mymoneymess Profile

Latest Blog Posts

• You Can Economize Yourself Right Out of Business
  on Apr 10, 2012 in budget business make more money reduce expenses
  This is a pretty familiar scenario. I’ve heard small business owners say it and I’ve heard Fortune 500 CEOs say it and I don’t see the logic in it. “Due to lower revenue/sales, we are taking measures to reduce costs.” Hu...
• If I Had Won The Mega Millions
  on Apr 2, 2012 in budget make more money
  I figure if I’d been one of the three Mega Millions winners I’d have netted about $50 million in a lump sum after the split and taxes were taken out. For all you math geeks out there I know this isn’t necessarily accurate but since...
• Life…
  on Mar 25, 2012 in Uncategorized
  Wow. It really has been a long time since I posted anything at all. The tone of this post is going to be a bit different from previous posts. In the past I’ve tried to make my posts informative, even educational. Think I’m going to change...
• Emergency Funds – How Much is Enough?
  on Jul 25, 2011 in build savings financial control
  Financial experts and advisers may not agree on much but they all tend to agree on one thing. You need to have an emergency fund. Common advice is to have between three and six months’ worth of expenses in your emergency fund. The question of t...
• Tax Day
  on Apr 17, 2011 in Uncategorized taxes
  Tax Day – the day our income tax filings are due – is tomorrow. Normally I grumble a lot around this time of year about how screwed up this system is. You have to scramble to get all your crap together so you can fill out some paperwork t...
• What I’m Up To
  on Apr 14, 2011 in Uncategorized
  If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, thank you. If you’ve wondered why I haven’t posted very much recently, I’m going to tell you. Some of this information is necessarily general, but I’ll fill in details a...
• Rebuilding Credit
  on Apr 7, 2011 in credit credit score improvement
  If some change in your circumstances such as serious illness, loss of your job, divorce, etc. sends your financial life into a tailspin your credit score is likely to suffer. How much it suffers of course depends on how bad your circumstances get bef...
• A Debt Settlement Example
  on Mar 29, 2011 in debt debt settlement
  I’m often asked how debt settlement works and whether or not it’s a good way to get out of debt. The answer to the first question is yes. Debt settlement does in fact work. The answer to the second question is that it depends on your fina...
• A Little Right and A Little Wrong
  on Mar 23, 2011 in buying a home home loans
  Woohoo a new post! A lot going on for me the last few weeks. Starting a new business. Had a bit of a snafu with my hosting company. If you tried to get to the site and found it was down, I apologize. I’ve switched hosts and everything is stabil...
• Weekly Roundup
  on Mar 7, 2011 in Uncategorized
  Another crazy week for me. It’s after 11 PM Sunday and I’m just getting this done. (Though I made a big goof earlier. I started working on it 12 hours ago and when I had to leave to go run errands with my wife I hit publish instead of sav...
• Weekly Round Up
  on Mar 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
  Bankruptcy and Marriage – Should You Marry Someone Who Went Bankrupt? on fivecentnickel.com struck a chord with me and not in a good way. I’m sorry, marriage is not a business decision. If you love someone enough to get married you take them...
• Better Late Than Never – Weekly Round Up
  on Mar 2, 2011 in Uncategorized
  Life’s been a bit crazy the last ten or so days so a result this weekly round up, which I would normally want to post on Sunday, is only just being posted on Tuesday. It is also a bit short because haven’t done much as much reading of fin...
• Debt Phobia – Really?
  on Feb 25, 2011 in budget debt
  I subscribe to a particular mailing list some writers use to obtain comments (expert or otherwise) for their work. While the terms of service prevent me from posting an inquiry that came to my inbox this week, nothing prevents me from commenting on i...
• How to Avoid Common Budget Mistakes
  on Feb 24, 2011 in build savings credit financial control
  A budget is a great tool to help you reach your financial goals. Nearly everyone in the personal finance world repeatedly beats the budgeting drum, for good reason. Here are some common budget mistakes and how you can avoid them. Not having a budget...
• Household Budget Formulas
  on Feb 23, 2011 in budget financial control
  There are a few things in the PF world that I look askance at or at the very least tilt my head to one side much like my dog does when she has no clue what I’m doing. One of them is trying to strictly adhere to percentages or some sort of formu...
• Encrypt Your Important Documents and Store them Online Free
  on Feb 22, 2011 in do it yourself
  In his comment on my Organizing and Protecting Your Financial Documents post, MoneyCone made the point that you can encrypt your files yourself and store them with Google. Quite true. Google gives you 1GB of space for files you upload but don’t...
• What to do if Your Identity is Stolen
  on Feb 21, 2011 in credit do it yourself
  What do you do if your identity has been stolen despite your best efforts to protect yourself from identity theft? Unfortunately, if you’ve been a victim of identity theft it could take quite a long time to clean up the damage the thief does to...
• Weekly Roundup
  on Feb 20, 2011 in Uncategorized
  I feel like there are so many things to write about that I could write several posts a day if I had the time to do so. I don’t have that kind of time, so I’m just trying consistently do a post a day. I succeeded this week. If you missed a...
• How to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft
  on Feb 19, 2011 in do it yourself Identity Theft
  This is a serious post about a very serious problem – identity theft. You can be great at managing your budget, saving money, staying out of debt and so on and still have your finances ruined by identity theft. It is estimated that annual financial...
• Organizing and Protecting Your Financial Documents
  on Feb 18, 2011 in budget financial control
  A great deal of personal finance is paperwork. You have pay stubs, bills, insurance papers, bank statements, tax records, loan documents, etc. There are several others that come into play in your financial life that aren’t, strictly speaking, f...