Personal Finance

One of the main reasons real estate is so attractive as an asset class is its privileged tax treatment. Understanding the full implications of real estate taxes for both primary residences and income properties is a vital part of being a real estate investor.

Given the recent volatility in the market, I’ve been realizing that passive income is an incredibly effective hedge against a recession, if and when it comes. If I lost my job, even a small passive income stream could give me the extra month or two I need to find a new one during a recession.

Because investing is so vital and so confusing, most people decide to hire an investment advisor instead of doing the work themselves. Investment advisors serve a vital role, but depending on the way they are compensated, they can also seriously harm the long term performance of a portfolio. Today, I will take a deep look into what financial advisors do, how they are compensated, and a selection of other tools and resources that can help with financial planning and investments.

Last week I looked into the two worst work from home jobs I ever had. This week, I am going to tell you the inside story behind my (budding) success with RFG, my ups and downs, and plans for the future. Note: this post was written by me and originally published on The Money Mix.

Online jobs are awesome. I want to make my own hours, and work in my socks if I want to. I’ve tried a few, but they never had the leverage and earnings that made it worth my time.

It takes a big pot of money to retire early. And if you want to have a nice lifestyle as well, it takes millions to safely retire early. But, if you are smart about your taxes, you can reduce those numbers significantly. Here's the smartest ways to keep your income taxes low for FIRE.

There are hundreds of different suggestions for how much you should spend on a car, but they all share one common fault: they assume we are all the same! Use this interactive calculator to type in your situation and preferences and see how much you could spend on a car.

If you have a little bit of money saved up, then you probably are interested in protecting it. Umbrella insurance is a low cost way to mitigate risks and protect yourself from personal liability lawsuits and claims.

As many of you know, I am a marketer at a startup. That’s one of many reasons why I write about startups and equity compensation all the time. Like, maybe too much, but I digress. Although I love my job, someday I’d like to leave the startup world to be an entrepreneur. My problem is that I don’t have any genius ideas for a business. I am just into entrepreneurship, finance, and finding efficiencies. So where does that leave me? Enter the search fund.

It’s easy to get discouraged by investing. With interest rates hovering at 3-5%, even modest retirement budgets require well over a million dollars in investments to work properly (e.g., $1,000,000 x 3% = $30,000). Many people get discouraged because they don’t have much saved now, but the truth is that the most important thing in any retirement plan is making repetitive, reliable recurring investments.

Time is the most precious commodity we have, but people waste it all the time because they don’t know its value. Use this interactive calculator to get a better idea of what your time is REALLY worth to you.

At the end of the day, our biggest limitation is what we think that we can do.

I'm not sure what's wrong with me exactly, but when I see EVERYONE agreeing on something, I always want to disagree. So i’ll say it: I don’t think a recession is imminent.

How much do I need to make from my passive income streams to #fatFIRE (retiring early without extreme frugality)? Here’s my plan, and my own #fatfire retirement calculator.

Although my eventual goal is #FI, I derive the largest part of my income from good old fashioned American work. Actually, it's new fashioned American techwork, complete with standing desks and kegerators. I've got it pretty good but I'll have to move on and choose between job offers someday.

Recently, I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw this interesting exchange between @ritholtz and @mrmoneymoustache: when can you REALLY call yourself retired?

With the current expansion nearing its tenth year, it's actually possible that someone could have already worked a third of their professional career knowing nothing but expansion. I figured it might be interesting to describe the experience of a recession for all of those that have never known one, and provide some tips to soften the blows.

I’ve repeatedly seen two narratives told over and over again. First of all, debt is bad. Second, although debt is bad, having a mortgage is alright because it acts like a forced savings plan, slowly enabling borrowers to build wealth. But can't the “forced savings plan” idea can be extended beyond simply mortgage debt, if executed intelligently with low interest, short term debt?

Life is expensive, and that can make it really hard to save. With rent, cell phones, cars, healthcare, food, childcare, vacations and thousands of other little costs, it’s not unusual for someone to have 80-90% of their income disappear into the ether. Lately, I’ve been thinking about ways I can try to turn at least some of those recurring payments into recurring investments, or at least mitigate them so I don’t lose so much of my income to recurring expenses each month.

Private mortgage insurance (PMI) is one of the biggest ripoffs in real estate. Many people that have it don’t need it, and could remove it. Use this calculator to see if you qualify.

We may not know when the next recession will come, but one thing's for certain: it's easier to plan for it BEFORE it begins, when times are still good. Here's my plan.

The best part about personal financial is that everyone has a personal take on it. As I've been writing over the past three months, I've also been reading a considerable amount of material from other personal finance blogs. One of the things that's interested me the most is the #FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement. Since this is my personal, personal finance blog, I'll come right out and say that I'm not #FIRE-ing. Here's why:

How much do I need to retire? I made this easy calculator to find out.

Portfolio Visualizer is a comprehensive suite of investment analysis tools that you used to have to pay thousands of dollars for, but thanks to the interwebs, is now free. Here’s what you can do with it.

I've had a couple of questions swirling around my mind recently, and for whatever reason they all had to do Unicorns (startups value at $1b or more). 

Go work for a startup! If you work in technology, chances are you've heard this advice, or you've thought about it on your own, or you're already working for a startup. In any case, I've noticed that there are tons of questions on Quora and Reddit and various other sites with people wondering how to find the "right" startup to join, which usually seems to actually mean "how do I choose a company that's going to make me rich." That's a little narrow-minded maybe, but it's reasonable to wonder how to find a company worth joining.

As I said in my welcome post, I’m going to try to skip the basic stuff in this blog. There’s no way I am going to be able to cover “setting up an emergency fund” any better than Dave Ramsey, or all of the hacks that emulate him. But… this first topic is something that would genuinely be useful for anyone. It’s certainly essential if you plan on saving and investing in any serious amount.