Tag: spending
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A basic guide to financial planning
There is only one job of a financial plan. It is to make sure you have the money you need when you need it. And there are 4 simple steps to complete. Step 1: Spend less than you earn A financial plan cannot work if you don’t have money left over. For the plan to…
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The art of spending money
and the tragedy of not doing so. Masashi, 76, and Hisako, 74, are married. They retired with $350,000. They also have a pension of over $2000 per month. They were frugal and they saved for retirement. And they regret it. Morgan Housel writes about why they aren’t the only ones in The Art of Spending…
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A Singaporean retired at 35. What can we learn from him?
As I was writing another blog post, I saw that someone shared a CNA video. I was stunned. If you haven’t seen the video, you can watch it here: Colin Lau retired at 35. He has financial freedom. And he is not rich. How did he get here? Should we follow him? And what can…
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Children probably shouldn’t go cashless
Cashless payment is kind of amazing. The ability to tap and pay with your credit card only started in the 2000s. Nowadays, it is ubiquitous. And with it comes a loss. A lost opportunity to teach our kids about money. Robin Powell speaks about having three golden experiences at home that will make kids better…
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Adding Friction to your life
Sometimes it pays to slow down. Other times, it pays to speed up. This is the concept of friction. Some things are easy. Some things are hard. Usually, the things which are bad for you are easy. The things which are good for you are hard. This is where we should flip the script. Make…
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More
The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Morgan Housel Do you know what social class is the largest? It’s the upper middle class. It stretches from the rich, to the richer, to the richest. Yet everyone in this group thinks they are upper middle class. People who are classified as Ultra…
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We don’t know what to buy to make us happy
We commonly come across advice to spend on the things that make us happy. Great advice. But it suffers from one fatal flaw. We aren’t very good at spending on the things that make us happy. This ability is called affective forecasting, or predicting what makes us happy in the future. A paper by Dunn,…
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Skipping drinks won’t make you rich
I’m not a fan of 3-dollar Cokes, as I’ve pointed out before. I used to be a fan of “skipping the latte”. I would wait for discounts before buying meals. I would skip drinks, always. If I didn’t need it, I wouldn’t buy it. It adds up, but not to much Let’s do some actual…
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Framing (is) the problem
I once had an argument with my wife. It was over a can of Coke. We were having ramen in Northpoint. My wife wanted to order Coke, but the restaurant was charging $3 a can. Daylight robbery! I wanted to get the Coke from a nearby ValuDollar. It would be $1 or less there. That…