Should you “Occupy Wall Street”?

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wall street

You may be aware of a growing social protest movement that began on Wall Street a few weeks ago. According to their website: “Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.” And now this protest is metastasizing and spreading to 25 [...] Read more »

Eliminating Debt is Like Fixing a Car – Persistence Pays Off!

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steak 043

I hate cars. Let me be more specific: I hate the fact that I know very little about cars. So little in fact that someone could completely make something up, I’d believe it was a real problem, and pay through the nose to fix it.  So, when the check engine light began to blink on and off in my car while it felt like it was about to stall, I knew that I was the one that was in for a ride. I wrote a previous post in the CareOne community about the problems we’ve been having with the car, [...] Read more »

Why do so Many Americans Rely on Social Security?

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government herd

As I checked up on Twitter Thursday morning I noticed that “social security” was a trending topic. Very rarely do you see a trending topic that has any real life value, so it was for this reason I decided to see what all the fuss was about. You don’t have to be Democrat or Republican to know that Social Security is bankrupt. This is a non-partisan issue, or at least it should be. Some seem to believe that reform is not only needed but necessary, while others think it should just be left alone. Regardless of which side you tend [...] Read more »

Financial Lessons for the Kid in All of Us

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640px-Angry_child_at_dental_treatment

While gathering my things after a workout in the locker room of my health club, I noticed a little boy about 3 years old wanting to go look at the scale. Each time he wandered towards the scale, his dad would grab the boy and guide him back to the locker area. The man instructed the boy to stay by him as he finished getting dressed after swimming. The boy would stand near his father for a few seconds, then start walking back towards the scale. The father would again grab him, indicating that the boy could see the scale when he was done getting dressed. This repeated itself several times, each time the boy becoming more insistent that he wanted to see the scale, each time his dad becoming more firm that he stay next to him. Read more »

Becoming the Leader I Need To Be

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Skydiving

In my day job as a software engineer, I am a technical team leader responsible for ensuring that a team of 8 operates efficiently, completes work items on time, and with quality.  My team respects both my technical and leadership abilities. There is chaos in the absence of strong leadership.  I see that every day. Where weak, or even no leadership is present, projects flounder in failure until someone takes control of the situation and drives it to completion. The same thing applies at home: Parental: without strong parental leadership to instill a moral compass and discipline, children may lack [...] Read more »

Where Debt Begins: The Disconnect Between Perception and Reality

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Where Debt Begins

If you are like most people today, you have debt payments challenging your future and creating a drag on your ability to invest. In addition to the financial issues debt creates, it also affects how we feel about ourselves and how we look at the world around us. We may think to ourselves, “what’s wrong with me?” or “where did I go wrong?” To move past these feelings, it might be helpful to consider where it might have all started. Read more »

Financial Planning for Retirement – Be Conservative, Responsible, Realistic, and be Successful

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Nest Egg

Not long ago I had the good fortune to gain insight with respect to one family’s financial planning that was centered around retirement. This had been a young couple with children, with both the husband and wife having lived through the Great Depression and bleak economic times surrounding World War II. Talk about a life lesson in stretching a dollar! What struck me as unusual was the constant focus, from the very beginning, on retirement and taking care of their children. It was unusual in a very good way. This couple knew that the future was coming. They knew that [...] Read more »

Six Important Questions to Consider When Improving Your Finances

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sick and tired

Are you sick and tired of struggling week to week, month to month? You probably know it doesn’t have to be that way but just haven’t quite figured out how to get the ball rolling. (or keep it rolling might be more accurate) Most of the time we tend to use techniques other broke people use whenever they want to break free. The problem is most people, especially broke people, haven’t a clue as to how to turn things around. We usually need a push in the right direction, from the right person. That certainly describes our old financial patterns [...] Read more »