Hey, everyone checking out this page, FYI I am giving away two iPod nanos. (click to check it out)

Last night my girlfriend and I got into a discussion over children and expenses. Though I am about as stubborn a person as you can find, she made a good point about affording kids and kids expenses that got me thinking about big picture. The truth is that as life goes on, there will never be a BETTER time to save money and pay off debt. For that matter there will never be a better time to do ANYTHING. Follow me here…

Saving money and paying off debt NOW
-No matter where you are in life there is no better time. If you are recently graduated from college or in your 20s and you can’t save money and pay off debt right now, how the hell are you going to do it when you are when you have a new home complete with mortgage payment, how about a car and car insurance. Or if you already have a home how about wife/husband, kids, diapers, babysitter, kids sports, family vacations. Or if you already have kids how about when your kids go to college? Or if your kids are all out of college and you are in your say, 60s, how about increasing cost of insurance, and medical bills. Or even if you are older and in good health you best be saving and paying off debt before your retire. As you can tell there is NEVER a better time than now. Salary increases WILL just get eaten up if you don’t get into the right spending habits right now.

Start a business NOW
A lot of the same things that apply to saving and debt also apply to starting something new. One of my friends told me he didn’t want to start a business until he had saved up a good amount of money and had “learned some more.” Now thats great and all, except that his idea had to do with social networking and quite frankly who knows where thats going to be in five months let alone FIVE or TEN years. And who wants to be 30, 40, 50+ working on a college social networking project? For some reasons I get visions of that old perverted creeper standing around at the bars just waiting for some college girl to be drunk enough to wander over to him. Other reasons: when do you have more time than before you are married with kids?

Getting in shape NOW
Theres that peyton manning commercial where he gives the pep talk that if you aren’t a professional athlete or under the age of 23 forget the six pack and just buy a bigger shirt…well there is a certain truth. As we age our metabolism slows down and our hormone levels drop making it harder to lose weight and harder to add muscle. Just think about having to run twice as far when you are 40 as you do when you are 20 to lose those l-b-ses, that should motivate you, you lazy couch potatoe you. In fact, stop reading this article and go to the gym, then come back and finish. Unless you’re at work, then you get a pass. I won’t even mention the fact that being healthy with benefit you greatly as you age. Oh, I guess I just did.

Clean your house NOW
The dirtier you let something get (I know, I have lived with 5 guys before) the harder it is to get it cleaned up later. Do it now, unless you like dirty crap all over the place. Especially dishes, nothing smells better than a dish thats been sitting in the sink for days or a week or a month or NINE MONTHS (I actually saw this at an apartment several years ago. Apparently they simply stopped using dishes but didn’t bother to clean the ones that HAD been used).

Do your taxes NOW
I hate doing taxes. I would rather clean the bathroom at your local gas station than do taxes. Really. That being said, getting it over with is better than having it hang over your head.

Take risks NOW
Invest in risky stocks. Don’t even bother with bonds. Go skydiving. Travel to a part of the world where you dont speak the language. These are the kinds of things you can only do (responsibly) when you are young.

The absolute best thing you can do for your worries and regrets in the future is taking care of them right now.

There is something that gets left out a lot when the topic of personal finance comes up. It is one of the most simple things to grasp, yet also one of the hardest to do. It is something that I personally am terrible about if I don’t watch myself. Ok enough suspense already, wheres the beef?

The secret is simple:

Do not buy things you do not currently have enough money to buy.

Ok, you’re thinking, thats pretty obvious. But is it really? Lets dig a little deeper here. If you are like me (note: not referring to good looking and intelligent) then how many times have you said to yourself “well, I have extra on my next paycheck so I will just fit it in there.” Well, there is a good chance that something else will come up next pay period, so then both the original charge AND the new charge get put off. This is what I like to call the reverse snowball. Snowballing is a common metaphor for how to get rid of debt….well this is the best way to build debt.

Here is a a good example. In the consulting environment I get paid a bonus based on how many billable hours I worked for a customer in a given month. I do not figure this into my budget and it varies wildly based on what customer, what Im doing etc etc and its always paid on the second paycheck of the month. For the first part of the month, if I know Im getting a good sized bonus for the month I will overspend outside my budget because, hey, extra money is coming. The problem is that I never know exactly how much it will be and it makes it very easy to get carried away and go wild with the spending. Yes, even a financial titan such as myself will be defeated occasionally by spending temptation. Its my Achilles heal if you will. Ok enough with the greek mythology. Lets strategize:

1) Stick to the budget except in case of absolute complete and total necessities. Medical expenses, car breaks down, furnace goes out and it’s so cold your beta fish is swimming under a layer of ice (true story)….these things are ok. NFL Sunday ticket is calling your name, not ok (also true story).

2) Budget according to only what you KNOW you will make.

3) Make an emergency fund. Yes I know its easy to use credit as an emergency fund, but you should be putting money aside anyway.

4) Be honest with yourself. Most people I know are masters at telling themselves they can easily pay something off later. Don’t do it.

5) Take care of yourself and your things so that you stay healthy, and they stay working. The best way to cut out medical and other expenses is preventative action.

Bonus: Pay yourself first, this will work wonders in keeping you to #1.

If I were giving advice to someone, I would tell them not to buy a new car. I would also tell them not to finance a car, but instead to save up and buy a late model used car. I would also advise someone to buy a car with low insurance premiums that gets excellent gas milage. All of that said, this weekend I bought a new car with higher insurance premiums that gets average gas milage (though much better than my previous car). I also financed it through my credit union. However, it wasn’t an impulse buy, it was something I did a lot of thinking about.

There were several reasons I went the route I did:

Professionalism - my previous car was fun (A Dodge sports car) but was more akin to something a high school kid would drive than a college graduate working for a consulting firm.

Need to get rid of my previous car - I was almost up on my warranty and did not wish to pay for an extended warranty. Also private party sales of my car are very slim.

Low interest rate - I was able to secure a very low interest loan through my credit union.

Personality - The car I got is very much a reflection of my personality.

Carpe Diem - I actually deteste this saying, but for me to have a new car, this is the time.

Budget - It fits into my budget

Resale value - It is one of the highest resale value cars on the market…which was actually one of the reasons I decided to get one new instead of used. The used prices were not much lower than the new prices.

Color - As odd as this sounds, the color I wanted was only available on the ‘07 model.

Without further ado:

When I wrote about having enough money to support your family a few weeks ago, little did I realize how much of an immediate example I would have in my life.  Several weeks ago my grandma who has had cancer for quite a while now fell ill again and had to go to the hospital.  After a few days in the hospital the results came back: the cancer had spread to her bones and there was nothing realistically that could be done anymore.

For the last few weeks of her life she was able to be home surrounded by family until she died on April 4.  This was made possible by paying for hospice.  I hesitated to post on this, but the simple fact is, I want to have enough money to pay for the best medical care, or if it comes down to it in the end, home care, possible for my family. 

This is something that a very large portion of the population just doesn’t understand. Years ago a cousin of mine was hooked on David Deangelo, a behavioral psychologist, and we were driving on a po-dunk road in canada listening to his CD when I heard something that really caught my attention. He said:

“Life isnt fair…and thats great news. We are each born with our own lot and others have their own biases and prejudices. This is good news because it also means you can turn things in your favor…if everything was fair you would just have to accept your place in life. You would have nothing you could do about it…Things are not fair, but thats the best news that there could possibly be, because that means you can turn things in your favor.”

There was a speech Bill Gates gave where he named 11 rules of life and guess what #1 was? Thats right: Life isnt fair - Get used to it!

So on to why it’s great news. Its great news because it means that you can take a poor financial situation and make it a good one. It means that you can come from poverty and be rich. There was a great story a while back that I read about a man who was slightly developmentally disabled. He lived in a very tiny apartment and worked at a local fast food restaurant, as well as a night job doing some sort of cleaning. There was something else about this man that no one knew. He had an obsession with the stock market and investing. As it turns out he supposedly managed accumulate several hundred thousand dollars. Another great example is Bill Gates himself. He went from a typical nerd to the richest man in the world.

The bottom line is in every part of life you can improve a situation. I don’t care what the situation is, you may (and in most cases) not get the IDEAL situation but you can always improve a situation.

Lets find an example. Oh, how about myself. I had an awesome family life growing up but we were solidly middle class and didn’t have a ton of extra money. When my dad brought home a computer I did everything I could to learn about it. I dove into every subject possible about computers. I went to the library (which reminds me of something from the movie Dave Chapelles Block Party where Wyclef Jean tells a group of kids not to blame anyone for not succeeding, “they have librarys in the ‘hood.”) . When I was in high school I landed a job with Hewlett Packard…not because I had any connections there, but because I had extra skills on top of what they were asking for (for an intern position). I managed to move up the ladder there and what was supposed to be a one year internship turned into working there for 6 years.

Want to decrease debt? Do what it takes to spend less. Eat like a college student again, find the cheapest happy hour, and don’t buy things you don’t absolutely need.

Want to save? Find a way to put aside a little money each paycheck.

Want a better job? Search them out, apply for them. There are jobs everywhere. Just because you didn’t get a degree in a particular field, doesn’t mean you can’t learn what it takes to get a job in that field.

When you come on hard times, instead of complaining about how unfair life is, think how you can use it to your advantage. If things are going well, make sure to figure out your goals and then do what it takes to achieve them. For instance, my current goal is to go to bed. I will now get into bed.

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The car loans and home loans require collateral that needs to be furnished at the time of approval, if you have any bankruptcy records, the collateral increases. Certain people get allured by the life insurance quotes and get arrested in these gimmicks and can also apply for capital one credit card. The unsecured loan demands greater interest rates and proves expensive. Such loans serves the purpose of that class who cannot furnish or arrange any collateral.

Along the same lines as “Why do you want to get rich?” is the question of “is it immoral to get rich?”

Quite simply it is not. If you can’t figure it out for yourself, maybe you don’t deserve to get rich, but I will help you out anyway. Here are some reasons that it is not immoral to get rich.

1) The market does not care if you invest in it. It couldn’t care less. If you are not making money then you are wasting your opportunity, and someone else IS getting rich.

2) If you do not like a companie’s ethics, then don’t buy their stock. It’s that simple. Hell, buy their competitor’s stock!

3) Charity. Get rich, and donate your money to charity. Is helping thousands of people with food donations….or better yet spending millions to help people setup systems to feed themselves immoral? I think not.

4) Volunteer. The less you have to work, the more you can volunteer.

5) Being rich does not mean being greedy.

I might add more later, and there is a lot more to dive into but I am sick of hearing about people talking about “living in poverty” as if its the only way to be a good person. Give me a break.

A while back I read an article on one of the blogs that visit daily and it was a piece called “Why do you want to be rich?” and it provoked a lot of thought about the issue. I cant even remember what the reasons listed were, but after careful consideration I have come up with a lot of reasons to get rich.

1) Freedom. I want the freedom when I am older to do whatever job I want wherever I want. Old people get cold easily so I want to have a house somewhere tropical. Or maybe I just want a jouse somewhere tropical because tropical places rock.

2) Family. I come from a middle class family. Without my help my parents might have to work indefinitely. I full intend to have enough money to be able to take care of them when they are older. There are other family reasons as well. I have a younger brother in college and I can’t help him with tuition but he lives at my house for free… I would like to have enough money to help younger sisters out when they reach college age. Not to mention when I have kids of my own I would like to be able to help them. Plus, I want to be able to do things for my wife that I couldn’t if I didn’t have money.

3) Travel. I want to travel. Who doesn’t want to see the world? I have been to Austria and I have been to the Netherlands. Both of those times I didnt see NEAR as much as I wanted to see. I have never been somewhere tropical and I intend to visit a ton of tropical places. I want to play golf in Scotland. I want to go pet a kangaroo in Australia. Im not sure if they let you pet kangaroos, but I am going to try.

4) Free Time. I am a hobby person, a sports person, and an outdoors person. Its difficult to go mountain biking while sitting inside at a desk. Hell, as it is, I sometimes feel like the guy in the Pearl Jam “Evolution” video where the vines come out of the computer and grab him. There have been too many times where I spend a ton of time at work, come home, and am too tired to go outside and play. I want to go find the dumb hippies at the park and play ultimate frisbee with them while my money makes money for me.

5) Charity. The more money I make, the more money I can put towards helping people. I know very well I can do a lot more to help people with a huge bankroll. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

6) I can. Its a shame to live in the land of the American Dream and not take advantage of it. It is a waste not to.

7) Stuff. I like stuff. I want to have the big house that so that all the guys come over and play poker and then watch the game on the big TV where we arent all having to cram into a tiny room to watch a 13 inch TV (caution: massive exaggeration). I want to have a pool in the back yard. I love computers and gagets and cars. Im not materialistic in the sense that I NEED possessions, I can get along fine without them….I just like stuff.

There are plenty of other reasons to get rich. Some people want status, some people want stuff, some people just want security. Whatever the reasons, anyone that makes their own money has my respect. And the truth is, ANYONE can do it.