Planning

Future of shopping – Why does it matter to the consumers?

As I mentioned in my post on Wednesday – Do you think this is possible?, I have been researching improvements retailers have been making. They seem to be making an extra effort to get my business. Don’t they all do that already? That is why we have a spending problem, right? Retailers have always researched [...]

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What do a fly in the urinal, chocolate elephants and photocopiers have in common? Goals! – Part 2

Every year starts full of hope about lofty dreams and plans for the future. By February, only ~60% of us have the same enthusiasm, by mid year more than half of us will give up. According to a survey done by the Operations Research Corporations, 24% (one in four people) NEVER succeed and have failed [...]

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Do a financial self appraisal

I just submitted my self-appraisal at work. Even though it is one among the least favorite parts of my job, I can see how a self-appraisal helps me set some aside to think about what I excelled at over the previous 12 months and what improvements need to be made over next year. It makes [...]

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Goals make you miss good opportunities.

You might think I’m off my rocker, so let’s try an experiment.  Your goal is to get to San Francisco, CA from Los Angeles, CA. You have 3 kids in your car whose quiet time quota lasts about 7 and half hrs. There are several possible routes. The straight forward and the quickest route is [...]

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This little piggy wants to retire…

Once upon a time, in the charming little town of Pigglesworth, there lived five little piggies – Patricia, Priscilla, Pippin, Pookie and Pinky. They all had a great desire to retire and enjoy the  relaxed life around Pigglesworth.  Here are their stories: This little piggy went to market The oldest piggy Patricia wanted to become [...]

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Managing our time : The myth of multitasking

Texting and driving, talking on the phone while walking, Facebook, Twitter, work, email, IM, Pandora. Multitasking has become the way of life.   Right now, as I type this, I have 23 tabs open in my Chrome browser. I also have the following applications open – Excel, InkScape, PowerPoint and Live writer, each of them with [...]

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Should you Buy or Rent? Calculator + Inforgraphics

I am an immigrant to this country and let me tell you, the American Dream resonates with me.  For someone who came to this country with next to nothing, the possibility that I can, through just hard work, be able to own my own white picket fence house with the 2 cars, is mind blowing. [...]

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Free financial planning – Financial planning days

I recently talked about finding a financial planner for the middle class. Here is a way to do that for free – Financial planning days. Financial Planning days is an initiative by various financial planning organizations to educate the public on major personal finance topics and offer free counseling to manage their finances better.  I [...]

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$1000 emergency fund? 6 months expenses? 1 year salary? Throw them all out the window!

When I first started getting serious about having our financial house in order, the first piece of advice I got from all the experts was – have an emergency fund. OK, got it, I will work on that! Umm… but how much should I have? No idea. The advice I got ranged from $1000 baby emergency fund to [...]

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