Financial Solution News

One of the questions that often pop into my inbox is “When is it appropriate to spend my money?”  When people ask, they often want someone to give them a general answer that will solve their problem.  They want a step by step guide because they want to splurge but don’t want to jeopardize their retirement.  Sadly, there is no cookie-cutter answer since every situation is different, but what I can do is try to guide you to make the right decision in case you are wondering about this.
The Answer of When to Spend is Easy for Some
Two types of people don’t have any problems deciding when to spend money - those who spend every penny and those who never spend any money.
Natural Born Consumers
These people just seem to have more fun.  They are the ones with the new cars, nice house and their kids always seem to be wearing […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Most of us have a job where hard work is expected and necessary.  We offer our knowledge and/or labor to the company we work for in order to get recognition, satisfaction and compensation in return.  Although this is the way most people make money, the minute we stop working, the income stops.
On the other hand, a popular idea that floats around the internet is passive income.  The idea of it is that money is being earned with or without our involvement.  Once it’s set up, the recurring income will come continuously.
Anyone can quickly see why this idea is popular.  Here are three extremely good advantages:
Provides Freedom
If your passive income is higher than your living expenses, then you free yourself from the daily grind of working for someone at least 8 hours a day.  You can enjoy your life and do what you want, while earning enough money to sustain your […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Unlike the rest of the world, owning a car in most parts of the western world is required.  Without it, most of us can never get to work nor go to many other places for that matter.
We have public transportation too.  Like everywhere else, there are trains, buses and metros.  It’s just that the routes cover so little of the area that it is impractical for most of us.  So over at this side of the pond, many of us are used to calling car expenses a necessity.
As a frugal minded person, there is no need to be upset because we cannot eliminate this expense.  We can still drastically reduce the money we spend on a car by making financially sound decisions.  Here are a few areas to look out for.
When to Replace Your Car
The easy answer is to drive the car until it no longer functions but for most […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Larry King Live on CNN interviewed two families in trouble because of the recent housing crisis last night.  The first family was starting to get behind on their payment, while the other already lost her home and is now living in her car!
Overview of the Two Situations
Family Hope
The first family (which we will referred to as Family Hope) lived in what they believed a $300,000 house.  They are starting to get behind in payments but they haven’t received their default notice yet.  They want to save their house but here are a few signs of why I think they haven’t really been doing something about it.

Larry asked them how many months they are behind and they did not really know.
When asked what their monthly mortgage is, they “think” it is around $2,100 - $2,200 instead of knowing
They seem to have 2 jobs, but they believe it is impossible to come […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Welcome to the first group project of PFN in which we prepared a summer fun guide!  While this article is about cool frugal ideas to stay away from the heat, other articles will cover different topics so remember to check out the articles at the bottom!
Summer is here and while things are just as unpredictable in these 3 short months as any other season, one thing for certain is the heat.  Just the other day, it was so hot in my apartment that I almost passed out!  The easy solution was to turn on the air conditioner but with the cost of living rising so much lately, I feel compelled to be stubborn and leave the A/C off!  Instead, I managed to focus all the braincells that was left and came up with these frugal ideas to stay cool.
Library
The first place I thought about going was the library as they […]

Original post by MoneyNing

It’s impossible to be perfect all the time. From money management to life decisions, we’ve all made many mistakes in our lives. Sometimes, we are able to learn from it; other times, the lesson isn’t so obvious. In those cases where we couldn’t figure out what went wrong, it is very important to just move on.
Perhaps one day, the lesson will come to us but learning from our mistakes is never as important as picking ourselves up from our mistakes and getting on with our lives.
It’s easy to understand the importance of living on when we realize that we are only a small part of this world and that the world revolves with or without us. If we are down when we make a big mistake, the only person that suffers is ourselves and maybe a few other people that really care about us. In […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Families are great. They are the first ones to come help, and the last ones to leave us when we are in trouble. When we were young, we lived with our families, and we start our very own later on in our lives.
Families however, make money matters even more complicated. Let’s face it, money is important to us, and anything important can potentially create conflicts. Most people enjoy a very good relationship with their families because there is no money conflicts; for others, money (or the lack of) can become a sticky subject.
Most people believe that the lack of money creates conflicts, but having money is just as troublesome. When parents have money, sometimes their children will try to fight for the inheritance, directly or indirectly. This is one of those unfortunate events that we all dislike when we hear it, but we see […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Everything in life goes hand in hand. If we are not happy at work, we will probably be unsatisfied with our life off work. On the other hand, if our life away from our job is a mess, there’s no chance that we can enjoy our work.
Lately, I’ve been quite happy with my life away from work. There are two main reasons for this:

I got married - The life changing event has been great so far. My wife and I are beginning to share our lives together and we can proudly say that “life is good”.
Our living standards changed - We recently moved to a new apartment and raised our living standards by living in a nicer place. Although the monthly rent has increased quite dramatically, we are so much happier because our quality of life increased to a never seen level. The difference […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Sooner or later, there comes a time when we make more money. Whether it is because we got a raise or because we found an additional income stream, it is something everyone will experience. Most of us start spending more money when these events happen because we feel that we can afford the extra expenses. However, if we want to achieve financial freedom, I suggest doing the following instead.
401k and IRAs - We should increase our 401k contributions and IRAs! Since we just got a raise, we wouldn’t feel much of a difference since we can probably increase our contribution rate and still get a higher take home pay!
Savings and Investments - Exactly the same as above. If you get a raise of 5%, why not put most of it into savings and investments? You won’t feel a difference and you will be much […]

Original post by MoneyNing

Last night, I walked with my wife to the nearby supermarket. At first, I didn’t want to go because I was tired from work and just wanted to sit around. However, my wife convinced me to go with her in the end and I was so glad that I did! We ended up having so much fun! The fact that we had a healthy walk and also saved some money was icing on the cake!
It all started after work when my wife wanted to buy some eggs. We moved recently, so we are still in the discovery stage instead of having a set route for everything. So, she decided to walk down to the closest grocery store to buy eggs because of a lack of a better alternative. I didn’t really want to get out of the house at that point but I […]

Original post by MoneyNing