About

Hello, and thank you for visiting my blog. I’m a mid-career professional in my early 40′s with an MBA in finance. In previous jobs, I worked for an investment advisory firm and in the employee benefits department of a multi-national manufacturing company where I earned my Certified Employee Benefits Specialist credential.

I started this blog in November 2006 to share my personal experience and thoughts in spending money, saving money, investing, taxes, banking, mortgage, insurance, and other personal finance related topics. I have another website ExploreBonds.com dedicated to investing in bonds, bond funds, and other fixed income securities.

If you have questions you’d rather not leave in a comment for everyone to see, please use the contact page to send me an e-mail.

There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of personal finance blogs. What makes this blog different? Marc Hedlund, CEO of Wesabe, said this blog was the Best Finance Blog for People Ready to Save or Invest. Many other readers also told us this blog is "one of the best" personal finance blogs out there.

"It’s the only finance blog I read."

"I read a LOT of ‘em; yours is extremely well done as a wide-audience blog."

"It covers more than just basic things, but everything is explained in a way I can understand."

Subscribe and find out if it’s true! You can do that via RSS feed or e-mail. This blog is about documenting and sharing our firsthand experience and thoughts in dealing with personal finance issues as they come up to me. Journalists do a good job reporting what others said. That’s their job: interviewing sources and reporting what their sources said. But it’s all secondhand. This blog emphasizes firsthand experience. I write from my personal experience and learning. I do NOT write advertiser sponsored posts which are really ads in disguise or posts that push affiliate referrals. One reader summarized it so well I decided to use it as the tag line: like a friend telling you about money. That’s what I’m doing here.

Because I have a busy job and family commitments, I don’t post every day. If I don’t have anything interesting to share, I don’t post. There’s no quota to fill. I try to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. When I do post, I prefer to write longer and more thoughtful articles. I will never write "11 things you should know …" or "99 ways to do XYZ" while having never done any of them myself, because I’d rather go deep into one thing I actually did. If you are looking for lists like those, this blog is not for you. If you have some patience for good infrequent posts, I think you will like my blog.

Reader Survey

Please take a few minutes and kindly let me know how you like or dislike this blog in my reader survey. Your opinion and feedback are very important to me.

Advertising

Advertisements are accepted on this blog. Interested advertisers please contact me. Advertisements on this blog are just advertisements. They are not recommendation or endorsement.

Note to Publicists

Publicists, please don’t add me in your e-mail distribution lists without asking first. Unsolicited commercial e-mails violate the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Each violation can subject yourself to a personal fine up to $11,000. I will send one gentle reminder on first violation. A second offense will be reported to the FTC without exception.

Disclaimer

I am not a financial advisor. I do have personal opinions, sometimes strong, ignorant, or biased. Everything you read here on this blog is the author’s personal opinion, not financial advice. I am by no means an expert on anything. I don’t intend to mislead, but my facts, figures, and calculations can be incomplete, inaccurate or plain wrong. The word "you" in the posts doesn’t mean literally you, the reader. In most cases it means the author. Please be sure to double check everything if you decide to act on anything I wrote about. Bottom line, please don’t blame me for anything you do.