A few weeks ago, I asked all of your advice on whether we should refinance our mortgage.  At the time, we had just begun thinking about it and were still working out the numbers.  As you can probably guess from the title of this article, we went ahead and did it. So, here’s why.  Part [...]

If you’re ready to make a change and get your finances in order, you need to check out the 31 Days to a Better Bank Balance by my Yakezie friend, Money Crush! Each post contains a great nugget of personal finance wisdom and a task/step that you can complete that very day to improve your [...]

It wasn’t that long ago that we were talking about how far home sales had dropped (a new record low at the time) and the causes behind it.  It was just announced (yesterday or today) that new home sales have “unexpectedly” dropped another 12.4% to a new all time record low. To be completely honest, [...]

Invariably, every few months, we get a wave of posts talking about “what would you do if you won $x,xxx,xxx?”  Or, what you would do with a smaller windfall.  And invariably, a majority of the people talk about how they would save the money.  And in some cases they are right.  But, most of the [...]

In our house, we have a gas fueled furnace for heat and an electric fueled central air unit.  So, as you can likely deduce, our gas bill is much higher in the winter months and our electric bill is much higher in the summer months.  But, our bill hardly ever fluctuates.  Why is that?  We’ve [...]

As you all know, I’ve been a member of the Yakezie group for quite a few months now.  The first phase of the group was to improve our Alexa rankings by learning to work together, and build each other up.  I’m happy to say that I went from a ranking of about 2,000,000 to just [...]

Freedom! Be your own boss! There are plenty of people out there that will tell you that starting your own business is the only way to go. You can set your own hours, and do what you are passionate about. And, sometimes those things happen. Eventually, you might be able to set your own hours.  [...]

Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s just how quickly you discover them and if you recover and learn from them that makes the difference.  Make a mistake and ignore it, and you’re likely headed for disaster.  Learn from the mistake, and avoid making it again, and you just might save yourself. Recently, while catching up on our [...]

Are you a Dissaver?  If you don’t even think that’s a word, don’t worry.  I didn’t think it was either until I looked it up.  And believe it or not, it is a word.  Here’s the definition or Dissave on dictionary.com. As you can probably guess, someone who dissaves is someone who lives beyond their [...]

Several things have happened recently that have made me decide that it’s time to upgrade the way I track my finances.  First, the software I currently use (Microsoft Money 2006) is no longer supported.  At some point it’s not going to work anymore.  Not for a while, but that combined with other factors says it [...]