I apologize for back to back editions of links. I figure most of you are still out of town enjoying left over turkey sandwiches. (Is there anything better than leftover turkey and stuffing in a sandwich with gravy poured over it?) I’m not turning into a full-time link machine though. I have been focusing my attention on catching up all the terrific articles that were in the last two weeks while I was away. Unfortunately that required reading more than 500 articles in the last 24 hours. I would have been advised to try to put my head in a blender. While I recover here are some articles that I liked this week or while I was away:
- I like Blueprint for Financial Prosperity’s You area Business, Act Like One. For too long, I thought of the company that I worked for as a business and that was the wrong mindset for me. I need to remember that I am a business and price myself accordingly.
- Ben at Money Smart Life gives some ideas on how to live within your budget. I need reminders like this since I’m trying to live a very frugal lifestyle while my income has stalled.
- Fortunately, The Digerati Life helps me with my income by giving me some tips on how to increase my income.
- Golbguru talks about the sandwiched generation. This is where the middle-aged generation have to pay for their parents’ retirement while also having to pay to raise their kids. I’m fortunate that my mother has planned for her retirement long in advance. We don’t have children either, so there’s currently no pressure, but I can see how this would be a problem for some families.
- Someone thinks that Americans are saving too much for retirement. I think in a world without pensions, a falling dollar, increased globalization too much might be difficult on a collective basis.
- The Sun’s Financial Diary ranks the most and least dangerous cities. A city close to my heart, Newton, MA is the 8th safest city. I can believe it since it’s a very wealthy neighborhood.
- No Credit Needed does a great job of getting me ENERGIZED about retirement plans. I’d use the 6% numbers to offset the factors of inflation. It looks like $800,000 in 401K and Roth IRAs can yield more than 3.3 million dollars – even at the 6% numbers.
- Mighty Bargain Hunter asks if we can do without some holiday expenses. Without sounding like a Scrooge, I agree with him on many of these.
- Free Money Finance gives an update on how how Medicare works. I’ve been learning quite a bit about Medicare from a hospital administration perspective since that’s part of my wife’s day job.
- Five Cent Nickel says that the dish network still isn’t good (toning down his language). I ran into that with Comcast this past week. Our bill jumped 30% when a “promotion” that we didn’t know we had ended. On top of it, I found myself having to spend $5 a month for the NFL network to just watch a couple of games a week.
- Brip Blap writes 8 steps to a six figure career. I thought this was a fantastic article. It’s very good advice that’s worked for him. For me, I could have simply used the “get a computer science degree”, “move to Silicon Valley.”
That’s worked well for me in the last year until I stopped working last month.