Age Your Financial Attitude for Greater Happiness

It seems that old, white male Republicans have an edge on happiness.  Before you go “ewwwwww – who wants to be one of those”, I’m not proposing that anyone change genders or political affiliations. However, let’s consider the financial fine print of these findings (or at least my interpretation of them). Read more

Escaping High Taxes

No long ago I wrote about how the states receiving the most stimulus money were not changing their tax and spend ways and were generally not doing their citizens any favors with the new federal money. I compared a few of these tax and spend states – New York and California – with states having lower tax burdens, like North Carolina. Some of the comments were critical of my views, including mentioning all of the wonderful high paying jobs that could be found in the high tax states compared to other states.

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Do You Need a Mortgage Broker?

I have never used a mortgage broker, preferring to be more personally involved in loan investigation and due diligence. Lots of others have used them and I wonder how much that has contributed to our recent financial meltdown. Read more

A Public Failure to Walk the Money Talk

How many of us have “talked the talk” but not “walked the walk”? Well, add a money reporter from the New York Times to the list.

Mr. ToughMoneyLove doesn’t particularly like beating a man when he is down, but when you write about your own stupidity to sell papers and books, I’m all over it. Read more

Will You Feel Sorry for GM Bondholders?

Last year I wrote about feeling sorry for a GM retiree who might have to go back to work in his 50′s.

Boo hoo.  Mr. ToughMoneyLove was not sympathetic.

Alas, it’s getting worse. Read more

Battling Conventional Telecom and Media Providers

Yesterday I prevailed in my little struggle with AT&T over saving money on our landline telephone. Since I was unable to fully downgrade our service using online account management, I connected to the site as a potential new customer so I could engage the online, real-time chat person/robot. When she/it responded with an oh-so-charming “how can I help you today”, I hit her with the query: “I want to fully downsize my account to the bare minimum.” Her response: “I do not have the resources to help you with this issue – please call ……”  Nice. Not having the “resources” is an obfuscatory way of saying “it’s not gonna be that easy sucker.” Read more

For Some Jobs, this May be as Good as it Gets

Have you ever asked yourself: Is this as good as it gets? If not, maybe you should start thinking about that question now.

Some pundits are already calling the the beginning of the end of the recession, including exhortations to aggressively buy into to the current (sort-of) rally in market. That may be good for investors willing to take on risk once again. Read more

Whittling Away at the Expense Ledger

Mrs. ToughMoneyLove and I are continuing to look at our monthly expenses for the purpose of eliminating or reducing those for which we receive little benefit. Part of this process is a natural consequence of becoming empty nesters (almost). Another part arises from our desire to re-direct financial resources to expenses that we anticipate will bring us the greatest pleasure now and into our retirement future. Read more

Devaluation of the College Degree

If you graduated from college in the 70′s or 80′s, get ready to be extra proud of that degree. The next generation of college graduates will also be receiving degrees. But many of them won’t be worth much compared to yours. I will explain. Read more

States Can’t Get it Right on Education Funding

Most of the states that have started lotteries have done so on the premise that it will benefit higher education.

What a crock that is. Read more

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