Personal Finance For the N64 Generation
Home prices in the Bay Area have literally doubled in the past three years. This absurdity has been wrought on us by a combination of a continuation of easy money by the Fed and the biggest private and public market tech bubble since 2000. You should not buy a house in San Francisco unless you enjoy declaring bankruptcy and losing money. Continue reading “Why You Should Not Buy a House in San Francisco”
A pension crisis of epic proportions is unfolding in New Jersey right now, but if all you listened to was the presidential campaign trail you’d assume it’s the best managed state in the nation. In fact, New Jersey is a financial disaster. I’m a firm believer that you can’t just worry about your own financial situation as a millennial. You have to look around you and see what’s going on because if you don’t you could wake up one day and wonder how your taxes got to be sky high, or your city services aren’t being delivered, or how people aren’t getting their pensions. It is with this thought in mind that I want to tell you that New Jersey’s pension funds are projected to be totally broke by 2027. By my own calculation, I find the pensions will be empty by 2025. While this problem has been building over the past decade, Christie and his administration have misrepresented the fact that they’ve placed the state on the path to financial ruin by making one of the lowest pension contributions in the country. Now, Jersey’s pensions are about 50% funded using their own ridiculously high expectations for investment returns on their pension fund and the payments the state needs to make to catch up are not being made, so the funding ratio is going to continue to plummet. Let’s find out how this is happening and what you can do to protect yourself if you or anyone you know happens to live in New Jersey. Continue reading “New Jersey is a Financial Disaster About to Explode”
Alfred Morris, the starting Running Back for the Washington Redskins, got a ton of attention recently in the sports and business press for the shocking revelation that he rides his bike to work. Check out that photo on the left. Even though the bike doesn’t look too shabby, consider the parking lot competition he is tempted to compete with. Almost every vehicle is a luxury car. Professional athletes are notorious in the media for driving hot vehicles and spending money like there’s no tomorrow. However, when I got to looking at Morris’s situation more closely, I realized that Alfred Morris has the smartest financial mind in football, perhaps rivaled only by Ryan Broyles, who lives off a $60,000 a year budget with his wife. Continue reading “Alfred Morris Has the Smartest Financial Mind in Football”
In one of the universe’s great ironies, people that marry for money usually get beat out financially by those that marry for love. Huh? Say what? People looking to marry a sugar momma or sugar daddy look like paupers compared to couples that walk down the aisle and stay married for the next 40-70 years. I’ve seen this not only in my own life through friends and family, but through statistics. If you read The Millionaire Next Door, one of the best personal finance books ever written, you’ll find that one of the most common traits among America’s millionaires is being married to the same person for decades. How is this possible? I’ll go through different scenarios to show you that the real sugar daddy or sugar momma for you could be right under your nose. Continue reading “How to Marry a Sugar Momma or Sugar Daddy”
People have been asking me for a while now to write about how to get a better phone plan. How much are you paying per month now for your plan from AT&T or Verizon? $40 a month? $80? Maybe $120 after taxes and fees? I am currently traveling the world and am able to call and text my friends and family with my 5 dollar a month phone plan. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made in the personal finance space has been to cancel my relationship with the blue blood phone companies and switch over to this cool little startup called Republic Wireless. Here’s how you could save 60% or more off your phone plan, even if you are still using Mom and Dad’s family discount. Continue reading “My 5 Dollar a Month Phone Plan and How You Can Get it Too”
First rule of modern society: people are not nearly as perfect as their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles suggest. Whenever we look at someone’s life through the #nofilter lens (we all use it), we see a whitewashed version of life free from any challenge, difficulty, or roadblock. When I post pictures of traveling the world online, I leave out the unpleasant parts, but I decided for this post I wouldn’t spare my readers from some of the more graphic details of the tough times I’ve been through so far in my travels around the world. Hopefully these stories below give you realistic expectations if you’re thinking of going off on global trip that it won’t all be sunshine as well as make you laugh a bit so you can get through the week. Continue reading “The Funny, Crappy Stuff that Happens When You’re Traveling the World”
People are typically stunned when I tell them that I got my one way plane tickets to Europe for $300 total, and they were actually two separate tickets, the first to Iceland and the second to Norway. If you go the easy route and type in Point A to Point B on Kayak.com (I shudder to think if you’re typing that in on AmericanAirlines.com) you will probably pay way more than is really necessary to get to your destination. I don’t have any amazing tricks to get cheap flights to Latin America and Europe because I don’t use gimmicks, I use strategies that you can apply each time you look for a trip. Continue reading “How to Get Cheap Flights to Latin America and Europe”
Dear Travis,
I’m 27 years old. I have only been working full time for 1 year because I spent 8 years [in the entertainment industry] and I am left starting from scratch. I moved back in with my parents and I have very little in savings. My fiancée makes $25,000 per year currently with little savings. Neither of us have debt. I make $50,000 a year with an unknown bonus. Can this New York City worker retire early? Continue reading “Can This New York City Worker Retire Early?”
I’ve been doing a ton of traveling and have been spending the majority of my time in Eastern European countries. I have been thinking quite a bit lately as to what my definition of rich would be. Most wealthy people will give a number that is twice their current net worth, which is pretty comical. You have multi millionaires saying they aren’t rich which is pretty silly if you are in the top 1%. You hear stories how $300,000 a year is middle class for a family of four in New York City, or that real estate in SF is so outrageous you can’t find a home there for less than $1,000,000. After considering what the term “rich” means to me, I realized it’s really location dependent more than an absolute dollar amount. Clearly, rich is a relative term. Continue reading “Rich is a Relative Term”
Reader in Melbourne, FL: We’ve been renting for about a year now and we’re wondering if we should take the next step and buy a home before mortgages get really expensive and housing goes back up again. I work with the school system and make about $37,000 a year. My boyfriend is a firefighter and he gets about $60,000 a year. The place we are renting is $925 a month for a townhouse by the beach. We’d like to get a single family home since we’re thinking about marriage. These run about $200,000 and rent is about $1200 a month. Should we try and see if we could use an FHA first time homebuyer mortgage? My boyfriend won’t qualify because he had to walk away from a home he bought in 2008 but maybe I could do it? We don’t have very much saved up for a downpayment so that’s the only way we could afford buying right now, but it stinks feeling like we’re throwing money away and I know that I’ll be here for several years so I would like to put down roots.
Sincerely, Reader from Melbourne, FL Continue reading “Case Study: Buy or Rent a House with Boyfriend in Florida”
