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Weekly Highlights and Carnivals - Sick Kid Edition
2007-09-22 06:16:00
For the past six days, my oldest daughter has been doing all the nasty stuff that comes with having a stomach bug. After the fourth day, we took her to the doctor and they diagnosed her with the Rotavirus. Apparently it’s severely contagious and extremely long-lasting, so we have had a heck of a week dealing with it. (of course, my daughter has had an even tougher week) We’re marching on, though, and praying that nobody else catches it. This week brought some great posts from the M-Network and beyond: M-Network Paid Twice talks about becoming an accidental investor. Being Frugal explains how to avoid Murphy’s Law. Single Guy Money flaunts his 1 million dollar umbrella. Plonkee Money has an extensive interview with Fabulously Broke. Moolanomy begins a series on finance basics. Gather Little by Little responds to a reader asking how to include a 401k in their net worth calculation. Debt Free Revolution debates a commenter about the use of credit cards. Christian...
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Big Cities to Become More Unaffordable
2007-09-20 14:00:00
It’s difficult to imagine a city like San Francisco or New York becoming less affordable for the average person. Even with the recent market downturn, 2 bedroom/1 bath homes with around 1,000 square feet go for well above $500,000 in San Francisco. In Manhattan, you would be lucky to get a 1 bedroom/1 bath condo with under 1,000 square feet for less than $500,000. So, with prices way out of whack with the rest of the country, they can’t become much more unaffordable, right? According to Chris Mayer, director of the Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia University, homes in these “Superstar” cities may become even more unaffordable. He sites three trends that he believes will occur to inflate home prices in these cities: The aging population As baby boomers begin to retire in the next several years, they will begin to look at where they want to spend the rest of their lives. Ask anyone that has been to Florida, and they will tell you that many of th...
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My Yard is a Waste of Time and Money
2007-09-18 16:00:00
The following guest post was submitted by glblguy from Gather Little by Little - A Christian Personal Finance Blog (RSS) My boys mowed the yard the other night, and when they finished the whole front yard looked like a dust storm had gone through. What grass I have is crabgrass, the rest is mostly dirt with a few weeds and lots of completely yellow and dead grass. In the spring, it was a lucious green and completely full and thick. Looking at our yard, my wife commented,”Why do we care about our yard so much? I am just tired of worrying about it.” That got me thinking about how much time and money I put into my yard each spring and fall. In the spring I aireate, thatch, re-seed, fertilize and water. By May it’s beautiful, then the summer heat and drought kicks in. Within a few weeks the yard is yellowing, within a few more there is more dirt than dead grass. In just a few more large clumps of crabgrass are beginning to dominate. Then comes September. I aire...
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The New Site Design is Here!
2007-09-18 12:56:00
Just a quick note to all those reading this through a feed reader - Financial Dominance has received a much needed aesthetic overhaul. Please click through and leave a comment or email me with your feedback. As an added note, I know there are a few minor glitches with some of the plugins. Please be patient, and I will correct them as soon as possible!Share This
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A Negative Side Effect to Paying Down Credit Cards
2007-09-17 14:00:00
About six months ago, my wife and I sent the final payments into our two biggest credit cards. We had struggled with the credit card debt for the better part of five years, but, with the help of a large bonus and other miscellaneous cash, we were able to crush the remainder in one fell swoop. This would be the end of our dealings with the credit card companies, right? Wrong. Last Friday I received yet ANOTHER set of cash advance checks to use for “special vacations or emergencies.” They keep telling me that “because of my strong financial history” they are offering me this great deal of quick cash at “only” 14.99%. Only 14.99%? I have kindly called them several times explaining that I didn’t have any use for their money anymore, and that they could stop sending these checks for security purposes. Each assures me that I will receive no more mailings, and, for good measure, attempts to convince me that I should do a balance transfer or ...
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Watch for the New Site Design in a Day or Two
2007-09-17 13:00:00
As promised a couple of weeks ago, Financial Dominance will be undergoing a site redesign this week. Thank you for all of the suggestions on the new design. Here is what many have suggested and can expect to see in the new design: Less advertising Less “blah” (I think I solved this one by using a design with a bit more color) More interactive (This won’t be immediate, but I have some plans for down the road. The new site design will help me make it happen. I appreciate all the feedback on the site redesign, and I hope everyone is as pleased as I am with the result. Please stay tuned for the changes as they will occur in the next week.Share This
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Carnivals - Week of 9/10/07
2007-09-13 09:00:00
It has been a couple of busy weeks around not only Financial Dominance with my work on the new site design but also around my real life world as well. I resumed my studies for an MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management last Thursday and have worked on homework nearly every night since then. Oh well, it’s great to be busy! I was featured in the following carnivals this week: Carnival of Personal Finance The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted at KMull this week. These were my favorites from the carnival: Dax Desai talks about the power of self-directed IRA’s. MoneyNing shows how to gain wealth and save money by missing a movie. (well, actually there’s a bigger picture here, but you should read it to find out) Edith Yeung has an awesome article about creating passive income. My article, Should You Listen to Financial Gurus, was included in this carnival. Carnival of Everything Finance The Carnival of Everything Finance was hosted at Everything Fina...
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Paying by the Month or Paying Annually - Determining Which Makes Sense for
2007-09-12 16:21:00
The following guest post was submitted by Jaimie from I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… (RSS) There are several recurring expenses that people have the option of paying by the month or paying in one lump sum every year. There is usually a fee associated with the monthly payment option, so it would seem on the surface that paying once a year would make the most financial sense. Although as a general rule this is true, it may not always be the case. The answer depends on many factors including what the total amount per year due is, what the fee is (calculated for the entire year) and also, what purposes that money would be serving over the course of the year if not paid in a lump sum. To illustrate some real life scenarios for this I am going to take two such recurring payments in my own life - my life insurance premium and my auto insurance premium, and why, for us, it makes more sense to pay one of them on a yearly basis and one on a monthly basis, even though they b...
More About: Sense , Term , Ally , Month , Annual

Forget the Bling, How About Interest Compound-ing…
2007-09-11 06:48:00
Ok, so that was my poor attempt at a rhyming title to fit this post. Please keep reading… It looks like some rap legends are taking a little time away from making their millions to enlighten the average person on how to take care of their finances. The Hip-Hop Action Network, led by the co-founder of the hip-hop label Def Jam, discussed money management at North Carolina A&T University. Topics included everything from debt management to credit scores. To be honest, I’m not sure how effective these guys will be. From the audience’s perspective, it’s tough to listen to a guy talk about saving money while wearing a $1 million diamond necklace around his neck. In fact, one guy even admitted that he buys “the hottest cars that come out.” From the presenters’ perspective, what makes them qualified to lecture about personal finance? Have they simply been fed a few facts about saving, investing, and debt to be able to speak using a few t...
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Weekly Highlights and Carnivals - September 7, 2007
2007-09-08 06:24:00
I still haven’t fully recovered from Labor Day, so this week’s highlights will be brief. The M-Network has added a couple of more members as you can see by the M-Network blogroll to the right. I’d like to highlight a couple of great posts from our two newest members - Debt Free Revolution and Single Guy Money: Debt Free Revolution thinks that paying bills is fun. I admire their enthusiasm, but I’m nowhere close to thinking that paying bills is a good time. Single Guy Money discusses a sly coworker who hides money from her husband. I think sneaking behind your spouse’s back like this is reprehensible and calls into question the character of the person that is doing it. Also see Being Frugal’s post which asks her readers if they keep secrets from their spouse. This week I submitted my post about Giving Your Graduate the Gift of Financial Education to the Carnival of Financial Planning. The most popular post on Financial Dominance this week was...
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Should You Listen to Financial Gurus?
2007-09-06 06:27:00
I recently read a great post at Debt Free Revolution called Dave Ramsey: Con Man, Cult Leader, or Other? In the post, Ana ponders whether Dave Ramsey should be considered a con man since he charges money for his books, seminars, and other products. This got me to thinking about various other gurus and why some are regarded as heroes and others are regarded as villains. Right off the bat I began thinking about the often controversial Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad series of books. In many circles, especially in multilevel marketing organizations, he is very highly regarded as his message is that anybody can be rich if only they have the right mindset. However, for many others, he is regarded as a con artist that preys on the naiveness of people just looking to get ahead. So what causes this extreme divide between people who love Robert Kiyosaki and those that despise him? And why does Dave Ramsey seem to have nearly universal acceptance? (I don’t mean that every...
More About: Financial , Listen , Gurus , Guru , Fina

What is the 4% Rule?
2007-09-05 05:37:00
If you have spent a lot of time reading about retirement planning or discussing it with your financial advisor, you have probably heard of the 4% rule. This rule causes a lot of confusion when I discuss it with family and friends. The rule itself is not complicated, but it seems that everybody has their own version of what it means and its use. I’ll try to use this post to clarify the rule and hopefully give a better understanding of its application in retirement planning. What exactly is the 4% rule? The 4% rule is a rule of thumb that says you should withdraw 4% of your nest egg in your first year of retirement and increase it annually for inflation. That’s it. Where did it come from? The 4% number is a result of a bunch of very smart people modeling how long a nest egg would last given certain withdrawal rates. From my understanding, they used a type of Monte Carlo simulation. They determined that, given a 4% initial withdrawal rate increased annually for inflat...
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Guest Post on Finance Is Personal - August 31, 2007
2007-08-31 15:12:00
Just a quick note to look for my guest post 9 Ways to Save Big on Prescription Drugs over at Finance Is Personal . Have a great Labor Day weekend, everyone!Share This
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Give Your Graduate the Gift of a Financial Education
2007-08-30 15:00:00
So, your little girl or boy has finally grown up and is about to graduate. They are about to face the scary “real world” without the constant guidance from mom and dad. You wonder, “What can I do for them before they leave for college that will have a lasting impact on the rest of their life?” Money Magazine has a great idea: give them a session or two with a financial planner. What better to preempt those inevitable credit card offers and student loans? The financial planner can explain, probably much better than you or I can, the downward spiral that can occur when a person spends more than they earn. And, in college, what you earn isn’t much, so you have to be even more conservative in your spending. The planner can explain the long lasting financial effects of just one extra night of partying a week. Aside from explaining what the student shouldn’t do with their money, they can also explain what they should do with their money. Right a...
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Upcoming Site Design Changes
2007-08-29 06:07:00
When I started this blog, I began by picking a template that was aesthetically pleasing and threw in a few widgets for good measure. As time went on, I began to realize that I really didn’t like some aspects of its design. Now, with a few of my friends (BeingFrugal.net, Plonkee.com, and PaidTwice.com) taking the bold step of totally redesigning their site and getting great results, I want to tweak my site a bit as well. Over the next two or three weeks I will be gradually introducing a new site layout. During this process, there will likely be many bugs and issues with the site. If you find a bug, please use the Contact Me link at the top of the page or email me using brian at this domain. If you have any comments or suggestions on what you would like to see implemented with the new layout, please leave a comment to this post or contact me through the methods I specified previously. If you don’t want to watch the madness that is likely to occur, just subscribe to my ...
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Clear Out Those Wallets - Here Comes the All-In-One Credit Card Machine
2007-08-28 15:00:00
How many of you have multiple credit, debit, and loyalty cards sitting in your wallet? Do you dislike digging through your wallet or purse to find that one card that gives 1% cash back on whatever you are purchasing? If you answered yes to either of these questions, Jonathan Ramaci, the founder of iCache may have the answer for you. The iCache will be relatively inexpensive device (less than $100) that will allow you to upload your credit card information into a website and upload the information into an iCache device. Once there, the removable card can be programmed (and reprogrammed) to be any credit, debit, or swipable loyalty card you own. After a single use, the information on the card is erased. But wait, what happens if your iCache is stolen? The iCache uses a biometric strip where the owner uses their thumbprint to gain access to the device. Combine that with the previously mentioned fact that the data on the card is erased after a single use, and it seems to be a fair...
More About: Card , Credit , Machine , Credit Card , Clear

Weddings Aren’t as Expensive As You May Think
2007-08-27 15:00:00
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the average cost of a wedding, which is the cost you hear on the news and in magazines all the time, may be a lot different than the typical cost. The numbers that are typically reported take the sum of all survey respondents’ wedding costs divided by the total number of respondents. While this sounds like a sensible way to determine the average wedding cost, what happens when one respondent has a $1 million wedding? The overall average is skewed since the lowest the cost could possibly be is $0. As an example: One $1 million wedding put into the mix with 54 weddings costing $10,000 each would boost the mean to $28,000, although among the 55 couples, $10,000 would seem a much better representation of the typical cost. This type of fuzzy math has also been used to overstate the average person’s credit card debt. Since some consumers have an abnormally high amount of credit card debt, the overall arithmetic ave...
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Weekly Highlights - August 24, 2007
2007-08-25 06:37:00
This week will likely be remembered for being the week where two personal finance blogging heavyweights collided over The Simple Dollar’s advice about investing in a down market. (hint: read the comments on the first link) I don’t want to fan the flames anymore, but Plonkee added his two cents. Anyways, on to my favorite posts of the week! From the M-Network: Paid Twice tries to find the balance between living for today and saving for tomorrow Plonkee tells us why he chose a less lucrative career Gather Little by Little says there is no such thing as good debt Being Frugal explains how she is going to celebrate the start of the school year Moolanomy asks if you are guilty of these top 10 money wasters From other great bloggers: Finance is Personal has a very timely post on 7 ways to avoid foreclosure The Digerati Life wants you to know the cost of having kids No Credit Needed shows you how to video tutorial on using the envelope system to manage your cash - Very co...
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Carnivals - Week of 8/20/07
2007-08-24 05:45:00
I didn’t get to participate in as many carnivals as I wanted to this week, but I am happy I could submit to a couple. Carnival of Personal Finance The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted at The Simple Dollar this week. A few of my favorites from the carnival: Mortgage Blog talks about keeping the right balance between work and leisure Baglady says it’s not all about the money when evaluating job opportunities Advanced Personal Finance shows you how real returns get in the way of a good plan Carnival of Financial Planning The Carnival of Financial Planning was hosted at The Skilled Investor this week. A few of my favorites from the carnival: Confessions of a Housewife gives the scoop on the budgeting secret that saved her marriage Opportunities a Plenty gives a few tips to boost your retirement savings The Tao of Making Money explains what gap insurance is and when you may need it My contribution to both carnivals was What Do I Need to Retire.Share This
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Very Happy With Illinois 529 Savings Plan
2007-08-23 06:52:00
Today I started looking through the new set of funds for my daughter’s Illinois Bright Start Savings 529 plan. The new funds came about with a change to the plan’s Program Manager from Legg Mason to OFI Private Investments (a subsidiary of OppenheimerFunds). I must say I’m very impressed with the radical change not only in fund selection but also the dramatic reduction of fees. I guess I can thank my new state treasurer, Alexi Giannoulias. Here are the highlights of the plan: Maximum account balance is $235,000 This is PER BENEFICIARY. So if you have two children, you can have the maximum for each. Let’s be honest, though, $235,000 is a lot of money. The cost of a year at Harvard is currently $50,950. Assuming four years with the same tuition rate (bare with me - I know it won’t happen), the total cost of tuition, room, and board would be $203,800. That leaves $31,200 to purchase books and other necessities of college life. As long as the maxim...
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Now May Be the Time to Replace Your Old Gas Guzzler
2007-08-22 05:03:00
According to CNN Money, auto sales may be the latest casualty in the subprime fallout. Between lenders tightening their lending standards and the general uncertainty about where the market is going, consumers just aren’t looking at throwing money at a depreciable asset. According to CNN Money: CNW Research, which specializes in surveys of car buyers, found in its latest reading that 13.6 percent of the potential market’s customers were canceling or postponing plans to make a new-vehicle acquisition any time soon, up from 10.1 percent last year. I’m not sure how much more automakers can take - especially US automakers. It’s not enough that they are already behind the eight ball because of the high cost of unions. But now they are dealing with record gas prices, tightening lending standards, and an uneasiness from some consumers as they watch their home equity drop and their payments go up. Of course, bad news for automakers often means good news for consum...
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My One Money Advice
2007-08-20 05:57:00
Pinyo over at Moolanomy tagged me in his My One Money Advice Meme. He was inspired by Blog Action Day. On Blog Action Day, all bloggers are encourage to write about something important in order to affect real change. For this Blog Action Day, bloggers will be writing about the environment from the perspective of their blog’s topic. The question from Pinyo: If you can give one advice, tip, or story related to money, what would you share? My answer: Understand that your situation is different from everybody else’s Although I often write in my articles that YOU should do this and YOU should do that, my recommendations are not meant to be followed blindly. In some cases, it may be okay to have debt. Dare I say even credit card debt if used correctly. If you don’t feel my advice applies to you, take it with a grain of salt and move on. The same goes for any advisor that tries to take a cookie-cutter approach to your finances. There are rarely absolutes when it ...

Weekly Highlights - August 17, 2007
2007-08-18 05:46:00
Before I get to my favorite posts for the week, thank you to everyone who is wishing me luck in my war on caffeine. So far so good, but it has only been 1 day! Here are my favorite posts from the M-Network and beyond: Moolanomy points out 10 baby steps to financial recovery. Plonkee wonders what is the most important thing to insure. Gather Little by Little gives helpful tips for moving. Paid Twice talks about the motivational power of the X. Free Money Finance asks what you would do if you had a high paying, unrewarding job. My most popular post of the week was Maximize Your Paycheck. If you have been lurking around my site a while and don’t want to miss a post, consider subscribing to my RSS feed. If you prefer, you can also subscribe by email to receive the previous day’s posts each morning. Share This
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Launch of the M-Network
2007-08-17 22:23:00
The past week has been a busy one as I and a few other personal finance bloggers are launching a personal finance network called M-Network . Our aim is to make M-Network the premier personal finance blog network. One of the major benefits to readers is that you can subscribe to one feed and receive posts from each blogger on the M-Network. Only high quality personal finance blogs will be included, so you can be sure that your reader will not be filled with garbage. Those currently included in the M-Network are: Gather Little by Little Moolanomy Paid Twice Plonkee Money Financial Dominance I encourage you to subscribe to the M-Network feed, so you can receive feeds from several quality personal finance blogs all in one place. If you are a blogger that would like to be considered for a spot on the network (size will be limited), contact Pinyo for more information.Share This
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Thinking About Ditching School? Think again.
2007-08-17 14:00:00
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the value of a college education and how a degree is almost mandatory for many white-collar employers. In many cases it is not because the employer thinks there is no way a person without a degree could do the job, but because they want to speed up the hiring process. Imagine you are the hiring manager responsible for hiring a new employee. You send your request out to Monster.com and receive 100 resumes. The first thing you are going to do is what I call a “superficial elimination.” In this process, you are going to weed out all the resumes that do not meet some arbitrary criteria you have established. In my experience, the first thing I look at is a college degree. Not because I think non-degreed people are incompetent, but because I want a fast way to eliminate a decent chunk of resumes. However, some people continue to push their belief that college is unnecessary. Now, to be frank, I agree with them to a point. Mostly on t...
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The War Begins: Me vs Caffeine
2007-08-16 05:37:00
This is not a personal finance post. I am posting this here to hold myself accountable. As I get older, I become more and more conscious about the foods and drinks I consume. For the most part, I have done very well. I have cut back on chips, cookies, ice cream, and many other tasty but unhealthy snacks. My arch nemesis, though, has been soda (or pop to my Wisconsin friends). There is just something about flavored carbonated water that leaves me craving it day after day. When I was in college, I drank upwards of five per day. Today, I drink only two, but just two sodas contains 300 calories, 60 milligrams of sodium, and 84 grams of sugar. It’s a slow poison, and it is one I intend to weed out of my life. The trigger for my decision was a post over at Finance is Personal called The True Cost of a Mountain Dew Addiction. It was a painful reminder of the additional cost I am incurring by being addicted to caffeine. Dental costs and restless sleep are just a couple of the...
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Asset Allocation: It May Be Time to Rebalance Your Portfolio
2007-08-15 22:21:00
Raise your hand if you think the stock market has been a little volatile lately. It has been a crazy couple of weeks watching the DOW drop by triple digits, bounce back a couple of hundred points in a glimmer of hope, and then drop by several hundred more points the next day. Many investors have found a new friend in anxiety medication. If you have any stock exposure in your portfolio, you’ve probably shared in their pain. However, many investors may be feeling this pain more than they need to. If you have any exposure to stocks in your portfolio (especially international stocks), you have probably enjoyed a healthy return for the past two or three years. These gains have likely caused stocks to become a more disproportionate part of your portfolio than you had originally anticipated. Thus, during this downturn, you are being negatively affected on a disproportionate portion of your portfolio. This is where asset allocation comes into play. Asset allocation is the redis...
More About: Portfolio , Time , Reba , Balan

Carnivals This Week
2007-08-15 06:03:00
I had the opportunity to participate in three carnivals this week. Each had a different theme, but they were all in some way related to personal finance. Here are the carnivals and my top picks from each one. Carnival of Personal Finance Cash Money Life asks, “How much is the home run record worth?” My Wealth Builder explains that we could have profited from the housing and subprime collapse. The Digerati Life gives 10 popular reasons to buy new cars instead of used. My contribution to the Carnival of Personal Finance was my article Maximize Your Paycheck. Carnival of Debt Reduction Gather Little by Little posts part 6 of their series “How to get your finances under control” called Get Out of Debt. Clever Dude asks if the thought of debt is ruling your life. Free Money Finance tells you to forget about biweekly mortgage payment plans. My contribution to the Carnival of Debt Reduction was my article High Speed Debt Elimination. Carnival of Money Stories ...
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How Far Can You Go on a Tank of Gas?
2007-08-14 04:46:00
Check out this cool mileage comparison tool over at BankRate.com. Just select your class of car or truck and the price of gas in your area to see how much you will be paying for each tank of gas and for each mile traveled. Don’t get too hung up on mileage, though. You also want to make sure the car performs well in crash tests unlike the car below. Credit goes to Consumerist.com for pointing each of these gems out.Share This
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Why Defining Your Investment Goals is So Important
2007-08-13 15:00:00
Last week, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity wrote that he is liquidating his target retirement 2050 fund because of the recent volatility in the market. After re-reading his post, it appears that this was not his major retirement savings vehicle, but was instead a portion of his overall portfolio. In any case, his sudden withdrawal shows that he did not have an investment plan for this portion of his portfolio. While I feel the same uneasiness that he has with the recent volatility in the stock and bond markets (see my comment in his post), the allocation of my investments was decided by asking myself a few simple questions. 1. How long until I need access to the money? The longer the time horizon until you need to access the money, the riskier you can be with that money. In my case, I tend to have two types of investments. First, I use a liquid, short-term savings account from HSBC Direct for money I may need within the next year or two. Typically this is used for unplanne...
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