.The Art of Spending

Sanjib Saha | April 17, 2021

I GREW UP IN a middle-class family in Kolkata, India. Like most folks, my relationship with money was shaped by my parents’ financial habits. They were on different sides of the saver-spender continuum. My homemaking mother strove to live beneath our family’s means and never seemed to feel deprived. By contrast, my father—even with a modest salary from his government job—was focused on the art of spending.

At my mother’s insistence, my father bought most of our household supplies from wholesalers and cooperative stores, instead of the pricier local bazaar. Branded condiments and drink concentrates were missing from our grocery list, because my mother considered them overpriced. Instead, she joined a community food-processing center to learn how to make tomato ketchup, rose syrup and the like. She used to make enough for our family, as well as neighbors and relatives. My childhood friends still reminisce about the homemade mango-flavored drinks that she served them on hot summer days.

.Final Thoughts A Legacy Letter

Kathleen M. Rehl | February 12, 2021

YOUR ESTATE PLAN specifies what you want done with your money and possessions after your death. But your life’s treasures extend beyond these material items—to your values, heritage, relationships, hopes, dreams, memories and stories. You can share some of this with family and friends through a legacy letter, sometimes called an “ethical will.”

Not long before my mother died, she wrote her legacy letter. She asked that it be read during her memorial service. Her letter began: “To you, my family, who are reading my legacy letter, please know how important you are to me and how much I love you. Life has been such a fascinating and interesting adventure. I apologize for the times I wasn’t the Mom you would have liked me to be. Please know that I really tried my best. Forgive me if I have hurt you in any way.”

.Overnight Millionaires

Posted April 13, 2021 by Ben Carlson

It’s basically impossible to discover new TV shows, music or movies before anyone else these days because everything is dissected immediately by some corner of the Internet, social media or podcast But back when Mad Men came out in 2007 my wife and I were into the show before it became a huge success.1 I wore this as a badge of honor as people eventually played catch-up on Netflix. It remains one of my favorite shows of all time.

The star of the show, Jon Hamm, took some time to find his own success as well.

Hamm was 36 when he got cast to play the ever-mysterious Don Draper. Despite being a struggling actor for many years before finally hitting it big, Hamm credits finding success later in life with his ability to cope with his newfound fame:

I think if you find crazy success at a very young age, then it can be quite dangerous. The road to celebrity is littered with people who got too much too soon and weren’t equipped to handle it.

.Fit But Not Healthy, Wealthy But Not Rich

Your Money Life – Fit But Not Healthy

By Dave @ Accidental Fire · Published April 13, 2021

I took my training too far and became super-fit but not healthy. It got me thinking then, can you take the accumulation of money too far and end up in the same situation?

Can you become wealthy but not rich?

Let me give you my definitions of those two words for the purpose of this post. Being wealthy means having tons of money, plain and simple. How about being rich? If someone asks you “Do you lead a rich life?” most folks (I would hope) do not directly equate being rich to a monetary net worth or income level.

A rich life is defined by one’s relationships, happiness, and how much they give back and engage with others in the world.

.What To Do When a Teenager’s Tastes Turn Expensive

Trent Hamm March 24, 2021

Somewhere along the line, the toddlers and youngsters that used to fill my house with noise grew up into preteens and teenagers. The toys they once yearned for and constantly played with have slowly been packed away and given to charities, and their tastes have changed. They now want gadgets — cellphones, tablets, higher-end PCs — and our oldest is yearning for a car in the near future.

While a small weekly allowance used to work great for helping them buy the occasional toy that they wanted, a few bucks a week doesn’t really get them to the point of being able to buy the things they want. Sarah and I don’t want to simply hand them fistfuls of cash, either. Should they get a job? What’s the solution?

.The Twelve Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again

By Trent Hamm

As I’ve mentioned before, I get tons of email from people describing the personal finance problems in their lives, commenting critically on things I’ve written, and offering up their own stories of success. Not only that, as The Simple Dollar has become more and more popular, I’ve had more and more opportunities to talk about personal finance with people face to face.

What amazes me is that I see most of the same problems pop up time and time again. Sure, the specifics of the story change, as do the severity of the situation, but these same twelve items come up in almost every story I hear about financial problems. Even worse, quite often multiple items from this list appear in the same tale of woe. I’m not immune to them, either. At the time of my own financial meltdown, I was guilty of the majority of these things. It was only due to a commitment to fixing my financial situation that I was able to overcome these mistakes and set them right.

.Are You A Cheap Person? Or Are You Being Frugal?

ByTodd Kunsman

Saving money and finding ways to make your dollars stretch farther is not necessarily a bad thing by any means. After all, not everyone can live lavishly all the time or never worry about their finances. However, sometimes your money saving ways puts you in a category of being a cheap person. This means you are becoming too obsessed with money, savings, and looking for ways to never spend. The problem is others start to notice and you may begin alienating yourself from friends and family. Instead, you want to practice being frugal and scale back on being cheap.

But what is being cheap about? What are the signs of being a cheapskate? And how can you tell if you are being frugal or cheap? Don’t worry, I’ll explore all these questions below!

.Why It's so Hard to Talk About Money With Friends—and Why You Should Do It Anyway

Jolene Latimer Wed, April 7, 2021

Plenty of us feel totally comfortable talking with our close friends about almost every topic—sex, parenting, even politics. But what about money? In many cases, finances are the final conversational frontier among friends. While many old-school cultural taboos have been broken or at least softened, the stigma surrounding money talk remains—and it's a cultural norm that could actually be robbing women of the very conversations we need to improve our finances.

"You can be embarrassed if you have too little, or embarrassed if you have too much," says Diana Machado, who runs a business in Canada to help women find financial community. "There's no easy outlet to reach out and say, 'I need to talk about finances.'" Conversations about how to earn money and manage it are important in a world that still undervalues women's labor and financial education. Yet many women find themselves uncomfortable bringing up even the topics of salary or earnings (not to mention discussing financial hardships and discrimination) among friends, especially if they were taught growing up never to ask someone how much they make.

.The Do’s and Don’ts of Combining Finances With Your Partner

Sam DiSalvo Wed, April 7, 2021

One of the many things that became “real” once my husband and I got married is our finances. For four years, our only discussion about money was in the notes of Venmo transactions. I had no idea how much he made, and he had no idea how much I made; we just knew we had enough money to split dinners via Venmo.

That all changed when we moved in together and, shortly after, got married. Our short financial conversations had to become longer and include topics such as salaries, taxes and “how come you get so many Amazon packages?”

Here’s what my husband and I have learned after a few terrifying-but-worth-it conversations about combining our finances.