The Financial Freedom Project

In the last article, we used the story of the American ’49er and the greatest mining boomtown in U.S. history to discover how you can strike it rich by mining your debt.

By the end of that article, you should have been able to identify the size of your personal debt mother lode as well as the potential income and wealth concealed within each of the individual loans on your debt claim.

But in order to calculate how much of these riches you can actually recover, you need to decide which debt reduction method you’ll put your money on and ride to the debt-free finish line.

Today we’re taking a definitive look at the top two thoroughbreds in the debt-free derby to determine which is the better mount for your financial racetrack – Debt Snowball or Debt Avalanche. Continue Reading

The almighty price tag is everywhere – fast food drive-throughs, restaurant fold-out menus, catalogs, grocery aisles, clothes racks, and online product listings.

Price tags come in all shapes, sizes, and colors and influence our shopping behavior in many ways. Similarly, the price tag of your financial freedom should influence the saving and spending decisions in your monthly budget.

With this in mind, today we’re exploring how to check the price tags of the individual items on your financial freedom shopping list.

Continue Reading

Murphy’s Law – Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. We all know this old adage. And I’d wager that most of us have lived it and can lustily vouch for its accuracy.

The insurance industry is predicated almost entirely on this concept. There are at least 95 policy types that exist – life, health, home, auto, motorcycle, boat, accidental death and dismemberment(!?!), travel, liability, flood, kidnapping, alien abduction… the list goes on.

And while hopefully your chances of being dismembered or abducted by aliens are excruciatingly low, just remember that Murphy is still out there.

So the question becomes, how do you Murphy-proof your finances? I submit that you can do so by copying a design element dating back to the early days of “the motorcar”. Continue Reading

Have you ever daydreamed of what it would be like to run a large business? Of being an executive high roller in a high-rise? If so, you’re in luck, because your household has an immediate opening for a Chief Financial Officer. And you just happen to be the most qualified candidate to fill it.

The job requirements of a CFO are varied. They can include ultimate responsibility for everything from crafting budgets to managing cash flow and optimizing tax liability.

These facets all have an impact on the bottom line of every business. But there’s one metric that trumps all others when it comes to determining business success or failure – net profit. Continue Reading