Money Rules Made Easy

How much debt should you have

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 02:11:00 +0000

It's important to take on debts for the things that help you live comfortably. Almost no one buys a home, or even a used car, with cash. That's what banks are for, and there's no shame in carrying debt for reasons that contribute stability to your life or make it possible to earn a good living. But too much debt, or simply a little too much of the wrong kind, invites disaster. Debt interferes insidiously with your ability to save and to invest....

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How to do a real estate short sale

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 06:13:00 +0000

Upside down in a mortgage, or two? The frustration of owing more on a house than it is worth is tremendous, never mind multiple properties. If you cannot hold out for a turnaround in the market, a short sale might be the best exit. It can save your credit history from the pain of foreclosure or worse -- bankruptcy. And lenders often prefer it to taking over an abandoned house. The important part is to get your game face on. You need a buyer...

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Take the full home office tax deduction

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:13:00 +0000

If you're like millions of Americans these days, you're working from home part-time or full-time. If for you that means a slapdash arrangement of your kitchen phone and a laptop on the counter, you can pretty much forget getting a home office tax deduction. Nope, it takes a bit more forethought to meet the IRS guidelines. But if you are home all the time, have a pretty good-sized space dedicated to work and it's your main office, well, step...

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Get a fat tax rebate every year

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:20:00 +0000

It's nice, if perhaps inconsequential, that the government occasionally sees fit to "redistribute" the taxes it has already collected in order to goose up consumption or try to offset a coming recession. Nice, because money is always helpful, but inconsequential because most taxpaying Americans are unable to do much with a few hundred dollars but spend it on consumption. What if you could get back several hundred or a thousand bucks every year,...

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How to buy a foreclosed home

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:33:00 +0000

Buying a home in foreclosure proceedings is not easy. Right away, the first thing you have to do is toughen up. The homeowner has probably made some mistakes, but he or she has to have seriously ignored financial reality and common sense to get into foreclosure proceedings. Their lack of seriousness is not your fault. The person trapped in their home wants out, but they are probably also carrying around a lot of stress, guilt, tension and...

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Get the biggest common tax deductions

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:07:00 +0000

Every year in April, millions upon millions of people file their taxes, usually right on deadline, and on hastily filled out forms. Talk about throwing away money! It's a common misconception that only the rich get to take advantage of tax "loopholes." Nothing could be more wrong: Just a little bit of foresight and planning can net you plenty come tax time. It helps to think of all the ways you, the ordinary taxpayer, spend money in pursuit of...

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Get the lowest mortgage interest rate

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Interest rates are one of those easy math ideas that we nevertheless fail to fully comprehend. What's the difference between 5 and 6? Not a whole lot. But the gap between 5% and 6% on a 30-year home loan is huge, hitting $22,582 extra over the life of the loan. If you are headed out to buy a house, it will pay big to first get your financial story straight so that when the loan offers roll in, you don't get stuck with a lemon of a mortgage. The...

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How to free up cash for investing

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:50:00 +0000

Stocks and bonds can seem like a rich man's game. Gotta have money to make money, right? Okay, time to snap out of that attitude. The fact is, the absolute dollars you have to invest is far less important than getting off your duff and doing it, the earlier the better. If you can make the right moves and nail some nice returns, pretty soon you'll find that now you are that rich guy, rolling your past gains into new opportunities and watching the...

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How to buy exactly the right house

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:38:00 +0000

Buying a house is a tremendously stressful undertaking, especially a first home. The idea of a home of your own is freighted with memories of growing up, with hopes for the future, and with plain and simple fear: Fear of paying too much for the house, of buyers' remorse, of choosing poorly and of getting stuck with an unsellable pit of a home. Untangling all those emotions is work, never mind the blizzard of obscure mortgage documents,...

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Get cheap electronics and computers

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:12:00 +0000

See it, love it, gotta have it? Slow down, or your inner "fanboy" -- those drooling 20-something geeks who sleep on the sidewalk to be first to get the coolest cell phones, slickest laptops and newest whatever from Apple -- well, that guy will break your bank. Electronics have taken the place muscle cars once held on the imaginations of young men, and women are not far behind them. Avoiding the impulse to just buy now and settle accounts later...

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Save hundreds on home repairs

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:33:00 +0000

One of the glories of owning your own home is, of course, pride of ownership. The downside of that is repair bills. If a pipe bursts or an appliance conks out, there's no landlord to back you up. Few new homeowners properly budget for repairs (an extra mortgage payment a year, excluding roof work, is a good starting point), then you have to deal with finding and hiring people to actually do the repairs. Get ready for a lot of sweaty Sunday...

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How to save half your income each year

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:13:00 +0000

A 50% savings rate? Sounds nuts, right? But you can, in fact, do it. Okay, sure, if you are seriously just getting by, that's a very high target. But many people aren't just getting by, they actually choose to live paycheck to paycheck despite having a pretty good income. Think about how much make right now. Are there people living in your area who make considerably less? You bet! Yet they pay their bills, feed their kids and, yes, probably even...

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Improve your credit score now

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:50:00 +0000

Few things in financial life can seem as arbitrary as a credit score. Credit reports are complex, and there are three of them on your out there in very different formats. Each credit "pull" can feel invasive, as if your youthful indiscretions are being exposed to the uncaring eye of a finance manager years, if not decades, younger. What does he see? What does it mean about you? Relax, you'll probably get your loan (that's his job, right?). But...

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Get the maximum in college financial aid

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:13:00 +0000

For most parents, college is the ultimate "Hail Mary" play in their financial lives. They put if off and hope the kid will get a huge scholarship or some other financial aid windfall will offset the rapidly rising cost of tuition, room-and-board and books. Sometimes that happens, but usually college is a scramble of financial aid, loans and rapid depletion of parental bank accounts. It should be clear to you by now that the soundest strategy is...

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Pay less in income taxes every year

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The politicians who answer for our federal government absolutely love the current income tax system. It's so completely convoluted that most of us overpay, year in and year out, yet think we get a good deal. If you are single, young and don't make much, you probably shouldn't be paying a cent in federal taxes. Yet millions do. The rest of us, well, suffice to say that you need to either get an accounting degree or, more simply, hire a decent...

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Save money on car insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:33:00 +0000

More so than most other insurance, auto insurance as an industry is overloaded with jargon. Telling the difference between collision and comprehensive is an important start but so is figuring out exactly what you are getting for your money. It's easy to carry too much of useless coverage and not nearly enough of the kind of insurance protection you probably need. Start by getting out your existing policy and taking a look. Then consider...

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Save big money on groceries

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:49:00 +0000

Food can seem like one of those non-negotiables in life, like rent or transportation. It costs what it costs, right? Absolutely not. You can easily cut your grocery bill and pocket the difference, saving hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more, each year. This is important to your long term: What you save now means big money later. Say your cut your food bill by $1,000 this year alone and invest it instead. Add a zero to the end, and that's...

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Get the best price on a new car

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:14:00 +0000

We all know that queasy feeling, deep down in your stomach: "Ugh, I gotta go talk to a car dealer..." The salesperson, to be fair, is probably going to be pretty nice, but the overwhelming fear of getting screwed ruins the experience. Is the price even close to fair? Can I get financed without losing my shirt or my dignity? You can walk on to a car lot and actually keep your dignity, and a fair amount of your own money, just by coming prepared....

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Pay off your home mortgage early

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:14:00 +0000

There are all kinds of good reasons not to pay off a mortgage early (investing more early on pays big later, for instance), but let's presume for the moment that you have decided that it's a necessary move: You want to retire, for instance, or just have to own your current home outright, the sooner the better. There are a few pretty painless tricks that can accelerate the payoff date. They won't cut the actual payments down, but these early...

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Save money with low-cost health insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:01:00 +0000

Health insurance premiums are quickly disappearing from company benefits packages, particularly for small employers (which is to say, most employers). Even large companies are asking their workers to shoulder a part of their premium, and copays can add hundreds of dollars in hard-to-budget annual spending. The key is to think of health insurance premiums the same way you think of car insurance, that is, as a way to transfer away risk. Like any...

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Becoming a creative (and rich) cheapskate

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:37:00 +0000

One of the most-repeated and unverifiable (although undoubtedly true) stories about the late Wal-Mart Chairman Sam Walton is that he wore Wal-Mart suits off the rack. He had billions in the bank and would show up at formal events in cheap-o navy blue suits with a tag hanging off the neck. Cheap? You bet, but like fellow billionaire Warren Buffett -- a man who could probably buy a car company tomorrow, yet who drives late model cars and has...

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Make a plan to increase passive income

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:35:00 +0000

One day, you will retire. When that day comes, by definition all of your income will be passive. That is to say, money will work for you in the form of interest, dividends (cash from owning stock, paid quarterly) or capital gains (cash from sale of stock that rose in price), rather than you working for money. Passive income can be defined a number of ways but, in the end, it's all the same thing: Someone pays you on a regular basis for the use...

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Be a pain-free multi-millionaire

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:47:00 +0000

You're careful about money. You might even have a pretty good bank balance. But are you really on your way to being an 'inevitable' millionaire? Here's five Easy Money Rules steps you can take this year to put yourself on a collision course with $1 million (or better) in less than 20 years. THE RULES Kill your credit cards dead, right now The average U.S. household is holding $8,400 in credit card debt right now. Insane. Take a second job, sell...

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Get out of credit card debt immediately

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:35:00 +0000

Using a credit card for everyday spending doesn't feel like high-risk behavior, but even minor purchases quickly snowball into big debts you will not pay off within a month. If you are like most Americans these days, you have learned the hard way and now carry anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000 or more in high-interest loans (which is what they really are) with no end in sight. Get out, and get out now. You do not need a counseling agency --...

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Radically reduce your cost of living

noreply@blogger.com (Greg Brown) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:53:00 +0000

To get your retirement on track, you pretty much have to spend less or make more. It's not hard to make more. Get a second job or a better job, put your non-working spouse to work, whatever. Money is money, and while getting that new or better gig means working for it, you will probably be better off for doing it in any case. Of course, the real trick is spending less -- much less. Short of becoming a monk, the best way to radically reduce your...

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