• The Ashes

    No one ever really taught me much about handling money. What I knew about it as a child was that we didn’t have much of it. I grew up believing we were poor, although I don’t remember ever going without anything I needed. I remember being told things were too expensive and I remember working Read more

  • FI – Financial Independence

    What does financial independence mean to you? Is it a number? A time frame? What is financially independent? What does it look like? These are questions I never really asked myself before until recently. Early this year I reached out to a friend whose advice I value about some financial choices I was weighing at Read more

  • Financial Responsibility in Recovery: Beyond Sobriety

    What comes to mind when you think of the Recovery Community? What kind of people do you think of? Addicts? Alcoholics? Homeless people? People from dysfunctional families? Broken families? People with criminal backgrounds? What about the word recovery? Does it bring to mind 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, or any of the other Read more

  • Renting vs. Owning: Making Informed Decisions for Your Future

    After a handful of years working very hard to repair rebuild my credit, a whole new adulting idea came to mind. The thought of owning my own home. I made a call to a realtor last year and made it very clear that I wasn’t ready to buy, but that I wanted to gather information Read more

  • Credit Repair – Negative Items

    Using credit wisely is the best way to avoid the need to “repair” credit. But for many of us, this lesson is learned the hard way long after our credit reports show a multitude of late payments and even collections. We find ourselves with an attitude of acceptance that our credit is just “ruined” and Read more

  • Effective Credit Card Usage: Benefits, Cautions, and Guidelines

    If you use credit cards wisely, you can benefit from a lot of perks, depending on what that card offers. For example, if your card has a cash back benefit, you earn money as you use the card, and can generally trade in this money for a credit to your account, a gift card, use Read more

  • Investment Options: Individual Stocks, Mutual Funds, and Index Funds

    Any time you put money aside, you are making an investment in your future. That may be in the form of saving for a future purchase, a future expense, an emergency fund, a new car, a home, retirement, etc. If you hold that money in cash, it actually loses value because inflation causes the value Read more

  • Individual Retirement Accounts

    It may be that a work sponsored retirement account is not an option for you. Or maybe it is but they don’t offer a match. Perhaps there aren’t a lot of good choices of fund options in the work sponsored plan. This is common. If you have a work sponsored plan available and your company Read more

  • Retirement – Work Options

    If you don’t want to live on Social Security in your golden years, which we’ve already discussed, is not going to replace your income when you want to retire, you need another plan. What do you want your life to look like when you’re in your 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s? Do you want your standard Read more

  • Social Security and Retirement

    There are so many people who put off thinking about saving for retirement believing they will “catch up later”. It doesn’t seem so urgent when it’s decades away. And it always feels like there is time to do something about it, until there isn’t. Social Security was designed to help prevent poverty for people who Read more

  • Debt-Free Transportation: Tips for Ditching Car Loans and Interest Payments

    A vehicle is one of the most expensive things you will ever buy and most of us need, or at least believe we need, a car. If you live in an area that doesn’t have an easily accessible public transportation system, you probably need one. Owning a car is expensive. You have to pay for Read more