Go check out the article and then peruse the comments.  As of this writing there were 913 comments on his article.

And when you’re done with that, go check out what they are saying on Reddit (with a pretty young demographic)

Young People Don’t Have it Very Easy These Days is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

I have to admit I’ve found it challenging to blog about our personal finances over the last year.  It doesn’t mean I’ve lost my passion about it, but it just means that things are moving along at a very boring pace.  We set most of our automatic investments up years ago and have let them continue to build.  Yes, we’ve made a few tweaks along the way, (like starting a 529 plan for our daughter’s college expenses), but as a whole, things have been pretty steady.

I have to admit I miss posting our net worth updates and sharing our progress along the way.  It’s funny.  When you’re young and just starting out, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to share your financials but as your assets grow and more people that you know discover your blog, it’s inevitable that you start to pull back.  I can’t remember the exact time we pulled our financial information close to the vest, but I believe it was after we crossed the $250K net worth threshold.  That was quite awhile ago and we’ve achieved some pretty impressive milestones since that time.  No, I’m not going to be specific, but we are very much on track to meet all of our financial goals for retirement.

Without question, the hardest part about personal finance for us now that we’re in our 40’s is staying excited about it.  With everything on bi-weekly autopilot, there is very little effort needed.  This brings me to the point of this post.  I think the number one tip for people in their forties that have previously set their financial goals is to “stay the course”.  Don’t get distracted.  Don’t let boredom derail all the work you’ve put in already.  This is the time to continue saving and investing.  You’re in some of your prime earning years and you need to get as much of that income as possible invested for your future.

Of course, there are plenty of people that have hit their forties and realized, “Oh crap, I guess I better get started saving for our retirement!”  While you’ve shot yourself in the foot a little bit because you’ve lost some critical years of compound interest, you haven’t put yourself on life support yet.  For you, the number one thing you can do is get started saving NOW!  You need to invest every single dollar you can.  It’s not too late but you are going to have to maximize your investing with every spare dollar.  You’ve lost some key saving years already so you need to make up for that lost time with increased contributions to your retirement plan.  Your goal should be to invest as close to the maximum that the IRS will let you annually (currently $17,000).  If that’s not possible, just put as much as your income will allow.  Most importantly, set up automatic contributions to a retirement plan and learn to live without the money.  Don’t trust yourself to put the money away each month.  You’ll be most effective if you set things up to invest on an automatic plan.

Number One Tip for Personal Finance in Your Forties is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/04/30/hunting-for-health-insurance/

Health Insurance in the US Needs HELP! is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

Luckily we didn’t spend all the money ourselves.  As part of my agreement to buy a hamster, my 8 year old daughter had to save enough money to buy the hamster and pay for part of the equipment we had to buy.  I decided that it was a good opportunity to teach our daughter about saving to buy something, as opposed to the popular American tradition of borrowing someone else’s money to buy something when the urge arose.  I’m very proud of her for sticking to her goal and diligently saving for her hamster.  I will admit there was a small part of me that hoped she’d fail simply because I REALLY didn’t want to have a hamster in the house.

So far things are going pretty well, with the exception of the “Great Hamster Escape” that we had a few nights ago.  It was a stressful few hours but we were very lucky that we finally found “Cookie” at about 9:30pm that night.  I definitely slept a lot better knowing that the damn thing was safely in his cage.

I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that, while I really didn’t want to spend money on a rodent, it’s going to be a heck of a lot cheaper than owning a cat or dog.

Looks Like I’ll Be Tracking the Cost of Owning a Hamster is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

We knew that the cost of a shuttle to and from Disneyland each day would cost us about $10 each day.  Since we purchased a 3 day pass, that was $30 total.  We also knew that we wanted to drive to San Diego one day.  Since there really wasn’t a viable transportation option to get from Anaheim to San Diego, that pretty much sealed the deal on getting a rental.  We took a little comfort in the thought that we were only spending about $190 on the car when considering the offset of the Disneyland shuttle, but we knew were definitely paying a premium to have a car.

When we arrived at the rental counter in the airport, I wasn’t surprised to see that the rental agent had a few questions for me.  I will say that I was a little surprised at the sheer number of questions he had though.  Included in the questions were the following: Did we want to rent a GPS device?  Nope.  We brought a cheap GPS device from home (and it worked out PERFECT).  Did we want the deluxe insurance that would basically let us take the car off roading, jump it off a cliff, spray paint it purple, participate in massive riots where the car ended up getting flipped upside down and set on fire, and then return the car with no questions asked, and no liability?  No thank you.  Do you want the reduced insurance that would still protect you from loss of use in the event of an accident, even if your insurance covers the damage?  No thank you.  And the final question (not insurance related) was whether we’d like to prepay for a tank of gas at their $4.23 price for fuel?  No thank you.  (I think the “gotcha” on this one was that they charge you for a full tank ahead of time so that when you come back with a half tank of gas, you still paid for a full tank).

In the end, I actually started feeling a little guilty (notice I said “a little”) that I said “No” so many times.  I could picture this rental agents monthly statistics that show him not getting the percentage of “up sells” the company expects, but I certainly wasn’t going to pay for anything that was unnecessary.  I knew ahead of time that my personal automobile insurance covered my use of a rental car, and I also knew that my American Express card offered another level of protection.  Since I don’t normally buy three levels of insurance, I knew this wasn’t the time to start.  When you rent a car, I’d highly recommend checking with both your insurance company and your credit card company to find out how they can protect you in the event of an accident, or damage to your rental car.

Should You Buy the Rental Car Insurance? is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

I mentioned that the free days were our favorite part of the trip.  We’ve decided if we go back to Southern California in the future, we’ll scale back on the theme parks a bit and spend more time at the beach.  Here’s a breakdown on the vacation costs:

Airfare, hotel, rental car for three people: $1800

Theme park admission (Disneyland, Legoland): $800

Food: $200

Shopping (The girls bought shoes): $100

Parking: $110 (hotel charged nightly and there were parking fees at the beach)

I’m still shaking my head at how much money we spent on the theme park admissions but I guess that’s just what you do when you have an 8 year old.  It’s not something we do every year and our daughter had a great time so we don’t regret spending the money, but it still felt pretty darned expensive.

We actually spent a lot less money on food and drinks than I thought we would.  We stayed at an Embassy Suites hotel so we had free breakfast every morning, (made to order Omelets, hash browns, bacon, sausage, donuts, toast, fruit), and we also had free cocktails every evening from 5:30-7:30.  We saved a TON of money with these two things and I’m guessing we averaged our room cost down to about $20 a night after all the free food and drinks.  (I’m only exaggerating a tiny bit).

Anyway, it’s good to be home and we’re already thinking about where to go next year.  Did you do anything for Spring Break?

Vacation is So Underrated! is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

In the build up to last Friday’s drawing, every news team in the US was frantically running around from mini mart to mini mart looking for those people that were buying tickets so that they could ask them questions about what they’d do if they won.  I didn’t hear one news team ever question the purchaser as to whether they were wasting their money with the odds so stacked against them.  I suppose they didn’t want to be a “Debbie Downer” when everyone was having so much fun thinking about what they’d do with all that money.

I bought $5 worth of tickets (for only about the third or fourth time in my life) just for fun.  I had to explain to my daughter that we really weren’t going to win.  Unfortunately, at 8 years old, she thought if we’d bought a ticket, that must mean we were sure to win.  If only it worked that way.  I checked the numbers soon after the drawing was held only to find that I didn’t match ONE number on any of the 5 chances I had.  Geesh.  It’s actually kind of funny.  As I was checking my ticket and realizing I hadn’t matched any numbers, I immediately started thinking about some of the people I’d seen on the news.  Many of the people buying tickets were clearly not wealthy, and in fact, actually looked quite poor.  The reality was that they probably couldn’t have afforded to throw even $5 towards the lottery.  I especially thought about the scruffy, dirty man that the news had stopped and interviewed as he came out of a mini mart with a stack of tickets.  He exclaimed, “My buddy and I just bought $700 worth of tickets!!!”.  That poor bastard threw $700 away for a 1 in 175M+ chance at winning.  Based on his appearance and the way he was talking, it seemed likely that this man had just thrown his rent money away for the month.  I’m betting he hasn’t slept much more than the people that did win the jackpot.

Learning a Lesson From the Mega Millions Jackpot is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

I’ve been contributing to a Roth IRA for a number of years and am happy to have another way to diversify my investments from a tax perspective.  So, what is a Roth IRA?  It’s a great tool to help you save for your future without a future tax liability.  You can contribute up to $5000 per year of your earned income (notice I said you have to have earned income?) to an IRA sheltered account.  You use “after tax” money and all earnings and growth in your Roth account grow tax free.  Once you reach age 59 and a half, you can withdraw any or all of the account value and face no tax liability. (You can always withdraw account contributions tax free but the gains need to stay in the account until you reach retirement or you will face a penalty).  There are income limits if you make a ton of money, but for the majority of people out there, you likely qualify to participate in a Roth.

So, how is this different than a 401k?  Well, it’s a lot different.  In a 401k, you contribute pretax income to your account.  This saves you the taxes in the year that the money was actually earned, but those dollars, along with any gains in your account, then face a tax liability when you withdraw the money at retirement.  The HUGE drawback to this is that you don’t know what the tax rates will be in the future.  In the US, with trillions and trillions in national debt, it’s probably a safe bet that the tax rates won’t be lower 25 years from now.

I actually use a ROTH in conjunction with a 401k.  My thinking is that, if I have a substantial account value to draw from at 59.5, I can defer taking any distributions from my 401k longer, giving it more time to grow.  It will also let me defer my pension a bit longer to maximize the payout.  By building assets in a Roth IRA, I’m basically diversifying my tax liability by paying some now at the current “known” rates and paying some later (in my 401k).

Here are a few resources to learn about the Roth IRA:

What does Wikipedia have to say about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_IRA

Info at the IRS:

http://www.irs.gov/retirement/article/0,,id=137307,00.html

RothIRA.com:

http://www.rothira.com/

Why Everyone Should Have a Roth IRA is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-uses-scratch-tickets-2012-3

Do The Millionaires Next Door Buy Scratch Tickets? is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money

I also read an article today that said Bank of America is trying out a new program where they’ll let a homeowner that’s 60 days or more behind in their payments, rent the home from them, transfer ownership to the bank and the bank will forgive the debt.  If this happens in any volume, that might drastically reduce the bank owned inventory from hitting the streets and further hamper my ability to find the “deal of the century”.  I’ll be keeping a close eye on that.

Where Have All the Houses Gone? is a post from: Everybody Loves Your Money