You Can Do It Personal Finance

mom and dad finance

Can you really do it? Sure, but probably not the way you’re reading about in that personal finance tips article. Real Do It Yourself Personal Finance I’m going to be honest. As a professional financial advisor and Certified Financial Planner for several years, I never helped anyone quit their job to pursue their passion, or side business. I helped plenty of people retire, but who kept working at something smaller, easier, or better liked. I could have helped someone do that, but that isn’t actually why people come to financial planners, or at least that’s not why people who are willing to pay for professional advice come to financial planners. The trick to financial planning is that it is all about achieving long-term financial goals. Long-term. That’s the catch. A lot of people are not interested in long-term. They want to get rich quick, but there is a problem. After a few decades of various get rich quick schemes being pedaled around, most people in their prime working years no longer believe in get rich quick. For them, it’s about get successful quick by retiring early, or passive income, or quitting to start their own business. The thing is though, …

Read More

Paying Off Your House Mortgages and Money Psychology

By any measure, the math says that paying off your home is not a smart move financially. Then why is it that so many people see paying off their home as a great goal? There are three reasons really. One is out of date thinking, the other is a financial myopia, the last one is No Discipline Syndrome. Out of Date Out of date thinking, or as I like to call it “Old Timey Wisdom” (like in Oh Brother Where Are’t Thou – Old Timey Music). Old Timey Wisdom is wisdom that was once true in different times but may not hold up today. Just one generation ago, paying off your house meant financial security. Often, this was a major deal to this generation, because one generation before a lot of people lost their homes at various times, but most notably during the Great Depression. The wisdom became that as long as your house was paid off, you never had to worry about a huge part of your financial security. So what is different today than just a few decades ago? Well, then, it was likely that the first house you bought could be the one you lived in your …

Read More