What is your “worry free” spending limit? A cup of coffee? A bouquet of flowers? A restaurant steak? A new golf driver? When we got to a certain net worth, I recall thinking that anything under $20 or so was basically “free”. That is, even if spent every day, $20 wasn’t enough to materially impact our financial trajectory over the longer term. It was … Continue reading Worry Free Splurges
Just a quick post this morning. I wanted to share this data I just came across in the Wall Street Journal. If you want to feel good about how your retirement savings are going, just compare your savings with these mean & median figures from across the USA. I’m guessing if you found your way to this site, you are running well ahead of the … Continue reading Mean & Median Net Worth
About once a year, some dusty old post from this site will “pop” and go viral. My post on private label grocery products from May of 2017 is the latest. Link: National vs Store Brands For some reason, it’s the top read post of 2025, after sitting mostly ignored for the last 8 years. After its 2017 debut (with a few hundred views), it fell … Continue reading Store Brands Revisited
The simplest route to FIRE (being financially independent & retired early) is to spend less than you make. That is, simply put … to SAVE. Unfortunately, Americans have never been good savers. I last lamented on this in April 2020, at the start of the pandemic lockdowns. We were told that Americans were such poor savers that the pandemic required the government to bail everyone … Continue reading Personal Savings Rate Update
We dropped a package off today at the ginormous Marriott Orlando World Center. I recalled seeing a TV segment on the opening of the resort in the 1970s when I was a little kid and Walt Disney World opened. The lighted elevators that go up the side of the hotel tower were peak innovation for the day. We dropped the package, peeked around the hotel … Continue reading 15 Things We Hate Spending Money On
With my Dad’s, passing, I continue to reflect on significant memories with him that helped shape my life. One of those memories involves this old, wooden, Bancroft “youth model” tennis racket shown above (with my current racket) and a good lesson in finance. I was about 10 years old. We lived in Hillsdale MI – a small town in the southern part of the state. … Continue reading My Dad’s Lesson In Interest
In the world of personal finance and saving for the future, there’s always a new trend that is said to be making waves. The latest one is called “soft saving” – I just heard about it. In “soft saving,” the traditional wisdom of working hard, saving diligently, and retiring early is being challenged by a generation that values experiences and personal growth over accumulating wealth. … Continue reading Soft Saving Approach
Internet memes get posted by the millions each day and most of them aren’t worth the time you spend looking at them. That’s why today’s post is pretty silly. I saw this dubious meme tonight and got suckered into analyzing it five different ways. There are a lot of dimensions to the claim in this meme – time, inflation, houses, cars, college – and for … Continue reading Life Was Financially Better … When?
Television has always had a special place in my heart. I grew up just when color TV started to blossom. I think we switched from black & white to color about 1970. We got rudimentary cable about 1979. I was always enthralled with the TV’s glow of sight, sound, and motion bringing great stories, places, and events into our living room. TV wasn’t just my … Continue reading Finally … Cutting The Cord
A friend has a senior role in operations at one of the largest banks in the country and said they get more complaints about removing coin machines from their branches than about anything else. It turns out that most of the biggest banks – Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, PNC, Wells-Fargo, and Capital One – have all done away with them. We found this out … Continue reading Coin Counting Charges
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