This post is the latest in my series on the Best Personal Finance Books of All Time. As a refresher, we've already covered: The Millionaire Next Door The Richest Man in Babylon Bogleheads' Guide to Investing The Automatic Millionaire Today we'll discuss Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2016
How Can This ESI Reader Buy a Business?
Here's an email I received yesterday from a reader: I am writing to get your advice (or maybe the advice of your readers) on how to go about buying out the current owner of the company I work for, or going out on my own. Some history of the company I currently work for: They are a small communications company with less than 20 employees. The have been in business … [Read more...]
Costco Car Pricing is Good, But Not Better than My Method
Summary: This post reviews the Costco car buying program and its associated pricing compared to negotiating a purchase on your own. After I got a great deal on my latest car purchase using my tried and true method for saving a fortune on a car I was in Costco shopping a bit. As I exited the store, I saw a small flyer on the Costco car buying program. Their car-buying … [Read more...]
Can This ESI Reader Retire?
Here's an interesting, real-life situation that I'd like to get feedback on. I know there are some really smart ESI readers out there, and I need your thoughts. The other day I received the following email from a reader (FYI, I've edited a bit for brevity but haven't changed the substance of our conversation): I would greatly appreciate your opinion on my current … [Read more...]
Five Steps to Six Figures in Seven Years
As you can tell from the title, this piece is kind of provocative. That's the way I like it. :) I actually wrote this post several years ago and am updating it now. The promise in the title is even easier now than it was then and much easier than it was for me when I completed the task almost 25 years ago. Of course, six figures isn't what it used to be either, but I'm … [Read more...]
Recent Credit Card Moves
Since I wrote How to Earn Thousands with Credit Card Rewards there has been a good amount of change in my credit card strategy. I thought I'd share those changes with you and hear what you are doing these days with your card strategy. FYI, Quicken shows that I have redeemed about $830 so far in cash back rewards this year. Not bad, huh? That said, some of the monies … [Read more...]
My Retirement Story, Part 3
My last post was the second in the series on my retirement. If you missed it or the previous one, post one was titled I Retired! and post two was My Retirement Story, Part 2. With that said, let's continue the story. Working Out the Financials Given the bad situation at work (my boss, the business, and my lack of interest) as well as my personal desire to accomplish … [Read more...]
My Retirement Story, Part 2
Last time we started a series of posts on my retirement. If you missed that and want to read it, check out I Retired! Let's pick up where we left off. Business Results Lagging Our business was "ok" but not great. Then the perfect storm hit. Our first quarter had been propped up by a seasonal selling event where customers had to buy from us. The second quarter had … [Read more...]
I Retired!!!
Yep, I retired. At 52. Feels great. :) I'll give you all the details of why, how, etc. over three posts -- all this week. Thinking About Retirement In case you all haven't noticed, I've been writing a lot lately about retirement. And not just retirement in general, but my retirement specifically. For example, consider these posts: Various Forms of Retirement … [Read more...]
My Jobs, Introduction to the Real World
I've now shared my pre-college jobs, my college jobs, and the jobs I held while in graduate school. Today we'll cover my first "real" job. The fact that I had this job at all was somewhat of a miracle. I had set a goal of working for this Fortune 500 (top 25) years before in undergraduate school. The professor classified them as "the best" company that did what I wanted to … [Read more...]
