Evolving Personal Finance » savings
When to Pass Up a Company Retirement Match
I know this is practically heresy around the personal finance community, but I don’t think everyone should contribute to his 401(k) or equivalent, even when a company retirement match is available. I didn’t think that I held that opinion until I advised a coaching client to pass up his unlimited 100% company 401(k) match. I am supposed to advise my coaching clients according to the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, perhaps with some reasonable modifications. Starting Baby … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, choices, investing, retirement, savings
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Swapping Baby Step Order
This is the fourth installment of this series on reasonable way to adapt Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps program to fit your financial goals. You may want to reference last week’s post on intra-Baby Step modifications to familiarize yourself with the steps before we dive into this week’s discussion of inter-Baby Step modifications. The big difference between Dave Ramsey’s approach to managing debt and investments and other financial professionals’ is that Dave Ramsey does not care about … Read entire article »
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Reasonable Baby Step Modifications
As we discussed in the two prior posts in this series, Dave Ramsey’s (DR’s) program for getting out of debt and building wealth works very well for some people but may be inappropriate for those who don’t agree with all of the underlying principles. The next two posts are intended for people are curious about following the Baby Steps loosely but who want to know what some reasonable modifications may be. In this post, we … Read entire article »
Filed under: choices, debt, emergency fund, giving, goals, psychology, savings
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Underlying Principles
As I stated in the overview for this series, in this first post I will share what I have observed are the key foundational views of money on which Dave Ramsey’s entire program is based, the underlying principles. If you disagree with any one of these views, DR’s program is either not for you or you will want to make some modifications to follow it successfully. You Want to Plug in to a Simple, Universal Program DR’s … Read entire article »
Filed under: debt, psychology, savings, values
When Plans Change
I have a personal update for you today! It’s about how our protracted time to graduation has affected our plans, careers, and finances. I though we had some timelines and plans down, and then they were shot to heck, and now the picture is re-coming into focus. Grad School I’ve mentioned in my weekly wrap-ups here that for the past several weeks Kyle has been working around the clock on writing his dissertation. We were hoping that … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, cars, goals, marriage, personal, savings, spending, transitions
You Should Spend More and Save Less (Especially Grad Students)
The same episode of Freakonomics that I wrote about last week contained another segment that I thought worthy of comment here (and actually there is one more!). Levitt told Dubner some advice that he received from an older faculty member when he was just starting out as a professor of economics: “You should spend more and save less. You’re never going to be poorer than you are today… Your salary would only go up and your … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, grad school, savings, spending
Money Updates from the EPF Household
Today’s post is a collection of odds and ends – thoughts and observations about our life as it intersects with our finances. None of these topics are enough for a full blog post at this point so this is a clearinghouse for our thoughts at this moment. Townhouse Water Damage We had a bit of a scare a couple weeks ago with the townhouse we rent. A leak developed in the ceiling of the lower floor, directly … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, cars, housing, marriage, personal, savings, targeted savings, transitions, travel
My Sister’s Awesome Financial Decisions
I don’t talk about my family of origin a lot on this blog (for privacy reasons) but I want to suspend that policy for today’s post to brag about my sister. My sister is 25 and not a nerd. Like, I’m a nerd, right? I went to a nerd high school and a nerd college and now I’m doing a PhD in engineering and I picked up an interest in PF along the way, which … Read entire article »
Filed under: college, debt, family, goals, investing, retirement, savings, stock market
Trying Hard to Not Time the Market
Kyle and I have a decision to make! We have some subsidized and deferred student loan debt (i.e. sitting at 0%) and we also have the full amount of money we need to pay off these loans set aside. Most of that money is invested in mutual funds, but about $6,000 is in a CD that is maturing this month. When we first allocated our savings, we knew we should be conservative because we had a … Read entire article »
Filed under: debt, investing, savings, stock market
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Will You Ever Reduce Your Retirement Contribution Rate?
November 4th, 2013 | 23 Comments
When I think about the retirement savings trajectory of a typical American, I imagine that his rate of saving for retirement increases basically monotonically throughout his life. In his 20s and 30s he doesn’t save anything; in his 40s he wises up and starts putting money away; in his 50s he panics and saves as much as he can given the lifestyle he’s become accustomed to; by the time he’s about to retire he’s putting … Read entire article »
Filed under: choices, retirement, savings