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Two hundred episodes!  To mark this special milestone we look back at five of the best episodes as voted by our listeners.  Here’s to two hundred more! It’s not even been a year and we have two hundred episodes in the books.  We’ll look at some of the highlights from the past one hundred episodes. 1.  Mr Money Mustache.  MMM is a legend in the world of personal finance and you were as excited to hear the interview as we were to conduct it.  If you want the road map to retire early, very early, MMM is the go to resource.  Hint, live on half your money. 2.  The Mad Fientist: A genius when it comes to figuring out tax shelters through various investments.  This guy has it on lock down. We redeemed ourselves with some of you who were unhappy with the previous IRA episode and we were grateful for the second chance. 3. Our Twelve Financial Philosophies:  This was just Matt and Andrew discussing their twelve financial rules for success.  I like guest episodes but there is nothing like a good Matt and Andrew rant

  Couples fighting over money issues is one of the leading causes of divorce.  Learn how to divorce-proof your marriage with Derek and Carrie Olsen. There are so many questions when it comes to marital finances.  Do you combine money or keep it separate, three accounts, his, her’s, and our’s?  How do you handle it if one spouse greatly out earns another?  Can a spender and a saver ever learn to co-exist?  We brought on a married couple who are experts in navigating this mine field. Derek and Carrie advocate combining finances.  It teaches you to work together and forces conversations you might otherwise not have about values, your past, your ultimate future goals.  It can help you know your spouse in a way you might otherwise not. Being the higher earner may make one spouse feel more entitled to dictate how the money is spent.  But who brings home more bacon can change.  If you wouldn’t like having your spending scrutinized, your spouse won’t like it either and when the tables turn, they might get back at

  It’s time for five questions.  We answer questions about liquidity, building credit, paying yourself first, vacations and credit card rewards. 1.  When do you take the time and money to go on vacation?  Whenever you can!  Segment an area of your checking account that is your vacation fund and contribute weekly or monthly, just like your investment account.  Check out my article on ways to travel on the cheap.   You kind of know when you’re getting to the point of needing a vacation.  It’s the point at which everyone you encounter is your potential murder victim.  Try to feel when this is becoming an everyday feeling and plan your trip a few weeks before that.  Bail is expensive. 2.  I’ve recently taken out my first, small student loan.  I want to build credit.  To do so, is it better to pay if off according to the plan the lender set up or should I pay it faster?  If you want to build credit, don’t pay it off faster.  It will give you less on-time payments which are reported to the credit bureaus.  But d

John Corcoran from Smart Business Revolution is a networking expert.  He tells us why networking is important and how he paid off $600,000 in debt. Between 2006-2010 John racked up over half a million dollars in debt mostly through equity lines of credit. He was working during that period which is why he was able to get so much credit but he went back to law school and incurred $129,000 in student loan debt. He graduated law school at the worst time to find work as an attorney and worked a series of jobs for small firms.  During this time he wasn’t making enough to tackle the debt mountain.  It wasn’t until he started his own firm that he could start to make some progress. In 2010 he sold his rental property and a year and a half later sold his condo, it wasn’t a great time to sell but it enabled him to clear most of the debt.  Not everyone has property to see in order to pay off debt but not everyone accumulated that debt by taking out huge lines of credit. John has always enjoyed writing and has always b

In a battle of hourly vs salary, which prevails? We take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of each. It can seem more prestigious to be in a salaried position, maybe more because of what it used to mean that because of what it means now. It used to mean white collar, benefits, an office. Some salaried positions still offer those things but they’re not automatic. How Many Hours? This is the big question when you’re considering hourly vs salary. In some cases, employees are exempt from overtime laws, including commissioned salespeople, drivers, farm workers, and administrative, executive, and professional employees. This is the sticking point because many of you reading this would be classified as one of those last three. Currently, even salaried employees who make less than $23,660 per year are eligible for overtime. The Department of Labor is considering changing that to make anyone, even those once considered exempt, earning less than $50,440, eligible. If you’re a non-exempt hourly employee, yo

One of the most confusing aspects of starting a small business are the taxes involved.  We get some expert help from Jamaal Solomon. Small business taxes are one of those things best left to professionals, like surgery or dentistry.  Sometimes the money you would save trying to DIY it is not worth the aggravation and resulting mess. So many acronyms, LLC, S Corp, C Corp.  We just want to do things legally while paying the least amount of taxes possible.  Small business taxes are not one size fits all.  Each case has to be handled on an individual basis. One piece of advice Jamaal has for everyone is not to wait until April 15th to see a tax consultant.  That is a bad time to find out that you should have been setting aside money quarterly to pay the tax bill.  And do everything like you’re going to be audited tomorrow.  Sitting in front of an IRS agent is no time to realize that you played too fast and loose with the legalities.  But remember, the difference between creative and legal is a fine distinction

Do you love buying all the things?  You might have a problem.  We all love buying stuff but it can become a real problem.  Let’s tackle it together. “It’s ok, I deserve it.”  Is that something you find yourself saying a lot?  Whether or not you deserve it is not the question.  I’m sure you do, you work hard, take care of a family.  Of course you deserve it!  But can you afford it?  That’s the question that needs to be answered. Shopping becomes a habit.  It’s a way to entertain yourself, to reward yourself, to blow off stress.  If spending money has become these things to you, it’s time to break the habit before you are crushed under a pile of your own debt (and detritus). The first step is to set up a budget.  Use a spread sheet, use YNAB, use Mint, use the back of an envelope, anything.  Just start tracking where your money is going.  Even if this doesn’t make you stop what you’re doing, at least at first, this gives you vital information.  Where is your money going? If this behavior is sinking you, you

Competition is heating up among the Robo-Advisors. We get a lot of emails asking which is better: Acorns vs. Betterment vs. Wealthfront so we broke down each of the services to see who deserves your investment.  The whole point of going with a Robo-Advisor is the ease of use. Based on the research, it’s highly unlikely you’ll outperform the market on your own. Better yet, if you tried to do it on your own, it would be much more expensive. For someone just looking to invest with the right service, it’s getting harder and harder to tell where you should put your money. Before we get started, I also wrote an incredibly in-depth Betterment Review, an equally detailed Wealthfront Review as well as interviewed the Acorns founders so if you’re looking to go even deeper check those out. In this article, I’ll be focusing more on the nuances of each service than the nitty-gritty features and how they work. Let the Robo-Advisor battle begin!     A Birds Eye View Every good investment comparison needs a sexy chart b

Negotiating is a vital skill.  For a job, a raise, to get to watch the game instead of The Real Housewives.  Dan Green will teach us what we need to know. Not many of us are taught how to negotiate.  We might parrot what we hear other people say but how successful were they?  We need to learn from an expert how to really get what we want. The most common reasons people give when asking for a raise are:  I’ve produced X since my last raise.  I’ve been here X number of years.  I have a family, student loans, etc.”  These reasons focus too much on yourself and too much on the past.  Neither of those things are things your boss cares about. What the boss does care about it himself, the company and the future.  Be very direct with your boss about what you want to be making.  Don’t just ask for more money, say how much more.  Then ask what you need to be doing going forward to make that happen.  Dan does not advise giving an ultimatum.  You want to come across as someone who is excited to do more for the company

Afraid you’ll never get a foot on the property ladder?  Why not build your own tiny house?  Ethan Waldman did just that and tells us how we can too. In 2012, fed up with his job, Ethan quit, bought $1000 worth of lumber and began constructing his own two hundred square foot tiny house on wheels.  He has been living in it for a year and it has everything you would find in a regular sized house, just smaller. Tiny houses are becoming quite the phenomenon due to a perfect storm of events.  The financial crisis scared a lot of people away from the housing market, those not dissuaded couldn’t get a loan.  Kids coming out of college with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, saw that home ownership would be forever out of reach and weren’t sure they wanted that part of the American dream anyway. Ethan learned as he went along.  The only experience he had was from a tiny house workshop, he hadn’t built anything prior to the tiny house.  He did hire some help when construction was taking longer than he had p

In our ongoing series, Better Know a Millionaire, we interview Nellie Akalp to discuss the legalities involved in incorporating your own business. Nellie and her husband started My Corporation in 1997 to help small businesses handle the paperwork involved in incorporating.  After eight years of hard work they sold the business to Intuit for millions of dollars.  But like all of our millionaires to date, Nellie didn’t stop working once she had that money in the bank. Not satisfied with ultra early retirement, Nellie and her husband started a new venture, CorpNet, a one stop shop for small businesses to help with legal filings, compliance, and the paper work required to set up a business. Nellie and her husband were living paycheck to paycheck when they started the first company.  It started making money pretty quickly and they were able to pay off their student loans.  When the company was sold they found themselves with twenty million dollars.  Now they started living a little more luxuriously, a house bou

  Matt started LMM knowing very little about personal finance but almost 200 hundred episodes in, he’s learned a lot.  We’ll see how he’s doing now. We all should have financial goals.  It helps keep us on track and helps us see, in real numbers, that our dedication is paying off.  If you use Mint, make sure you put all your numbers in there.  It makes you feel good to see a positive net worth but if you left out your mortgage, the picture is not accurate. Matt’s goal is to get to a zero net worth.  Which sounds bad but isn’t.  It means that his net worth is no longer negative and that’s a big accomplishment.  He still has a car payment and is still about $10,000 underwater on his house.  He has four credit cards with no overdue balance on any of them and his credit score is a whopping 788! He has $4000 easily accessible in a checking account and $1000 in a business account and about $700 in “miscellaneous” money.  In this Betterment account there is $10,652.  Six months ago he had $0 invested, a great im

There is no question Dave Ramsey has helped people take control of their money. We wanted to see for ourselves how useful his financial advice is so we review his best selling book Total Money Makeover. The book easily breaks down a no-BS approach to money matters. He teaches how to lay the groundwork for a healthy financial fitness. From getting out of crushing debt to easy ways to invest in your retirement.  Introduction In the intro to TMM, Ramsey talks about the success stories, how changing your behavior is key, and how this sure fire plan can work for anyone if they follow it closely. He also tells you what the book is not; complicated, anything new, politically correct, the same as his other books (so he thinks you should buy those too), or wrong. Pros Dave believes that personal finance and most other things in life, is 80% behavior and 20% knowledge. Agreed, the vast majority of America knows what we should be doing with our money, actually doing it is another story. The book explains that what

  We answer your questions about mortgages, how to prioritize your finances, and college savings accounts. 1.  Why shouldn’t I pay off my mortgage as soon as possible?  Unless you get a huge windfall, chances are you can’t cut out years worth of payments.  So you might not be investing for twenty years because you’re paying every penny to the mortgage.  You also lose out on the tax break, you can write off mortgage interest.  If you’re investing and still have some leftover money, go ahead and put that towards the mortgage. 2.  What is a good way to set up a retirement account for my young nieces and nephews?  A trust is the best way to give money to children.  You can set the terms such as, the money can’t be accessed until age 25 or the money can only be used to pay for college.  This also removes any threat from greedy parents stealing the money. 3.  If I’m doing everything right, can I play with Loyal Three?  Loyal Three is a fee free investing tool to buy individual stock.  Invest in what you love bu

  Ever had someone try to sell you Amway, or worse, try to recruit you to sell Amway?  Today we discuss pyramid schemes and how to protect yourself from them. Robert Fitzpatrick joins us to discuss money making schemes.  They pre-date the internet but have exploded in number since the advent of the net.  Find out how to spot and avoid them. There are two main types of these schemes.  One that is presented as a money making opportunity, as a career.  These are multi-level marketing schemes.  The other type is sold as a social opportunity and commonly known as a gifting circle. The three biggest MLM schemes are Amway, Herbal Life and Nu Skin.  Someone recruits you to sell products and get a portion of your sales and you recruit others and get a portion of their sales and the “endless chain” grows.  In a regular sales job there is none of this cultish recruiting.  It’s cut and dry.  You sell product X for $X and make a portion of that price.  In these MLM schemes, you are told the amount you can make is near

When you first get interested in managing your money the newness keeps you motivated but staying motivated is once the newness wears off is the hard part. We’ll help you with that. It can be hard to find motivation towards your money when you’ve been at it for awhile but staying on top of things is important. 1.  Clearly Define Your Goals.  You have to know where you’re going in order to get there.  If you want to pay off a $500 credit card balance, what you need to do to achieve that is very different from what you need to do to save for a 20% down payment on a house. 2.  Focus on Today.  This means having the positive things you did toward your goal every day outweigh the negative things you did. You transferred $100 into your Betterment account and bought a $3 coffee.  You can still consider that a positive day for reaching your goal. 3.  Have  a Buddy.  Have someone in your life that shares your goals.  This keeps you motivated and accountable. 4.  Utilize Smaller Sub Goals.  Sometimes if you’re slog

Do you have bad habits?  Are they costing you money?  We learn ways of breaking those bad habits and replace them with healthy ones with James Clear. James Clear’s first site, Passive Panda, is dedicated to helping people earn more money through freelancing, employment, and entrepreneurship. He started studying the psychology of why people clicked on certain links, read certain articles and bought certain things. The more he learned, the more interested he became in how habits shape our lives and his new project was born. How Habit Shapes Our Life We repeat about 40% of our behavior almost every day. Think about it. Do you brush your teeth every day, wipe down your countertops, take your vitamins? Yep, those are habits. Over time, certain habits can become part of our identity. I’m a runner and when I broke my foot (not running) several years ago, I had to give it up for weeks. It felt strange like I was not myself anymore. This applies to bad habits too. Do you always drink a soda with your lunch, have a

When you become an expert at something, it stops the learning process and stunts your growth.  But knowledge is infinite and we should always be learning. Charles Holland Duell was the commissioner of the US Patent and Trademark office between 1898 and 1901.  He once famously said, “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”  Ok, that was debunked, he never actually said that but think about the ridiculousness of that statement. If that were true, air travel, space travel, the internet would never have been invented.  That’s the point of the expert paradox.  You can never know everything about anything because there are new things to learn all the time. For some people, the “expert” label becomes such an integral part of their ego, that they can’t bear to come down from their ivory tower to get back in the trenches to learn something new.  Soon enough the label no longer applies because they haven’t kept up with the movement in their field. Learning should be an on-going process for every

Can you get a top notch education for free?  Scott Young shows you how to DIY your own top shelf education.  Also find out what autodidact means! Scott wanted to go back to school for computer science without all the hassle of enrolling in classes.   He discovered that MIT and lots of other universities put their classes, projects, and final exams on-line.  He went through the process and passed the classes.  And he did it in twelve months rather than four years.  He spent about $2000 and that was mostly on text books.  Nine months tuition and room and board at MIT is about $56,000. Keep in mind, you’re getting an education this way but not a degree.  So can you get a job?  Apparently you can.  Recruiters have contacted Scott to let him know that people with this kind of drive are exactly what they are looking for.  You will have to be a little more creative with your resume to get an interview but if you can get in the door, you have as a good a shot as someone who spent tens of thousands of dollars for th

Today we get to know millionaire Jordan Harbinger of Art of Charm where ordinary guys become extraordinary gentlemen. In our on-going effort to break the social taboo of talking about money, we continue our Better Know a Millionaire series.  If you didn’t know how to cook, you would ask a chef.  If you don’t know hot to get rich, you ask a millionaire. Jordan was a Wall St attorney and saw how people made money and how companies wasted it.  He knew if he ever started his own business, he would not be wasteful.  He founded The Art of Charm podcast with a friend in a basement, learned how to sell it and now it’s a multi-million dollar business. Jordan drives a Ford Fusion not an Escalade.  He spends his money on self improvement, he invests in himself.  Speaking classes, broadcasting training, high end networking conferences.  He invests a few thousand dollars a month in mutual funds and has an IRA but doesn’t day trade. Something our young millionaires have in common is caring more about their business tha