the person you are negotiating with?  Can they easily find another buyer?  Do they need your money now?  Can they find a replacement for you easily without much fallout?

  Negotiating that Large Purchase

Good negotiation is just a compromise in your favor.

Large purchases are a bit different from buying a coffee.  Often times prices are subject to speculation like in the housing market or seller commission at play like when you purchase a car.  In cases like this the price is really in the eye of the beholder and while you obviously see the price as low as possible, it’s more than likely that your negotiating counter party doesn’t necessarily agree.

Negotiating isn’t a form of strong arming since you can’t really bully your way into a better deal (unless you’re in the Mob or something).  The Lost Art of Negotiation says that you need to come to a consensus with your negotiation partner (the seller) or, in other words, a mutually beneficial deal.  Someone wont just sell you a house they lived in for 15 years because you’re clever, they need to feel like they are winning as much as you are.

In order to “win”, you need to really understand the other persons motivation.  In the case of a house, if they are purely driven by the number than you need to help them understand (in a non confrontational way) why their house isn’t valued as high as they think it is.  Luckily, it is rarely the case that they are solely motivated by the number (contrary to what you might think).  Maybe they are an older couple and just the fact that you are a very nice young couple with a beautiful daughter and son, they may be subconsciously willing to give a better deal.  It’s scenarios like this that you need to look for and take advantage of.  A skilled negotiator will focus on refining his empathy muscle because that’s what will win him deals, not being clever.

  Negotiating Your Raise

It’s in your employers best interest to pay you the lowest amount possible so that they can extract the maximum value from your time.  You on the other hand are trying to maximize the value of each hour you spend working and because there is no clear way to determine the value of your work, salary is a prime target for negotiation.

The first thing you must remember is to leave greed outside the negotiating room.  In fact, if greed is the sole reason you have for a salary boost, you’re better off not negotiating and waiting.  Like when you’re negotiating a house, you have one main opportunity to succeed and without the proper plan you are just setting yourself up to fail.  How much are your peers (be honest) making at other companies?  How much are your peers making at your company?  What degree of risk does the company (or division) face if you were to walk out the door?  How easy would it be for the company to find your replacement?  These are all questions you must answer before you even begin salary discussions.  Be honest but don’t under estimate yourself.  When you truely understand your weaknesses, confidence goes a long way!

When you’re prepared to negotiate you must have a salary range in mind AND you must be willing to find another job if necessary.  See, if they opt to not give you a raise, then there is a huge divide between your beliefs and theirs and if you stay, you are a pushover.  Maybe before you begin negotiations start tentatively looking for a job.  If someone is willing to pay you more money only knowing you for a few hours then you absolutely know that you’re under valued and your management probably does too.

Now that you have your negotiating ammo ready, applying the art of negotiation is easy so don’t be nervous!  Go speak to your boss, your bosses boss or whoever is truly capable of getting you a raise.  Just tell them in the kindest way possible that you’re salary is way to low for the work you do, the conversation might only be 5-10 minutes long.  You’re not actually going to negotiate, you’re just planting the seed.  Make sure you start this process well ahead of raise season and occasionally though out the year, keep reminding your management very politely that you need a raise.

Viola!  Come raise season, if you were honest with yourself and the questions we posed above then you should be sitting on a nice bump.  If not, you’re working for a terrible company that will never pay you what you’re worth and at least you now know that you need to work elsewhere.  See, being politely assertive can go a long way!

  Don’t Waste Your Money

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Plug Your Spending Leaks

Money is a terrible thing to waste

Money is a terrible thing to waste and chances are you waste money yourself and may not realize, I was too until recently.  Maybe you’re paying for HBO and never watching it or you signed up for the Dollar Shave Club and you’re not using your blades.  Whatever it is, you gotta find these leaks and stop them!  Saving money is really important and the easiest savings you’re going to find are when you stop paying for things you don’t actually want or need.  When you plug your spending leaks it could feel like you just got a raise!

Plugging leaks is just a way of optimizing your spending and often times it still includes buying the things you you want/need but paying a lower price for them.  There are a ton of potential leaks that you can have so we can’t go over each one.  What we will do is go over some major types of leaks as well as a process on how to detect leaks on your own and how to plug them.

  Detecting your Leaks

Ok, I’m going to assume you have a budget, however if you don’t you can follow my handy budget guide and you should have things rolling in no time!  Basically I’m going to ask you to look at the past month or so of your spending and go down the list from most expensive to least expensive and look at where your money went.  Anything reoccurring month to month that is more than $50 should be seriously questioned as well as any spending you can’t explain.

In terms of reoccurring payments, things like your cable TV bill can easily be reduced.  First of all, I have no idea why you even have a TV bill to start with.  Want to watch live TV as much as you want, any channel with 20 hours of DVR space?  Try Aereo for $8/month.  You also have the ability to watch unlimited movies or TV shows on Netflix or Hulu for $15/month each.  Hell, get all three of them, you’re still probably beating your Cable TV bill by $70/month on average!  The point is, there are plenty of alternatives to the old school expensive take-all-your-money-and-still-show-you-ads services.  Google is your friend, use it to stop wasting your cash, chances are there is a better alternative out there and you just haven’t found it yet.

Next, we have your fear of commitment penalties.  This is the money that you throw away every month on services that you know you’re going to keep but don’t want to commit to an X month or year contract.  A perfect example is web hosting.  If you take my favorite hosting provider, Media Temple, and look at their Grid Hosting service (which can scale incredibly well) it costs $20/month, however if you buy it for a year it costs $200.  That’s a 17% savings for doing nothing.  Sure $200 may be a lot to put up front, however you need to make strategic decisions that will save you money in the long term.  If you’re only thinking about today then you’re F You Money is at risk!

  Ways to Plug your Spending Leaks

Nah, he’s just peeling away his wasteful spending ;)

When looking for ways to plug your spending leaks you need to look no further than the four C’s: Cancel, Challenge, Cut or Commit.

Like in my example above, Cable TV is a solid Cancel (for Aereo at least) or at least Cut.  However, most of your Cancels will be services that you no longer use but don’t realize you’re still paying for.  This is where your budgeting skills come into play because you’ll never find these charges unless you review what you’ve spent your money on (budgeting!!!).  Don’t under estimate this category, I’m a seasoned money saving veteran and I’ve found quite a lot of savings here time after time.  Sometimes you just forget about things you signed up for and that’s OK… as long as you realize and fix your mistake!

Challenging charges is a personal favorite of mine.  I remember when World of Warcraft came out you could get into the beta if you just signed up for a $15/month Game Stop account online.  $15 was a great price to get into the beta of a game I was going to keep playing so I did it!  Then, the following month, I forgot to cancel it and I was charged again.  Now, that’s not a lot of money but I was in college and to me that was a loss of more than 6 beers, something I didn’t take lightly.  Long story short I called my credit card company, challenged the charge saying that I canceled the service (which I did before I called) and Game Stop didn’t fight it.  $15 saved!  From my experience, most companies which pull that crap move of making money off your terrible memory never contest the charge because there are plenty of people who don’t fight and that’s good enough for them.

Cut is something you can look at your cell phone bill, cable bill or even Netflix bill for.  Do you really need 5,000 text messages a month?  I know you’re an adult but do you really NEED the Playboy channel with the internet?  Sure Netflix is awesome but comon, two DVD’s at a time?  Most everything can stream!  You get the point, if you’re not using it cut the fat and save the cash.  The company will never remind you that you’re not using everything you pay for so it’s up to you to find those easy savings.

Finally, Commit, the hardest one, especially for us guys ;)  Like I hinted to up top, if you know you want something/need something longer than one month, pay for it.  When you pay upfront you get a discount for your commitment and since you were going to use the service anyways the savings are free.  It’s easy, all you have to say is “I Do”…. or something like that.

  Do Something With Those Savings!

Hopefully this whole exercise wasn’t too difficult for you.  I bet that if you took a good hour and did some solid investigation you could find at least $100 in savings.  Didn’t find anything or don’t think it’s possible?  Please leave a comment or contact me, we will get you those ever elusive savings.

New Post has been published on http://www.listenmoneymatters.com/getting-started/build-credit-without-a-credit-card/

Build Credit Without A Credit Card

These guys aren’t your only ticket to good credit.

These days it’s like a right of passage when you finally ask the question, “How do I build credit without a credit card?”  You might get a response like “Wait, you didn’t get solicited for a credit card in college?!?” or “You’ll have to pay a yearly fee to a credit card company for the honor of letting you build credit.”  Chances are though that you didn’t get solicited for a credit card in college and if you’re like me, paying for a credit card is against your financial religion.

That brings us to the chicken and egg scenario – I don’t have credit because I don’t have a credit card and I can’t get a credit card because I don’t have credit.  If you’re young and have had no chance to build credit or are not from the US, building credit is a real problem.  Finally, there is a solution!

  Build Credit Though Rent Payments

If you don’t have credit, I would be willing to bet that the single largest expense you have right now is rent.  You’ve got to pay it every month to keep your landlord happy and not evict you or make your life miserable.  It’s been pretty unfair that the single largest expense you make every month doesn’t get counted.  If it was counted you would be able to build a killer credit history in about two years!

Enter RentReporting.com.  They’ve just started a service where they will make sure that you get credit for paying your rent on time.  They communicate directly with the credit processing companies making it mutually beneficial for renters and landlords to participate.  Obviously renters would love to have their rent checks count towards their credit and now knowing that they do (with this service) they will be more mindful about making their payments on time and for the complete monthly balance.  Landlords love this because evicting a renter is very difficult and the last thing they want to do is have to be actively involved in a renter relationship trying to coax them to pay.

RentReporting.com will even go a step further and allow you to count two years of previous rent history towards your credit.  This is huge for people who want/need credit cards in the short term or people who are looking to buy a house soon.  Two years of rent is a significant amount of money and a solid record of paying it on time in your credit report can dramatically raise your credit rating.

  Future You Will Be Thankful

In order to have RentReporting.com coordinate credit for your rental payments it will cost you $9.95 a month (for as long as you want their service).  You may have doubts because it’s not free but you have to look at the bigger picture.  Say you were about to purchase a home for $250,000.  These days a great credit rating for a 30 year mortgage will net you roughly 3.375% where as an average credit rating will net you about 3.550%.  Over 30 years the difference  in your  mortgage will cost you $12,357, however for two years of credit history that helped you save over $12,000 it will only cost you $238.80.

Even better, RentReporting.com will log your previous two years of rental history for $34.95 basically allowing you to do one of two things.  Either save over 85% and only log your past two years (which would help you immensely)  OR go for something like 4 years of credit history making your rating extremely solid for a savings of 61% (if you go monthly for two years and get your prior two years logged).

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Get Organized Already

Click the image to see the whole infographic by MaryEllen Tribby

There is this huge misconception that “being successful” is somehow difficult or not within your reach.  That’s crap.  Being successful doesn’t mean you need to be a rocket scientist, it just means you need to work on a few basic skills that allow you to achieve what you set your mind to.  There are only a handful of these skills, none of which are mind blowing or difficult to master but I think most people lose sight of them in their day to day life.  Today we’re going to talk about organization.  Being organized is paramount to being successul because achievement is the culmination of many little steps that amount to a single big accomplishment.  Quit dragging your feet and get organized already!

Note:  That really colorful info graphic is by MaryEllen Tribby.  If you would like to see the full version, just click on the image.

  Write Down Your Ideas and To Do’s

The Hipster PDA, finally something to be thankful for.

What do you do with your thoughts on the way to work or crazy ideas in the shower?  Don’t tell me you squander them because that would be wasting valuable brain juice.  The way I see it is you can only demand so much of your brain per day; breach that limit and it basically shuts down.

Since your brain juice is limited, I think it’s a terrible thing to waste and that’s why you need to have some sort of platform to “brain dump” to. You may be more of a physical person in which case a Mole Skin Notebook would be perfect for you.  Maybe you’re from Brooklyn and in that case the Hipster PDA is definitely for you.  Maybe you’re like my buddy James Altucher and you prefer Waiter’s Pads.

Personally, I’m a digital guy, between my iPhone, Mac and iPad I’m always connected and not far from an Apple Device.  Since I like being digital I use Evernote to record everything.  It’s probably the only app I would recommend because organization to me is difficult and I hate to waste my limited brain juice repeatedly thinking about the same thing over and over so I don’t forget.  I would rather think of it once, write it down and then when I have time to do something about it I just review my notes and see what was on my mind.

No matter what you choose to be your brain recording tool of choice, it’s absolutely necessary to keep track of your good ideas.  Not only is it terrible to waste good ideas but you’ll never achieve your full potential if you don’t let some of your best ideas see the light of day.

  Break up Big Goals into Tiny Pieces

Nothing worthy of the word “achievement” comes easy – and that’s a good thing.  An achievement is something you work towards and only once you’ve sweat and achieved success will people recognize your efforts and if you’re lucky, you will get rewarded.  You will fail many more times than you succeed but that’s a post for another time ;)

A great example of this is in the book The Happiness Project.  In the book Gretchen (the author) breaks down, step by step, what she does to ultimately achieve happiness.  Personally, I think happiness is the ultimate goal of life but you can use her approach to achieve any goal.  The point is she breaks her goal into multiple steps and then breaks it down even further until she has a bunch of tiny easy to accomplish tasks. Everything you do already follows the same approach as Gretchen, you just don’t realize it.

If you want to achieve financial freedom, first you have to do your research (reading blogs), then you have to make note of the ideas you like, then you need to action on them one by one, track your progress and adjust according to your results.  It’s a lot of work and it will not be completed overnight, however in 2-3 years you may find yourself in a great financial situation and it wont be because of some quick hack but a steady dedication to your cause achieving tiny piece by tiny piece.

  There are Great Calendar Apps, Use Them!

Get organized with Fantastical!

We’re busy people, we have to go to work five days a week, attend the birthday parties of our important people (and go shopping for their gifts), we have to file our taxes on time, pay our bills, it’s a lot of stuff.  No normal person can keep all of that information in their head and even if they could, they really shouldn’t.

Trying to remember our time commitments is another great example of how we waste of valuable brain juice.  Say you’re meeting your friend at a restaurant tonight.  You had to remember when you set the date a week ago, remind yourself periodically throughout the week so you didn’t forget and then again today so you actually showed up.  Imagine if you only had to think of your plans once when you enter it into your phone or organizer and then never again.  Once you unclog your brain from all those useless dates you suddenly have so much more capacity to think and achieve.

Again, if you’re from Brooklyn you’re going to want something like the Planner Hack which is very similar to the Hipster PDA with one of the major differences being an asparagus rubberband.

If you’re like me, you’re going to want something digital that reminds you of your events automatically.  Google Calendar is nice and Fantastical is even nicer.  I’m sure you can find something you like just find something.  Stop storing all that crap in your head already!

  Track Your Progress and Re-Adjust your Path

Ok, so hopefully I’ve convinced you to stop letting your great ideas escape you, to break down your crazy ideas into small manageable chunks and then use some sort of planner (digital or otherwise) to help you track where you have to be, when things are do, etc.  Now we need to track our progress so we can accomplish something big with all those little steps we are taking.

I think the ultimate goal should be a system where you are at home, at work, on a bus, whatever and decide that you have some free time and would like to get something done.  Maybe it’s researching a website, replying to emails or writing a blog post.  Whatever it is, you should have a ton of small meaningful tasks ready and waiting for you to action.  Personally I like the GTD approach where my tasks have various contexts like “Home” so when I’m at home I just look at things that are geared towards completing there.  In the end, it’s up to you how you would like to organize your tasks and break them down and as long as it works for you, that’s all that matters.

I would recommend Omni Focus as it’s been particularly helpful in getting me organized.  Between the project level organization, ability to filter by context, and robust due date calendar integration I have most of what I need in one application.  I just supplement with Evernote for ideas which eventually get broken down into tasks and put into Omni Focus.  For events, it’s half between Fantastical and Omni Focus depending on if it’s a project based event or a personal one.

  Don’t Forget to Brag

Don’t forget to brag

Look, you’re doing a lot of work.  Hopefully you’re humble about most of it and slowly work on your small tasks until you create something big.  Then you can brag but only a little bit.  While bragging by most can be seen as annoying, I think if we approach it differently we can actually achieve something.

For one, you need to talk about all the work you’ve done since you’ve locked yourself into that cave of an office.  It’s going to make you feel better and between family and friends you should get some positive feedback (or on point criticism) that will help fuel your next round of frantic work accomplishing.  Listen to all of your feedback good and bad, you don’t have to agree with it but you do have to listen.  The one thing you should be most fearful of when bragging is hubris.  That’s when you no longer listen and slowly undo everything you’ve worked so hard for.

One of the main reason to brag beyond feedback is to network.  You talk about work you’ve done, they talk about work they’ve done and who knows maybe you guys should be working on the same project.  Or, maybe you can help each other with things you have learned while working on your project.  Networking is super important and the main ways of drawing people in is to talk about the interesting things you’re working on or offer help/advisement on the other persons project.

I do think it’s important to note the loose definition of the word brag and the negative emotions that come with it.  There is a right way and a wrong way to do it.  It’s all in the delivery and if you don’t know how to do it, well, practice makes perfect ;)

  And Finally… Get Organized Already!

I just wanted to mention that any progress you make should be measured in baby steps, not mountain leaps.  To accomplish anything meaningful it takes time.. a lot of time.  However, before you can accomplish anything, you must get organized!

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How I Save a Ton on Travel Expenses

You work hard and you want to play hard too.  I’m right there with you and personally I think taking an awesome vacation is the best reward for working hard all year-long.  Traveling has always been very important to me and I’ve been very lucky to have been able to take many vacations and live abroad with my family.  Throughout the years my family and I have developed a few tricks which we’ve used to save a ton on travel expenses.

I find it especially easy to overpay on travel so I’d like to share a few of our tricks to help you save.  Since you’ve already committed to spending a lot of money on your trip, companies don’t really have to work that hard to get you to spend more than you need to.

  Book a Professionally Planned Trip

Peru on the cheap with Groupon Getaways!

I’ve got to admit, I’ve planned very few of the trips that I’ve taken.  Either my parents when I was younger or now my fiancé do most of the planning.  It’s a ton of work and it can be really stressful.  You want to have the best vacation ever but there is just so much research required and life doesn’t just slow down so you can plan a vacation.

Last year my fiancé and I were browsing around looking for ideas of where to go and we stumbled upon Groupon Getaways.  One trip that really stuck out was their trip to Australia!

The trip included round trip airfare from LAX, airfare between Brisbane, Carnes and Sydney, 10 nights in hotels across the various cities we stayed in and a ton of activities in all of the cities (like snorkeling the Great Barrier Reefs or hiking though the Daintree Rainforest).

All of the above was $2500 a head or roughly $250 a day! Assembling this kind of deal yourself would be impossible without connections in the industry.  Round trip airfare between LAX and Sydney is a minimum of $1500 a person.  That would mean all of the hotels, activities and inter-country flights would have to break down to less than $100 a day.  That’s just not going to happen.

While I definitely recommend Groupon Getaways because I’ve taken a trip of a lifetime though them and it was a great experience, LivingSocial Escapes has very similar offerings and I’ve heard great things from my friends.  All things considered, these sites come up with deals that are very tough to beat!

  Discover Cool Excursions and Save

The first big vacation my fiancé and I went on was Spain.  We pieced the entire trip together ourselves and wound up flying into Madrid, staying for 4 days, flying to Barcelona, saying for another 4 days and then flying home.  Europe was a bit easier for us to book and organize everything ourselves because it was pretty modern and there were tons of reviews for various hotels and whatnot on the internet.  That said, we only loosely planned our daily activities and relied heavily on our Lonely Planet guide (best travel guides EVER!).

While our Lonely Planet guide was great for covering the need-to-dos and must-eats, we found ourselves at a loss for what to fill most of our days with.  We wanted to experience the culture, explore on our own and mostly stay away from tour guides.  After a lot of searching the web in our hotel room, we came across Viator.

Viator is basically a local hub for fun things to do.  You don’t even have to be on vacation for it to be useful.  More importantly, they pride themselves on being cheaper than everyone else and if you check back often, you’re likely to catch a deal in action!

We booked vespas and drove around Barcelona, experienced a real non-touristy salsa club and went to a killer local jazz club.  We got our ideas from checking the Viator website (and app), booked everything though Viator and then just made sure we were there when the events were about to start.

Overall it was an excellent experience.  We got all of our activities dirt cheap and we only bought tickets for them maybe 8 – 12 hours in advance!

  Get a Slick Pad for less than a Hotel

Don’t overpay for a hotel, get a swanky apartment for cheap!

The years of the hotel monopoly are over.  Now normal people can compete directly with hotels and as with all forms of competition, we win. AirBNB is a cool new startup from Silicon Valley and they’ve refined the lost art of apartment rentals.

It use to be that you would need to research for hours just to find a hotel.  The hotel would most definitely be over priced but you would have no easy alternatives and being that you’re in a foreign city you don’t want to risk your vacation by doing business with some random person.

AirBNB lets you rent your apartment while you’re on vacation (to help pay for your vacation) and rent someone else’s for a very reasonable price.  When I was in London with my family we stayed at an apartment in the center of the city.  We had a full kitchen with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and it came out to be less than the price of the Marriott.

I’m still experimenting with AirBNB and I may try to rent out my Condo for my next trip.  I will definitely be renting an apartment to stay at though because we wound up saving cash and having a better experience as compared to the cookie cutter hotels we were use to.

  Do More on your Vacation, Save a Ton on Travel!

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Invest like an Expert Without Being One

Maybe things should be easy?

I was budgeting like everyone told me to and packing my money away into a savings account.  My savings grew really fast. Once I had cracked the code of being financially responsible it was easy.  I went to work every day and after two years of working and saving smartly I had a nice war chest built up.  It wasn’t like I was rich or anything but it was a lot of money for me at the time.  I wanted to make my money earn more money so my savings could multiply.  I wanted to learn how to invest like an expert.

I read everything I could get my hands on about investing.  I bought the book Warren Buffet used to base his life investment strategy off of (The Intelligent Investor) and it became my mantra.  The problem was I didn’t have enough time to be competitive.  You need to do a ton of research, keep your finger on the pulse of the macro economy and have the time to crunch a ton of numbers until you find a security you like.  I had a full time job, a social life and a budding romantic life.  There had to be a better way.

After a lot of research, I’ve landed on two tools specifically that I like for equities.  Betterment (which I’ve already mentioned here and here) and eToro.  You may be looking for a more hands on approach (which I’m still working on), however you may find them helpful in your quest to have your savings earn money for you.  Let me explain how I’ve used these tools to grow my war chest.

  Betterment – The Money Market Account of the Future

Move a slider, change your risk and auto diversify your holdings. Muahaha!

The beauty of your savings account is that you earn more interest with it than you do with your checking account and you still have instant access to your money when you need it.  This is the core idea behind Betterment and that’s why I like it so much.  These days the best you’re going to get with a savings account is sub 1% interest which I find pathetic and insulting.  I don’t know about you but my money is worth more; I sweat for it daily.

Enter Betterment, a glorified savings account where magic happens behind the scenes to get you a respectable return on your investment (otherwise known as your savings).  You have these wiz investors that take your money and put it into things that they think will make them good returns.  Your risk levels are their guidelines.  Interestingly, this is EXACTLY what banks do with your money only they are so bold as to take 99.9% of the profit and give you next to nothing.  It’s time to take back your gains and Betterment is the best attempt I’ve seen to do just that (and I’ve tried a LOT).

You have a risk slider (picture on the right) which you basically adjust according to how risky you feel.  You can move this slider as much as you want every day and the change is immediate.  I don’t think you need to go that crazy, but you definitely can if you want.

Sure you can make more money investing it yourself in penny stocks but really, how reckless can you be with your hard earned cash?  With Betterment, your money is SIPC insured so should some wacky stuff happen, your money is guaranteed by the federal government.  Haven’t heard of SPIC? It’s basically FDIC insurance only it’s twice as good because you are covered up to $500,000 instead of $250,000.

  eToro – Track and Mirror the Investments of Professionals

Your portfolio can be diversified across multiple professional investors

Unlike Betterment, with eToro you have to get your hands dirty.  Just not too dirty ;)

Betterment and eToro live in the land of investing account hybrids where eToro is the one that is closer to an actual investment account.  With eToro you can’t just withdraw your money, you will need to choose which equities you would like to sell when you need to withdraw cash.

The idea behind eToro is that you aren’t the all knowing all seeing Oracle of Omaha.  Since you know this you also know that there are people out there who will invest better than you.  That’s fine because with eToro you get visibility into what trades other people are making.  It’s kinda like social network meets brokerage account.

You get to search people, sort them and drill down into every investment decision they’ve made since they have participated in eToro.  If you like what you see, you can mirror their actions.  This way, when they invest in Apple at a low market point and sell at a high, you see the same gains they do.  You will also see the same losses they do so you’ve got to be careful.  There are a lot of very successful people on the site and you can tell by the amount of money they are investing that they are pretty serious about doing well so I don’t think you need to worry about people “throwing” their investments.

That said, diversity is the name of the game.  With that in mind, eToro lets you mirror as many people as you would like.  You can choose to follow me with 20% of your holdings, your investment banker brother-in-law with 15% of your earnings and so on so that no one person can be responsible for what happens to your hard earned savings.

Is this option riskier than Betterment? Yes. Is it fool proof? No. You need to be vigilant and keep an eye on your money.  The benefit here is you get to experience potentially higher returns than Betterment with knowledge that the people who you are mirroring your investments on are much more experienced than you, likely better informed and usually risking more money than you are.  It’s also important to note that eToro requires you deposit a minimum of $500 into your account so you can’t play with next to nothing like you can with Betterment.

  Invest like an Expert Without Being One

Yea, using statistics Betterment will show you what you will earn.

The important takeaway here is that just because you haven’t dedicated your life to following the stock market, you can still earn more than “nothing percent” on your hard earned savings.  Honestly, you would be crazy not to.

The picture on the right is an example of what you would be turning down if you chose to stay with your no-growth savings account.  A $10,000 deposit now is extremely likely to be worth $200,000 in 30 years.  It’s even more likely that it will be worth more than that as opposed to less.