Motivations for Change

by Kevin

I can’t make you change.

Dave Ramsey can’t make you change.

Your Mom can’t make you change. And she brought you into this world!

Neither can your significant other, your brother, or your boss.

These people hold great influence in your life, but they can’t make change happen for you.

Why?

If you get your motivation to change anything in your life from anywhere outside of you, then ultimately it is going to fail. The desire for change, that driving motivation, must come from deep within you.

Why Do You Want to Change?

I write about personal finance. A lot. All over the internet.

I try to share insight, tidbits, tips, and strategies that readers can take and apply to their own lives. Showing someone how to open a Roth IRA could literally change their family’s financial tree. Encouraging someone to cut back so they can pay down their debt faster might help them live a more fulfilling life.

Getting a note back that something you wrote helped someone make a better decision or improve their situation… there is nothing like that feeling.

That having been said, nothing that I write truly matters if it isn’t applied. And I can’t force anyone to apply my genius to their lives.

I can stand at the top of the mountain and scream for everyone to build up an emergency fund, think about their futures, and to start saving for retirement.

But it doesn’t matter if they don’t want to change.

I can sit down with a co-worker and pour over their bills line by line, showing them places they can save or decisions that cost them dearly.

But it doesn’t matter if they don’t want to change.

I can facilitate a Dave Ramsey group and talk at length about the benefits of finishing all the baby steps.

But it doesn’t matter if they don’t want to change.

So, do you really want to change? Is that why you seek out articles, blogs, and podcasts about personal finance? (Surely it isn’t for the entertainment!)

If so, I have good news.

Personal Finance Change is Possible

No matter your current financial situation there is a way out. If you are up to your eyeballs in debt, there is a way out. If you don’t know where you spent your last paycheck, there is a way out.

Changing personal finance habits is entirely possible. I’ve seen people do it. They might have needed a little nudge of encouragement every once in a while, but the drive inside them to change their life helped them reach their goal.

It’s somewhat odd to me that we have “reality” TV shows about fat people losing tons of weight, but we don’t have any shows about indebted people “losing” lots of debt.

The similarities between physical health and fiscal health are striking:

  • both are really important in your life
  • if either goes poorly in your life it can impact every other facet of your life
  • changing either isn’t easy, but possible
  • changing either requires a lot of dedication and willpower
  • changing either is worth it

You have to want it. You have to have a deep desire to make significant change happen in any area of your life.

But it is worth it. Imagine not having to live paycheck to paycheck, constantly in fear of losing your job or another money emergency. Imagine being able to replace the HVAC unit with cash when it goes bad. Imagine being able to fund your kids’ education and your retirement at the same time.

These are all worthwhile goals. They might seem far off, but if you look… they could be right around the corner.

Make it happen.

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Fundamental Money: Balancing Time and Cash

by Kevin

My wife and I are right around the corner from significant life change. If all goes to plan our son will be here sometime in the next six weeks.

There aren’t words proper enough to display the incredible mix of emotions this has caused inside me. “Eeek!” just doesn’t seem to do it justice.

One of the things I’m starting to notice amidst all the running around to get ready is… dare I say it? … a loosening of my financial iron fist on our budget and spending. There is only so much energy to go around right now. I’m working my job, freelancing at night as a second job for another 20-40 hours per week, taking care of my wife, eating, and helping put a nursery together. Oh and the minor details of learning how to take care of a baby when you grew up as an only child.

The slow reduction of strength on the “wait, we didn’t get the best deal humanly possible?” feeling I usually carry is… odd. It is at odds with how I normally operate.

Frankly, I’m mortified. This isn’t what a personal finance writer would do! Snap out of it!

The Ultimate Money Challenge: Balance

It is as if I am running into the ultimate money challenge for the first time. (That’s not true of course, it is just how it feels right now.)

Balance, balance, balance. The key to successfully managing money for the long haul.

To me balance means give and take. Flexibility. Focus when needed, relaxation when not.

For the longest time we — or mostly I — have been on the focus side of money. I may not be the best at sticking to a workout routine, but staying on top of our spending has come fairly easy to me. And this is with multiple reward checking accounts and reward credit cards to track, too. (The spreadsheet is glorious.)

I’ve never understood why a Mom trying to juggle two kids would go to just one store to buy every single item rather than making a few extra stops to get the best deal.

(The mothers reading this probably just spit out their morning coffee in laughter. He’s about to learn the hard way!)

But I’m starting to get it.

I’m starting to feel the struggle of balancing everything on a blissful but short six hours of sleep. Your energy gets drained while the pile of work seems massive. And that’s just to stay afloat and have a clean house on the rare occasion you are brave enough to have company over. And you’re telling me I need to hunt for the biggest discount and the best deal on top of doing all that?

No thanks, let’s just make one trip and buy everything we need regardless of the deals available elsewhere.

I get it.

Life is Full of Seasons

Thankfully this is just a season of life. We’ve spent the first major season of marriage happily married. We got a dog. We managed our finances. We invested well.

But now we’ve got a little one on his way to join us. The winds of change have been swirling and the new season is practically upon us. Our priorities should change or there would be something wrong. It’s different. It’s weird for the nutty spreadsheet guy.

Yet it’s strangely… good.

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Dreams of Living Overseas on the Cheap: Reasons I Haven’t Moved Abroad Just Yet

by Kevin

I love America. I love the opportunities I’ve been given, the freedom I have, and the business I can build while working my normal 8-5 job.

But every so often I allow myself to dream just a little bit. Of foreign lands and unknown places where the dollar seems to stretch for miles. A place where my wife, son, and dog can relax and explore while I write freelance personal finance articles for our income. Since we live in an extremely low cost of living place we don’t need as many dollars to survive.

Maybe you’ve had the same dream every once in a while. What’s holding you back?

Here are some things I considered.

4 Reasons Why We Haven’t Moved Abroad

Here are four things I’ve weighed in my mind every time I’ve started to think about moving to another country.

Family

When we left Birmingham to move to Knoxville we did it primarily to be closer to both of our families in east/northeast Tennessee. Picking up and moving to a foreign land with many hours on several different planes would be the complete opposite of moving to Knoxville. With our families getting older we want to be closer to them to assist them as they age rather than moving further away.

Healthcare

I honestly haven’t done as much research as I need to here, but healthcare is a major concern. Can you get health insurance to be an expatriate? Is it affordable?

Even if you can get health insurance, what is the actual healthcare like in the country (or countries) you decide to travel and settle down in? While healthcare in America is an expensive and bloated industry, at least I know I am getting quality care.

Taxes

How do taxes work with working and living overseas? I know the US government is constantly on the search for additional tax dollars. How does that work when you earn the income overseas? There are rules about expatriating just to avoid taxes and the IRS has a set of guidelines to see if you will owe tax or not. But what if you want to come back?

Risk

Lastly there is the risk factor of living in a foreign land among a foreign people with a society that will have significant differences from the one you know.

Everything is different. Etiquette. How to communicate in the grocery store. Laws and law enforcement. Legal issues – can you get a lawyer if you are arrested by a corrupt government?

The list goes on an on.

Address Your Concerns with Education

You can address most of your own concerns about moving overseas with an education in being an expatriate. There are dozens of quality websites available with forums so you can learn, engage, and ask questions.

At the end of the day I’m sure there is nothing quite like selling everything you own, packing up, and moving to that foreign country. Before you jump straight to that I would be inclined to rent out my house and belongings for a 3 or 6 month period of time to test the waters. I would personally hate to make a big commitment like that and end up hating the place I had decided to travel to for the long term.

Have any of you ever considered living outside the US to stretch your dollars?

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When Will Saving Money Be Worthwhile Again?

by Kevin

Do you remember the days of truly high-yield online savings accounts? “High-yield” online savings accounts still exist, but they are paying paltry amounts of interest.

No, back in the good days of saving money you could earn 4%, 5%, or in some cases 6% on your money.

There were no hoops to jump through. You just opened an account, deposited your money, and watched the interest roll in.

Those days have been gone for a long time. So long that I begin to wonder if they will ever be returning.

What Happened to Saving Account Interest Rates?

Before the financial crisis, housing bust, and Great Depression interest rates were much higher on everything. Saving account rates ran 4% to 6% online while mortgage rates were 5% to 8%. As the economy began to fall apart the Federal Reserve lowered, lowered, and kept on lowering their rates which in turn brings rates down across the entire economy.

Since then the economy has been okay, but not enough to justify raising rates. (Raising rates too quickly could kill a recovering economy.)

It’s a fine balance between raising rates too quickly and taking too long to raise them. In the meantime, savers are caught in the middle with inflation eating away at the spending power of their deposits and little to no interest to help offset inflation.

Where to Find Yield for Savings

If you are like me finding a new place for better yields on your deposit would be a welcome thing.

Reward Checking Accounts

The best place I’ve found thus far to amp up my interest rate on my deposits is reward checking accounts. I’ve written about them a lot, and for good reason. The account works like any other checking account: you get a debit card, you can write checks, and you set up direct deposit.

The good part is if you meet some really basic requirements like swiping your debit card 10 times per month and logging in to online banking, you get a much higher interest rate up to a certain dollar amount. So you might get 2% interest on $15,000 or 2.25% interest on $25,000.

Any amount of money deposited above the cap (such as $15,000 or $25,000 in the above examples) gets a normal, miniscule amount of interest or none at all.

Overseas Saving Accounts and Certificates of Deposit

A much more risky option – that I do not recommend – includes overseas saving accounts and certificates of deposit. Some institutions in places like India are offering 5% rates for you to deposit money with them.

While you aren’t breaking any laws depositing your money overseas, there are far too many risks for this to be a good idea. The biggest risk: you have no FDIC coverage so the bank can disappear and you would lose everything you had deposited.

Other Investments

Of course you can seek higher yields by taking on additional risk. Bonds, stocks, or peer-to-peer lending can generate higher returns for you, but these investments are not in the same category as a savings account. Savings accounts are essentially a risk-free return as long as you stay under the FDIC coverage limit. You have no guarantee of your capital that you invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, or peer-to-peer loans.

Saving Money is Worthwhile

Even with interest rates making saving money seemingly worthless there is still significant value in saving money. Having an emergency fund that can cover your living costs for 12 months if well worth it even if inflation eats away 3% of its buying power every year.

Saving money is worthwhile… it’s just that right now it doesn’t pay very well.

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