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Yes, that's why he encourages his low income callers to work on their career.
Sell piles of overpriced crap to those who can least afford it while appealing to their Christianity, lead them to the ELP slaughterhouse where he gets kickbacks and his flock get expensive mutual funds...too bad that gig is already taken...
Sell piles of overpriced crap to those who can least afford it while appealing to their Christianity, lead them to the ELP slaughterhouse where he gets kickbacks and his flock get expensive mutual funds...too bad that gig is already taken...
He also gives away a lot of free stuff to callers and a lot of legit advice that helps many. Don't just give the bad side and not the good.
"Left-over money" is a problematic concept without a clearly established budget for 'discretionary spending' and a 'fixed savings' amount. Ideally, any prudent individual will 'live within their means.' Such an individual will always have an 'unspent buffer' at the end of each month/quarter/year to accommodate unforeseen expenses or emergency situations. If one simply spends that 'buffer' at the end of each period, one is actually living 'close to the edge,' and not within their means.
I can see your point, but his advice is almost all common sense, so I can't give him much credit for that. And his investment advice is generally horrible. He does do a lot of giveaways though, I'll hand him that. Which reminds me, better run off to his site to submit my daily entry...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1
He also gives away a lot of free stuff to callers and a lot of legit advice that helps many. Don't just give the bad side and not the good.
"Left-over money" is a problematic concept without a clearly established budget for 'discretionary spending' and a 'fixed savings' amount. Ideally, any prudent individual will 'live within their means.' Such an individual will always have an 'unspent buffer' at the end of each month/quarter/year to accommodate unforeseen expenses or emergency situations. If one simply spends that 'buffer' at the end of each period, one is actually living 'close to the edge,' and not within their means.
I plan to have an "unspent buffer" of exactly one bus fare at the end of this month because I will need to purchase one bus fare before I will have enough money to purchase a bus pass for the month. And to be able to do that I had to keep food spending for this month below $100. Not prudent enough?
This is some what locale dependent, but not so much if phrased like this:
How much money do you need at the end of the month to feel comfortable? This statement ASSUMES RETIREMENT AND ALL BILLS are paid and there is a 3 month emergency fund in place. This money would strictly be discretionary. It could be saved, blown, whatever....................with that said what makes you and your family feel secure or what would make you feel secure.
I ask because my wife and I are at a fork in the road. My number to feel secure is much higher than hers it would be interesting to hear what some of you think.
I don't 'spend every dollar on paper, on purpose' like Dave Ramsey says. I keep a spreadsheet that tracks monthly income pre-tax, deductions for taxes & 401k, bills like rent, utilities, car insurance, etc, and variable expenses like groceries & gas.
Basically every payday I set aside money for the bills, groceries, and gas. After doing this I currently have ~$1,600 a month left over. That's not counting my 401k contribution as that has already been deducted from my paycheck. I need to up my 401k contribution from the 9.2% of pre-tax pay that it currently is, but I'm holding off on that until I get more in the emergency fund (currently have ~2 1/2 months). Once I do that of course that'll cut into my left over money.
Currently the wife and myself are living on just a hair under half of my after tax/take home pay. Her pay is separate and 'off the books' in that I don't track it on the spreadsheet. She has student loans she's paying and whatever she has left over she saves in her bank account or spends or whatever.
I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with what's left over. I'd love to get the bills lower, to this end I'm cancelling the cable as soon as the football season is over. Of course what's left over also has to cover down on emergency/unforeseen expenses, go towards restocking the emergency fund, and go towards my fund that's for a downpayment on a house someday. I don't spend much on non-necessities, like probably less than $100 a month on average, so I don't even track that on the budget spreadsheet. That said whatever I do spend is coming out of that left over money, hence why I'm not super comfortable.
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Isn't getting a career the best way to have money left over at the end of the month?
All joking aside, I've found the best way is to get a raise or two while leaving your 'standard of living' alone. I've gotten two promotions/pay raises over the last few years while living in the same apartment and driving the same used paid for car. It's a LOT easier to save & invest when you're making decent money and still living like you were when you had just started out.
Last edited by happygeek; 11-28-2014 at 08:48 PM..
All joking aside, I've found the best way is to get a raise or two while leaving your 'standard of living' alone. I've gotten two promotions/pay raises over the last few years while living in the same apartment and driving the same used paid for car. It's a LOT easier to save & invest when you're making decent money and still living like you were when you had just started out.
That's not realistic in the world of dead-end minimum wage jobs. Where there is no advancement path, raises often come only when forced by an increase in the mandated minimum wage. In the meantime, inflation - especially the rent inflation often not captured in CPI - erodes the worker's purchasing power.
Anything we have left over goes into the "whatever" savings account, just in case we want/need to do something later on.
We keep a running tally of what we have withdrawn or deposited into our "whatever" savings account.
While the account is - 400 for the year, we did get married- got our legal papers in order-bought wedding bands and had a colonoscopy paid out of here. So not bad.
One thing I've seen floating around is allocating 30% of your take home pay to "flexible spending".
Elizabeth Warren wrote a personal finance book with her daughter about 15 years ago, she suggests personal budgets include broad spending categories for needs and for wants; I think she allocates something like 30% to wants.
She recognizes debt as 'borrowing from the future' and I think she puts debt repayment into the 'wants' category for the purpose of crowding out discretionary wants, i.e. if debt service consumes 20% of your income, you get to spend only 10% on discretionary wants.
Now I'd love to know why she doesn't apply that to Congress.
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