You already know that I like Lending Club as an investment vehicle.  The returns are good (or great, depending on your default rate), and I like the idea that my money isn’t going to line the pockets of some corporation, but is being used to help someone who needs a loan get a better rate [...]

It’s important to trust your financial advisor. A few years ago I caught a story on the local news about a financial advisor from my hometown who was arrested for violating that trust. He had been a financial advisor for many years and was charged with financial exploitation of the elderly. In one instance, he [...]

A recent article on CNNMoney.com caught my eye – it’s titled “Many don’t have $2,000 for a rainy day.” Since one of my cardinal rules for retirement planning is that you should have 6 months of spending in the bank (or easily accessible, within 3 days), I read this article with interest. The CNNMoney.com article [...]

Some people suffer from a certain form of optimistic financial denial.  They look at part of someone else’s circumstances and use that to justify their own way of life, without considering the entire picture.  Take, for example, a relative I have that I will call Stacey (not her real name).  Stacey is nearing retirement, and [...]

According to a new report by the American Express Spending and Saving Tracker, 15% of the American citizens plan to augment their savings in 2011; as compared to a poll in 2010 and 40% say there will be no changes in their spending behavior this year. Are the Americans planning to spend more dollars in [...]

Not to be confused with the scales that our friend Lady Justice carries around with her everywhere, the scales of finance are a bit different in function.  To truly weigh something, using a scale, you load up one side of the scale with that which you want to weigh and then put weights of a [...]

Guest blog post by Lisa Cintron of Advisorworld.com With the price of gold challenging new all-time highs on a regular basis, more and more investors have begun to consider if the commodity should be a part of their retirement plan. Classically overlooked for multiple reasons, given the current economic landscape, gold should be an element [...]

Early Retirement Extreme By: Jacob Lund Fisker When many of us think of retirement, we think of some far off time in our future when we’ve saved enough money and reached an age where the government will allow us to withdraw our money without significant penalties.  When Jacob Lund Fisker thinks about retirement, he’s thinking [...]

We were recently told that our defined benefits plan was being taken away.  For those that are confused, a defined benefits plan is what is normally called a pension.  For me, I haven’t been around long enough for it to really affect me.  Some, who have been around for a very long time and are [...]

We already know that a good portion of saving money (both saving in savings accounts and saving on spending) can be determining whether something that we think we need is really a need or not and whether we could really do without that need. The underlying problem there is that as we become more affluent, [...]