Financial Advice: Big Ticket Purchases

Here's a quick tip for those times when you're buying something large, like a car, boat, house, or even an expensive vacation. When you're thinking about the price of something, if the phrase "I think I can probably afford that," ever pops up, then the answer is you can not afford it. The reason is simply because if you're contemplating whether or not you can afford something, it means that you're on the cusp of it being too expensive. Now whatever it is that you're thinking of buying, whether it's that new house or a new car, there are going to be a lot of other expenses that will pop up and ruin those well laid plans.

So my advice is to downsize the purchase to something where you don't even have to think if you can afford or not.

Enough With the Stuff Already

There seems to be too much "stuff" in our lives these days. There's too much stuff that we buy. Too much stuff that we eat. Too much stuff that we read. Too much stuff that we watch. There is so much "stuff" eating away the time, that sometimes it can become a huge burden. We get weighed down by all this stuff that we have. The physical stuff takes up room, requires maintenance, requires our money, while other stuff (like all that "stuff" on the internet) requires our time.

Maybe it's time to say enough already. Enough with the stuff. It's getting to be too much, too fast, and even after we have all this stuff, we're not any happier for it. Your new iPhone may make it amazingly easy to surf the internet or catch up on email, but there's a price to be paid for that. How often to you then feel the need to be surfing the internet or checking email? Isn't that how "crackberry" users got their name? Or watch a typical teen these days who spends most of his time with his face buried in a screen of some sort.

While I understand that times change and technology changes the way we live our lives, I also understand that today we are letting this stuff take control. At one time we had stuff, but now the stuff has us.

So what is this blog? It's my way to point out the way I see things today and to put to use a lot of the wisdom I have spent many decades gathering. I hope you enjoy and come back often.