Lazy Man and Money

How to Fix Personal and Couple Financial Issues with the Help of Books

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So it seems I was so sick that I reposted an article that I had already posted months ago. So here’s another blog post by Kostas.

When it comes to personal finance, there are many problems that people experience. In fact, many individuals and couples find it very difficult to manage their finances effectively, which can lead to all sorts of issues. When personal and couple financial issues rear their heads, it is vital to take early action to avoid the problem getting any worse. Fortunately, there are various resources that you can turn to in order to do this.

Couples’ finance is a very important issue in terms of ensuring everything continues to run smoothly. If problems arise with finances it can also lead to problems in the relationship, as money issues can create a huge amount of stress and puts couples under immense pressure. In this article, I will talk about some finance books that can help to guide you through.

Some of the top books to turn to for personal finance advice

There are a number of tips that I provide for both individuals and couples who want to improve their personal financial situations, and I believe that books can be hugely beneficial. Many of the books relating to personal finance offer invaluable advice that is both practical and effective when it comes to improving finances. They can become a go-to guide for many individuals and couples, so they are always useful to have around if you want to keep your finances on track.

You will find that some of the best personal finance books can help you to not only get your finances back on track but also enjoy better financial health moving forward, which means greater peace of mind and better quality of life for you. So, let’s take a look at some of the books that can help with individuals’ and couples’ personal finances:

· The Total Money Makeover: This book, which is by Dave Ramsey, is a guide that helps you back to financial fitness. The approach used is effective and practical, which makes it easier for readers to follow in order to get their finances into shape. In addition to this, there are various success stories that can provide you with inspiration and hope when it comes to money problems and debt. This is a book that really focuses on getting to the root of the matter, providing you with information on what you should and should not do in order to achieve financial fitness.

· The One Page Financial Plan: In this personal finance book author, Carl Richards, provides a simple solution to being sensible about money. People often find it difficult to create a financial plan, and this can all be part of the issue when finances start to fall apart. With this book, you can develop an understanding of why you need to create a plan and how it can help you when it comes to your finances. You will come to understand how to prioritize effectively when it comes to money, which in turn makes it easier to make informed decisions.

· Home Finances for Couples: Author, Leo Ostapiv, provides a wealth of information in this book, which is targeted toward couples who want to stay on the straight and narrow when it comes to financial matters. It is an excellent tool to help you to manage your finances effectively as a couple and avoid the pitfalls that many couples fall into when it comes to money. You can learn more about how to work toward shared financial goals and how to overcome money issues as a couple.

· The Couples Guide to Income Power: This book is by Jason G. Miles and is all about showing couples how to increase their income, get rid of debt, and even retire at an earlier age. You will find a huge variety of valuable information in this book, making it a great guide for couples that want to benefit from complete financial fitness. If you have financial goals and are struggling to reach them, this book can be an inspiration. In addition, you can benefit from the step by step guide that makes implementing the strategies far easier and helps you to enjoy greater financial freedom.

· The Couples Guide to Financial Compatibility: Author, Jeff Motske, clearly knows how personal financial issues can affect couples and result in arguments and even breakups. In this book, he provides information and advice that will enable couples to work together when it comes to both spending money and saving it. As a certified financial planner, the author has the expertise and experience to offer sound and very effective advice to couples that want to be able to put their money related issues behind them.

· First Comes Love, Then Comes Money: Bethany Palmer, the author of this book, focuses her attention on the importance of communication between couples when it comes to financial matters. Many couples fall into financial ruin because of their inability to communicate over financial matters. However, this book provides invaluable advice and suggestions that will make it easier for couples to discuss and agree about issues that affect their financial situation as a couple.

· The Heart of Money: A Couple’s Guide to Creating Tue Financial Intimacy: We all know that intimacy is important in a relationship. Well, in this book the author, Deborah L. Price, also focuses on the importance of intimacy when it comes to finances between couples. As a financial coach, she has helped many couples to overcome financial issues. This book is designed to provide the same benefit, with practical information that couples can implement.

Making finances work for you

The one thing that these books all have in common is the ability to help individuals and couples make finances work for them. With the range of expert advice and step by step processes, you should find that getting your finances back into shape is not as difficult as you might have thought. Better still, the advice given in these books will help you to keep your finances in good shape.

Cheap Alternatives to Men’s Gold or Platinum Wedding Bands

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Weddings are expensive.

Weddings are so expensive, in fact, that even as the typical wedding involves fewer guests, the average cost for what’s typically a five-hour event has shot up to $31,213, as of 2014 according to a survey conducted by The Knot, a multi-platform wedding resource. And the price continues to increase.

Sonic Rings
These are not the rings you are looking for

And when you’ve already resigned yourself to the fact that you’re supposed to spend tens of thousands to have your perfect day, what’s another couple of thousand on a groom’s ring, right?

A wedding band is another piece in the up-sell of everything that goes into a wedding

It’s almost too easy to want to spend money on your wedding; we see them as special, once-in-a-lifetime events wherein every item is a symbol, wrought with sentiment and meaning.

However, many of the aspects of a wedding that we think of as long-held, important traditions are actually relatively new inventions thought up by the wedding business to make money. The diamond engagement ring – almost entirely a 20th century creation at the hands of De Beers and its hired marketers – is perhaps the most famous example.

The groom’s wedding band is no different.

While there is evidence of women wearing wedding rings back to ancient Egypt, research indicates that it wasn’t the norm for men to wear wedding bands before World War II.

There are a couple of theories behind the birth of the two-ring trend: when men went off to fight in the second World War, many of them were said to have worn wedding bands to reminisce upon their wives back home. Other sources point to the growing gender equality between men and women — if the woman is wearing a ring, so should the man.

Whatever the reason, jewelers were all too happy to take the opportunity to sell yet another expensive item to American lovebirds — and it worked.

Yet, while men and women have taken great strides toward equality, the same cannot be said of our wedding bands. It is not uncommon for a woman’s wedding band to have a high level of artistry — diamonds and semi-precious stones, halos, eternity settings — while most men prefer a simple sliver of metal, which could be achieved easily by even the most novice jeweler.

But because they both fit into that same “wedding” box, men will pay far more than what they have to for what amounts to an inornate band, simply because soon-to-be newlyweds approach the purchase with their eyes closed and their wallets open.

Smarter options

The bulk of the upcharge comes by convincing men to stick to rings made of platinum or gold if they want something that will last a lifetime.

But the simplicity that many men want in their wedding bands offers the opportunity to go with a less traditional material that will be as durable — if not more durable — for a lot less money.

One option that is particularly well-suited to the simple designs of men’s wedding bands is titanium. While it is very difficult to solder and thus not as great a choice for more ornate jewelry that might have to be re-sized, titanium is inexpensive to machine into simple circles of a given size. Moreover, titanium is biocompatible – meaning you won’t have an allergic reaction to wearing it – and less susceptible to tarnish and scratches than more expensive metals including gold.

Another material that takes advantage of the relatively simple design of men’s wedding rings is tungsten carbide. This chemical compound is extremely hard so you wouldn’t be able to re-size anything made of it, but can be pressed into pre-determined shapes for a relatively low price. The resultant hardness means that tungsten carbide rings are extremely durable and very difficult to scratch. However, it is important to note that different manufacturers use different compositions of tungsten and carbon, with nickel and cobalt often involved as well, and that the different combinations can mean that these rings can differ greatly in physical properties. As always, read reviews to have the best idea of what you’re getting.

Besides these two, jewelers also offer men’s wedding rings in any number of novel, inexpensive materials that include, but are certainly not limited to, ceramics, steel, meteorite, and dinosaur bone. Needless to say, with a little creativity and legwork you can find something meaningful that won’t break the bank – a welcome relief given the high cost of other aspects of getting married.

Marriage Tension and Money

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This month’s Money Magazine had an interesting article asking What’s Your Money State of Mind? The article is the result of a survey of 1018 Americans who are 18 or older. The information in the magazine is presented better than the article on the web. It gave more statistics and fewer anecdotal quotes. Regular readers know that I’m more of a statistic guy… anecdotal quotes can be used to show almost anything, even alien abductions.

One particular graphic caught my attention. You’ll want to want to click on it for a bigger version that will open up in a new window.

As the graphic reads at the top money is the top source of marital tension. It is both the most frequently argued topic and the source of the most serious arguments.

I would have loved if they could have dug a little deeper on the questions considering it is Money Magazine. It’s great to know that Quality Time Together is 30%, but give me more details on the money aspect. What percentage of the arguments are about the lack of money. I’m guessing some 90%, right? What percentage is about good money problems, such as fights about using extra money to buy stock in IBM vs. Lululemon. That’s got to be a minority of the arguments, right?

I’m just curious to know those numbers so I don’t make too much of a false assumption here that the tension is from a lack of money. Nonetheless, given the recent news about the Americans being unprepared financially, I’m going to go out on a limb and make that assumption. I do that recognizing that lottery winners have their share of money headaches too, it’s just of a different variety.

There’s an old saying that money can’t buy happiness. However, it seems like it can prevent 41% of marital arguments. If that isn’t reason enough to take charge of your personal finances, I don’t know what is.

Actually, I take that back. I’ll give you a few more reasons… the rest of the graphic. If you look at the items almost all of them tie into money.

Household chores are the second most frequent and most serious arguments. We got a cleaning service to take care of much of that every couple of weeks. We still have plenty of chores, but they are much more manageable and very few arguments about them. It is one of our best uses of money.

Quality time together was also cited. The old saying that time is money is apt here. The converse is also true, money is time. Using the example above of hiring a cleaning service, money has bought us time. Hiring a landscaping company can buy time. Hiring a babysitter also buys time. What you do with that time is up to you.

I’m going to skip over raising kids, because I feel that isn’t mostly money issue, but more of a parenting strategy one.

Finally there’s the question of what’s for dinner. Money obviously can solve that by going to a restaurant or hiring a chef to prepare frozen dinners for a week or two.

There’s a lot more to marriage than money, but money plays a big role. It’s too bad it got put in a small graphic at the bottom of the page. Oh and you are on your own with snoring. Good luck.

Solving the “What do to I get my Husband/Wife for Christmas?” Problem

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It’s that time of year again. Time to engage in hanging stockings and mistletoe. Time for dreams of Kris Kringle and Super Bowls. Wait, something is off there. I’ve given up on my typical holiday-neutral stance and added a little football to the mix. It’s the time of year where things get all mixed up anyway, so I figure, let’s go with it. I get a lot of questions this time of year, but there’s one question that I get more than the others… “I need to buy a gift for the husband/wife… and I can’t come up empty handed?” What do you suggest?

I got one of these questions on Friday, my second of the season. I am always quick to suggest that you can never go wrong with hair clips and watch chains, especially because I often get asked by both spouses. When I get serious, I can occasionally be helpful, but it is always hit or miss.

It occurred to me that my wife and I typically don’t have this problem. We accidentally developed a pretty good system. Throughout the year when we want something we put it on our Amazon Wishlist. (Yes, I know you’d think this is Jeff Bezos’ blog lately, but it seems appropriate during the holidays.) Since Amazon allows you to put little notes on your list, we leave little hints like, “I don’t need this exact hair brush” or “You can get this cheaper at Target” (I’m sure Amazon loves that note). The items for me range from things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 comic books graphic novels (note that I can be all adulty about it) to the aforementioned hair brush (Jacoby chews through mine a couple times a year). When Christmas rolls around we both look to the list. On Friday, when thinking about how to answer the hubby/wifey question, I realized that this is a double win for us. It not only solves the Christmas problem, but it limits our spending throughout the rest of the year.

One thing you don’t want to give your spouse… a $60,000 debt. You know how I feel about those. Oh and add bungee cords to the list of things not to get. Even if your wife loves to camp and the bungee cords are very close to free, so it could be considered an “extra” thing to open, don’t do it… seriously.

Discussions About a Sudden Expense

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Yesterday, I wrote how my wife’s friend getting married is a sudden expense for us. If you haven’t read that article I highly suggest you do, or this article might seem out of place. I got an amazing amount of comments on that post, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to share their thoughts.

I mentioned yesterday that this expense is likely to be a minimum of $1800. It could easily run as much as $2500. Though my wife makes a very good income, my income has dropped in the last few months as I try to start up a variety of small businesses.

During the discussions of this with my wife, I went to what I do, logical arguments. I started to calculate how many friends she has and what the costs would be if half of them decided to get married. While that’s an unrealistic expectation, it would hurt our financial goals. As I thought about it more, this is one situation where thinking logically isn’t helpful for me. Behind the scenes I realize that it’s more about these psychological factors:

  • The value of a dollar is different for me than my wife. In the past, my wife and I earned similar incomes. This lead us to keep our finances separate. Keeping our finances the same seemed the easiest and most practical thing to do. We automate some money into a joint account each month and pay common expenses from that. With my lowered income, this expense would be more than I make in a month. Thinking about paying more than a month’s income this suddenly is causing me some stress. When I look at it from my wife’s point of view, I imagine that she’d find it still expensive, but not to the point of causing her stress.
  • I’m no longer like everyone else. Well no one is really like everything (or anyone) else. However, I’m different than many other people in that I write about money everyday. As part of that, I’m trying to make the conscious effort to be as frugal as possible.

Yesterday I mentioned that this has the potential to completely change how we feel about money. While keeping our finances separate worked in the past, it might be time to think about combining our finances. I think this would alleviate some of the stress spending money gives me.

As for the decision to go to Spain, I think we are leaning towards going later this year. We’ll be better able to manage costs at that point. This would give us the opportunity to spend more time with the couple. It would also allow us to plan a vacation of things that we want to do. My wife wouldn’t be able to ask for the time off for another week, so we’ve got some more time to think about it. It may turn out to be a moot point by then with airfare and hotels likely to rise.