Last week it was discovered that some 143 million American’s had their personal information exposed during a data breach at Equifax. If you have a credit report, then it is highly likely that your information was compromised. According to Equifax, the breach lasted from Mid-May through July and during that time, the hackers were able to access people’s names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and possibly driver’s license numbers. In addition, they stole credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 people and legal documents with personal identifying information for another 182,000. How To Determine If Your Information Was Stolen? In order […]
The Time Value of Money and Why People Aren’t Rationale
I’m amazed sometimes at just how irrational people can be, especially when it comes to a subject like the time value of money. I have been fascinated by this topic ever since I first started learning about it in my financial management class in college. Back then, we didn’t have fancy online calculators and excel was barely even a thing. If you wanted to figure out how much a dollar would be worth in 20 years at 10% interest, you had to use a table of multipliers to figure it out. Related: How to get started investing What I’m saying is, […]
My 5 Year Goals… An Exercise from “Will It Fly” by Pat Flynn
I’m a big fan of Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income Blog. What I love about Pat is that he is a family guy, like me, and he is a genuinely nice person. He is legitimately interested in how he can help other people, which has built him a huge following of passionate, loyal fans. I met him in February of 2016 at the pre-party for the Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Diego. He was just literally standing in a corner, by himself, enjoying a drink. I walked up and introduced myself and we talked for maybe 10-15 […]
Financial Snapshot for August 31, 2017 – I Broke Through $200k!
This post contains affiliate links. If you decide to click on a link for a product I recommend and sign up for that service, we will receive a small commission. This helps to defray the cost of this website. Thank you for supporting me! It’s hard to believe it has been three months since I started tracking my net worth. In case you missed the previous reports, you can check them out here: June 2017 – First report, net worth $169,628 July 2017 – $194,064 (+$24,436, 14.41%) There was a big move between June and July, in large part because I started […]
What NOT to Do If You Win the Lottery
Last week, Mavis Wanczyk, a 53-year-old hospital worker in Springfield, Mass. won the $758.7 million Powerball jackpot. She elected to take the cash prize option of $480.5 million and will clear $336 million after taxes. Not a bad payday. Unfortunately for Mavis (or “Mave” as she likes to be called), she should have read this article before talking to anyone or doing anything else with that winning ticket (other than sign the back of it and take a picture of it with her phone). What Mavis probably didn’t understand when she found out that she had won is that nearly […]
Weekly Roundup for August 28, 2017
Last week was a crazy week for me personally, as I was out of the office almost the entire week in CLE’s and mediation. But you don’t care about that. What you might care about is that I started a Pinterest Page on the recommendation of Nick Loper of Side Hustle Nation. He interviewed Rosemarie Groner from The Busy Budgeter on his podcast about how she was able to exponentially grow her blog traffic using Pinterest, and her tips and advice made a lot of sense to me. Granted, it has been at least a couple years since that episode aired, so the […]
10 Nuggets of Financial Advice I Wish I Knew in My 20’s
It’s absolutely amazing at how fast time flies by. Last night I was out with a buddy of mine, the first time I had really been “out” at the bars in quite a long time. And as I watched all these 20-something millenials living it up and having a great time, I started to think about what I was doing when I was in my early 20’s, just after graduating from college. And then I started thinking about what I wasn’t doing… at least as far as my finances were concerned. Bottom line – I made a lot of financial mistakes […]
Why Personal Finance is Harder for Solopreneurs, and What to Do About It
Before I dig deeper into why I feel that personal finance is harder for solopreneurs, I must share a little bit more background with you. According to Wikipedia, a solopreneur is the “sole owner of an independent company.” In other words, a solopreneur is an entrepreneur that works alone. On a personal level, I have been a solopreneur almost exclusively for the past 12 years. Since 2005, I’ve owned and operated my own “law firm” (as I loosely define that term). During that time, I’ve worked alone, had an assistant, had my wife help me, and hired contract attorneys to […]
Should I Get a Job?
I talk a lot on this blog about my net worth, but so far I haven’t talked much about my income. As most of you know, I’m a self-employed lawyer by day, and a financial blogger by early morning/night. Right now I’m struggling to decide whether I should find a job at a law firm or company (as in-house counsel), or remain self-employed. But before we get into why I would want to leave the life of the solopreneur to sell my soul to a corporation or large law firm, let me give you a little backstory. The entire reason I […]
Mid-Week Roundup – August 17, 2017
Here are a few nuggets from the financial blogosphere this week… How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Money and Quit My Job. This is a guest post by Mr. 1500 on J. Money’s Budgets are Sexy blog. It’s a nice little snapshot of how Mr. 1500 is doing since he retired early at the ripe old age of 43 four months ago. (Teaser alert: He’s doing fine and life seems to be pretty good for him!) The Top Reasons to Start Investing in an HSA Right Now. Great article by Derek from Money By Dad on why you should […]