.5 Tips for Retiring a Millionaire From ‘Shark Tank’ Star Kevin O’Leary

by Robin Hartill, CFP®

Ready to start investing your way to millionaire status? Follow these five investing tips from O’Leary.

1. Expect saving money to be really hard.

O’Leary believes that pretty much everyone is wasting money on something. But when you commit to saving and investing that money instead, keeping that commitment isn’t easy. “No matter what happens that week, no matter how bad that week was, you have to have the discipline of finding $100 and putting it to work,” he said.

The world wants to take money from you, the “Shark Tank” star says. You’re bombarded with the temptation to spend money, whether it’s on new jeans, sneakers, games or phones.

“For all the stuff that the rest of the world wants you to give them money for, you have to have discipline,” he said. “And it’s really hard to say, ‘No. This $100 is for me.’”

.Anthony ONeal Can Help You Get Out of Debt

By Jamie Friedlander | October 21, 2020 | 0

When Anthony ONeal was 19 years old, he got kicked out of college for participating in a fraternity hazing event. He had racked up $35,000 in debt—a combination of credit card bills, furniture bills and student loans. He was homeless and sleeping in his old, run-down car. He showered at the YMCA.

ONeal’s dad eventually agreed to let him move back in with him, under the condition that he’d get his life—and finances—in order. He handed him an old-school Dave Ramsey budget form to get started.

Now 36, ONeal is not only thriving financially, but he is a personal finance expert, a national best-selling author and speaker with Ramsey Solutions who regularly joins Dave Ramsey’s nationally recognized personal finance show. He’s debt-free and recently purchased his first home in Columbia, Tennessee—a 2,500-square-foot custom build. He just bought his dream car and recently sent his parents on vacation abroad for the first time in their lives. He’s written three books about student loan debt, although he’s planning to expand to other finance topics beginning with his fourth. He hosts a popular YouTube show, and has a robust social media presence, with more than 250,000 followers.

.Time Limited

Jonathan Clements | December 19, 2020

OUR MOST PRECIOUS resource is time. I’m determined to waste as little as possible.

Unless we’re at death’s door, none of us knows how much time we have, but we all know it’s limited. Yes, money is also limited—but, if we squander money, there’s always a chance we can make it back. Time lost, by contrast, is gone forever.

My preoccupation with time and its dwindling supply has grown as I’ve grown older. I may be patient with my investments, but I’m not patient with much else. After 58 years of trial and error, I know how I want to spend my days—and what miseries I want to avoid. That’s led me to adopt nine strategies:

1. Fix problems quickly. Faced with a distasteful task, I’m often tempted to put it off until next week or next month. This is foolish. The distasteful task—calling customer service, dealing with my tax return, cleaning out the basement—is going to cost me time, but now I’ve compounded that loss by spending unnecessary days contemplating the need to do it.

.How to Find a Financial Advisor You Can Trust

By Jeff Desjardin

More and more people are using financial advisors to help them navigate the complex journey to financial freedom.

But although more Americans are seeking advice on matters of personal finance, they are also less sure that the advice they are getting is trustworthy.

Unfortunately, a growing amount of Americans see advisors as serving their companies’ best interests rather than their own best interests. According to a survey by The National Association of Retirement Plan Participants (NARPP), 60% of Americans now feel this way compared to just 25% of respondents in 2010.

.Could Knowing Your ‘Money Script’ Help Your Finances?

By Charlotte Cowles@charlottecowles My Two Cents Nov. 5, 2020

One thing I hate about most money advice is that it tells you what you should be doing, as if you didn’t already know. Most of us are aware that we need to spend less, save more, and plan better (thanks for the reminder). To me, the real question is how you actually get yourself to do those things, and what’s making it so hard.

Enter “money scripts,” also known as “money stories,” a concept that has been tossed around by financial therapists for years and more recently edged into mainstream financial planning. Loosely defined, money scripts are “what you learned about money from your upbringing, how you responded or rebelled, and what your current money dynamics and patterns are,” says Bari Tessler, a financial therapist and author of The Art of Money.

.The 6 Biggest Mistakes Ordinary Investors Make

By Jeff Desjardins

In many areas of life, we are often our own worst enemies. The realm of personal finance is no different. What’s the biggest threat to achieving financial independence? Unfortunately, it’s your own brain. You can invest in all the right things, minimize fees and taxes, and even diversify your holdings. But if you fail to master your own psychology, it’s still possible to fall victim to financial self-sabotage.

The Brain’s Design

Today’s infographic is from Tony Robbins, and it uses data and talking points from his #1 Best Selling book Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook, which is now available on paperback. The graphic is based on a chapter in the book that reveals the key psychological limitations of the human brain. It turns out that these fallible survival instincts have been hardwired into our brains over millions of years, and they become very troublesome when we try to make rational financial decisions.

.How To Live Your Best Life Without a Lot of Money

September 18, 2019 by One Frugal Girl

Live Your Best Life

I sit on the floor, surrounded by a group of smiling first graders. “What do you want to be when you grow up,” I ask. Their hands shoot up high into the air as they enthusiastically call out their answers.

“A doctor.” “A nurse.” “A basketball player.” “A builder.” “A teacher.” “A zookeeper.”

They are so excited they have a hard time waiting for their turn to share. As we go around the room, each child speaks confidently about their desired career. Their futures are full of possibilities. They have big plans to live their best life and no fear that they may fail. After class, I reminiscence about my childhood desires when an unexpected longing arises from deep within. A desire to go back to a time before obligations, bills and responsibilities altered my goals. A desire to live the best life I dreamed about as a kid.

The How’s and Why’s of Taxing Your Child’s Allowance Money

Trent Hamm Founder of The Simple Dollar Last Updated: December 15, 2020

A few years ago, when I was using TurboTax to prepare our family’s income tax return, my youngest child hopped up on my lap. He had the insatiable curiosity that only a five-year-old can possess, and thus he immediately began peppering me with questions. What are you doing? What are income taxes? Why do you have to pay that money?

As I explained to him the basics of income taxes, I realized that the best way to teach the lesson of taxes to him was to run a little experiment on his allowance, along with his older siblings. What could I actually teach them about taxes that would feel like a learning experience and not like punishment?

This is a question many parents ask themselves when teaching their children about money basics. Giving a child an allowance is a pretty standard financial teaching tool, but how do taxes fit into this?

.Lost and Found

Dennis Friedman April 14, 2020

Sometimes, when we’re doing our estate planning, we get so involved with the financial side that we lose track of other things that might have special meaning for our loved ones.

WHEN MY FATHER died in 2012, my mother gave me his wedding ring as a keepsake—but I lost it. I turned my house upside down trying to find it. When my mother was alive, I prayed she wouldn’t ask to see the ring, because I didn’t know what I’d tell her.

I felt terrible that I had lost something that meant so much to my father, and I was upset with myself for not taking better care of it. I know that I’m terrible when it comes to protecting my valuables. Like a dog that hides his bone, I hide things in my house—but forget where.

.He Gets, She Gets

James McGlynn Humble Dollar December 15, 2020

IF YOU DESIGNATE beneficiaries for your retirement accounts, that’s usually a surefire way to pass those assets directly to your desired heirs without going through probate—but not always.

Because those beneficiary designations are so important, you should verify your choices every year in case there’s a change due to, say, marriage, birth, divorce or death. Especially marriage and divorce. Which brings me to a crucial issue: When dealing with IRA and 401(k) beneficiary designations, there’s a key difference when it comes to your spouse.

In general, a spouse who hasn’t been named beneficiary of an IRA isn’t entitled to inherit it. Unlike 401(k) plans, IRAs aren’t governed by ERISA—the Employee Retirement Income Security Act—so these accounts don’t have the same protections for spouses.

.Help Today’s Self

Adam M. Grossman December 13, 2020

SO MUCH OF PERSONAL finance is focused on our future self—and that’s a challenge. Think about the standard prescriptions: Open an IRA. Maximize your 401(k). Save for college. Save for retirement. Build an estate plan.

These are all about the future—often the very distant future. An enormous amount of time and energy is spent planning for “someday.” But it’s equally important to focus on things that can be done to benefit you today. As we head into year-end, it’s a good time to conduct some financial housekeeping along those lines. Here are eight recommendations:

1. Organization. Over the course of a career, it’s not uncommon to wind up with a collection of financial accounts, including multiple IRAs and 401(k)s from old jobs. Often these can be combined, making your finances simpler to monitor and manage. But this doesn’t always happen—and not just because folks are deterred by the paperwork involved. Another reason: Many people don’t even realize it’s possible. Fortunately, the IRS provides this handy chart showing exactly which accounts can and can’t be merged together.