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The Truth About Budgeting and Why People Fail at it!

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I’m bad at budgeting , your bad at budgeting, the government is bad at budgeting…

Do you see a pattern?

Heck, some people don’t even like the word budget, but regardless if you call it a budget it or not there is a way to not fail it.

Most people fail at diets and budgets for this reason!

Roth vs. Traditional IRA (In Depth Review)

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Since the conception of the Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) in 1974 from the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), it has helped thousands of individuals to save money for a comfortable retirement. Over the years, the types of IRAs have evolved and increased in number.

Although, this gave contributors more options to choose from, in some ways, it made it hard for some to select which one to use right away. The types of IRA available are SEP IRA, Simple IRA, Self-directed IRA, and the two most popular types: Roth IRAs and Traditional IRAs.
How well do you know your IRA?

Whether you already have a type of IRA in mind or in the process of choosing one, it is important to know the facts behind each type. The background and particulars of both Roth and Traditional IRAs, two of the most popular types of IRA available, are significant and learning about them will help you to see which one is more applicable to you and your current status.

Europe and Pushups!

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Hello fellow YFS’rs! I’m back from vacation and let me tell you it was amazing! I’m typically a beach, island, hot weather, tons of sun type of person. But, this year we decided to vacation a bit differently.

My wife, since I’ve known her, has wanted to visit Paris. Well, we decided to do a bit more than Paris.

We’ve visited the following locations:
Read More…

8 Hidden Costs of Home Ownership

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Owning a home has always been a part of the American dream. It’s something that we fantasize about when we’re young, something we scrimp and save for, and quite frankly, something we end up paying for, for the rest of our lives. Aside from the home mortgage, it seems owning a home is more expensive than we thought.

Leaky pipes and infestations are sudden home expenses to watch out for, and maintaining and repairing can prove to be not only a daunting task, but also a very expensive one. There are also other expenses that suddenly pop up, things that we don’t even think.

In order to prepare yourself for the potential expenses in home ownership, below are some of the hidden costs of having a home.

Property Tax

How To Buy A Foreclosure

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Foreclosures can be a real estate investor’s best friend. This is because most homes that are in foreclosure can sell on the cheap. We bought our very first home as a foreclosure! We got a heck of an deal. I’m not just saying that because we loved the home either.

Foreclosures happen when a homeowner misses out on their mortgage payments and is unable to come up with the money to repay the lender. Most of the time, the lender chooses to foreclose a home when there are several consecutive missed payments and infrequent communication with the borrower. Foreclosure can help the lender minimize losses on the loan.

Why are Most Foreclosures Selling At Discounts?

Most lenders are of course banks, and it is not their ordinary course of business to make a profit on real estate. Banks want you to keep making payments to them. They are in the business of loaning money not, owning houses. So when a bank forecloses a home or any other real property, this becomes a non-performing asset for them. This is the reason why banks are eager to get rid of these properties.

Another reason why foreclosures are cheap is when the owner themselves are desperate to sell so that they can at least make a little profit before the bank acquires their property. Most homeowners would even allow buyers to assume their loan just to save them the headache of being constantly hounded by banks. If a buyer assumes the loan of a person who would ultimately go through foreclosure the seller can save themselves a trip to credit purgatory.

LESSONS FROM FRUGAL BILLIONAIRES

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What do people like Warren buffet, Ingvar Kamprad and the Scions to the Walton family have in common? Well apart from the fact that they all are one of the richest billionaires on the Forbes list, it is their frugality that sets them apart from not only the rest of us common folk, but also their billion dollar peers.

For those of you who are new to the term, frugality is the act of meticulously saving or investing your fortune, rather than spending it on luxury mansions, sports cars, champagne spewing fountains or whatever else money can buy. For now, let us look beyond the immense wealth and covetable lifestyle of these aforementioned people and take a look at the valuable lesson they teach us about frugality and living within our means.

Warren Buffet, for example, prefers to eat in fast food joints rather than gourmet kitchens and his current residence is worth less than a million dollars, which is vanishingly small compared to his net worth.

Now what can you learn from this?

What Is Asset Allocation and Why Is It Important?

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One of the things that investment gurus always emphasize is to diversify, diversify and diversify. Supposedly, diversification will help improve the overall performance of your portfolio since it doesn’t ride on just one investment vehicle. The trouble now is this, with over thousands of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds to choose from, how can we correctly pick the right investment?

Some investors may end up studying different companies that sell stocks in order to choose the best stock picks, but doing so may just be the wrong approach. Instead, an investor should decide on what mix of stocks, bonds and mutual funds you would like to hold. This type of strategy is called asset allocation.

What Is Asset Allocation and Why Is it Important?

10 Common Characteristics of Millionaires You Can Follow

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Back in 2007, Forbes Magazine reported that all over the world there are a total of 946 billionaires, and according to Capegemini, a financial consultancy firm, in 2011 there are about 10 million millionaires. All of us probably have this dream of becoming millionaires ourselves, and sometimes we’re left wondering how these once ordinary people manage to make it big.

If prima ballerinas have the characteristics of grace, flexibility and poise, and if football athletes train to be resilient and strong, millionaires also share certain character traits that groom them to become the financial successes that they are today.

Below are ten attributes that are common in most (if not all) millionaires:

Top 11 Reasons You Should Use Yodlee MoneyCenter

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You should keep track of your finances. It is as easy as that. Whether you decide to use a pen and paper, a spreadsheet, or an online account aggregator, you should have an idea of how much you are spending and on what. You need to do this in order to spend responsibly, and you need to do it because it helps you to save money, plan ahead, and make good financial decisions.

Yodlee MoneyCenter is a great option when it comes to keeping track of your finances, and here are the top 11 reasons why you should use it. Sub bullet point #1 is because I use it!

It’s Free – First things first, this account aggregator is free. You do not have to pay anything to sign up and to use this service. While in some cases a paid service might be more useful, who wants to spend money to keep up with their money?

Aggregation – With Yodlee, you can see all of your accounts, securely, in one place, and the site updates quickly. You can track your net worth with this site as well.

Bill Pay – You can pay all your bills (the online ones at least) from the site. If you have to write a check, then you cannot pay online. However, many utility companies offer online bill pay—you just have to sign up for it.

Transfers – With Yodlee, you can transfer funds from one account to the other as well.

Security – This website has a high level of security, and it is a password protected, secure site.

Printable Reports – You can print out your financial reports, and these are great for financial advisors, spouses, etc

Manual Entries – You can manually enter information. For example, you can enter checks before they are deposited.

Easy to Use – It’s easy to use and set up an account on Yodlee, and it is even easy enough for a financial beginner.

Alerts – Yodlee features alerts and reminders. You can set reminders to pay bills, etc

Categories – Yodlee features categories, which are automatically assigned so that you can see what you spend on certain things, and Yodlee will create spending reports.

Track Your Investments – With Yodlee, you can track your portfolio,

The Cons

No Future Forecasting – Yodlee does not offer future forecasting in its budgeting tools, and this can make it hard to tell what you might spend in the future.

Interface – It’s not the prettiest interface out there.

Wealth of Options – While Yodlee is easy to use, it does have a wide variety of features that may overwhelm some people.

In Conclusion…

Yodlee is a great tool if you are managing a number of accounts, and it is best for keeping up with what you have, rather than predicting what you will spend.

Bottom Line – Yodlee is feature rich and more comprehensive than other account aggregators.

Extra information…

CNN MONEY had a piece talking about yodlee. Click here for the article, but here is the important part

If you’ve banked online, you’ve probably used Yodlee without even knowing it. More than 200 financial institutions, including Citibank and Bank of America use its services, touching nearly 26 million consumers. Your bank probably uses its technology, too, though Yodlee doesn’t like to name names.

Yodlee is the proverbial man behind the curtain. So what, exactly, does he do?

When you log into your bank and transfer money between your savings and checking accounts, that’s Yodlee providing to the technology to make the transaction happen. Paying a bill online? Yodlee. Signing up for a new account? Yodlee. Analyze how much you spend? Yodlee.

One last thing.. YODLEE HAS NEVER HAD A SECURITY BREACH!

Call to Action!

Do you use Yodlee? If so, what do you like and what do you dislike? Do you use another account aggregation site or program? If so, which one and why do you use it?

B-Boy Stance and Link Love!

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I’m going to keep it light today. I was looking around YouTube while bored, and found some older Donald Glover videos I used to enjoy back in the day. This clip is hilarious!