When is the last time you set a goal—be it for your spiritual life, professional life, family life, social life, physical or mental health, or any other areas? Has it been more than a week? More than a month? Hopefully not, but has it been more than a year? If so, it’s time to dust … Continue reading Financial Goal Setting
The importance and impact of down payments toward a loan is a widely-debated topic, especially now while interest rates are some of the lowest on record over the past 60+ years. It’s hard to go a week without reading or hearing about falling mortgage rates, zero interest financing, or the like. Sadly, there are some … Continue reading The Impact of Down Payments
Think for a moment about the last time you purchased a vehicle at a dealership. Does it bring back fond memories? For most people, the answer is no. In fact, Edmunds.com did a survey of over 1,000 people in 2014; to say the results were enlightening is an understatement. Let’s review a few of the … Continue reading Tips & Tricks for Buying a Vehicle
In other articles here on Sow a Dime & Reap a Dollar, I’ve discussed prioritizing spending, wants versus needs, budgeting, waiting 30 days (see links to these articles below), and a variety of other topics aimed at improving your financial future. If the content in those articles didn’t help you with tackling your spending, I … Continue reading Wait for a Windfall
As human beings, the desire to make things simpler is hard-wired into our brains. Sometimes this can lead to undesirable outcomes: for example, maybe we took a shortcut on the front end of a complex project, hoping to beat a deadline, only to realize we skipped over key information, causing us extra work to double … Continue reading ABC = Always Be Challenging
Have you ever been on the verge of deciding between a couple of alternatives and felt you lack a relevant, comparative benchmark? Maybe if you could use one final metric to compare Alternative A to Alternative B, it would make the decision easier? The good news is one such benchmark exists, and the better news … Continue reading Cost per Unit — The Universal Benchmark
This article is written in memory of my Nana and Papaw. They were born in the early 1930s and thus were members of the Silent Generation. Ironically, most people have never heard of this generation—we’re more familiar with the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, or the Millennials. The Silent Generation includes people born between 1928 … Continue reading What Would Our Grandparents Do?
Following a budget and trying to pare back your spending? Thinking about making a spontaneous, un-budgeted purchase? If you answered yes to both of those questions, you can benefit from this short article! Read on… There are many strategies that can help determine whether it’s something you truly want or if you’re caught in the … Continue reading Wait 30 Days…
This article is near and dear to my heart because I lived this way for many years. The “I deserve…” mentality is a slippery slope—you won’t realize how far down the slope you are before it’s too late and you slide all the way to the bottom. The attitude itself starts off as relatively harmless. … Continue reading Be Wary of the “I Deserve…” Mentality
This article likely won’t be the most popular one among the bunch, but at the very least it’s timely given all the financial chaos going on worldwide (un- or under-employment, currency inflation, rising consumer and government debt, etc.). In the interest of full disclosure: ten years ago, I would’ve read this article and immediately dismissed … Continue reading Why It’s Useful to Prioritize Spending
