Free Money Finance

How to Sell a House

If you're looking for the details on "how to sell a house", I'll cut to the chase:

Bury a St. Joseph statue upside-down in your yard, facing toward the for-sale house. After the house sells, the seller is supposed to dig up the statue and place it in a spot of honor in their new home.

:)

I stumbled upon this piece from the Wall Street Journal that talks about the inverse relationship between the housing market and sales of St. Joseph statues. When the market is bad, sales of the statues rise (because people are looking for ANYTHING that will help sell their house, even if it doesn't work.) When the market is good, homes sell quickly, so no help is needed from St. Joseph.

I find this piece interesting because:

• It's nonsense, but people do it. And they can't even agree on the rules. Should the statue be upside-down or right-side up? Should it face the house or not? Is it to be placed 6 feet from the house or 6 yards? And on and on.
• When we had our house for sale last fall, I purchased a St. Joseph statue to aggravate my wife (I told her I was going to buy one and she said I was crazy, so I did it.) In fact, the one I purchased is the gray one on the far right in the Journal's piece.
• I has some semblance of being related to personal finance.

Just thought I'd throw the topic out there and let you all comment on it. Has anyone ever heard of this legend? Has anyone ever used it? Did it work?

Do You Rebalance These Days?

Here's a piece from CNN Money that asks whether you should rebalance your portfolio or not. Their thoughts (FYI, this piece was published at the end of 2013, hence the numbers below are not for 2014):

Rebalancing your portfolio has long been investing orthodoxy, yet it has never been easy.

Shifting money from winning funds into laggards is counterintuitive, even though doing so can help reduce risk. But rebalancing has rarely been more challenging than it is today.

The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up 16% this year, and the 10-year Treasury bond has dipped 5.2%, which means you should move money from stocks into bonds.

Uh-oh. This is a dicey time to be plowing cash into fixed income. The Federal Reserve has repeatedly signaled that it will dial back its policy of buying bonds to keep interest rates low -- something that will pummel bond prices.

"I'm usually skeptical when someone says, 'This time it's different,' but once in a great while it is," says investment consultant Charles Ellis, author of Winning the Loser's Game. "You really need to think twice about owning bonds today."

Some thoughts from me:

• I have always been terrible at rebalancing. Over the years I've done quasi-rebalancing by investing new funds into areas that have fallen below my preferred asset allocation. But I've also always been heavily in stocks, so there hasn't been much need to shift many dollars around.
• I'm leery of bonds right now myself, unless your intent is to buy them and hold them for income until maturity. Interest rates are going to HAVE to go up at some point, right? Which means it's just a matter of time before bonds get hammered.
• I prefer to focus on the two keys to maximizing investment results: save as much as I can for as long as I can. These will yield much more fruit that concentrating on rebalancing and asset allocation will.

How about you? Do you rebalance regularly? Do you think you need to or is it not worth the effort?

Free E-Book on Finance Basics...Kind Of

A reader recently sent me an article titled The Key to Build Wealth? Start Slowly. The article itself was pretty basic, but also good, so when it mentioned that the author interviewed was giving his e-book away free on April 25, I made a note to check it out.

So I went to Amazon this morning, and the book is not free (as of this posting, maybe it will be later) but was still 99 cents. I don't have the time today to watch it hourly to see if it becomes free, but I thought I'd at least post a link and you could check it out as often as you like.

The book is If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly and based on the article, the content looks to be much better than the cover of the book. :)

Enjoy!

How Much Should You Save for Retirement?

This is a guest post from J.D. Roth, who founded the blog Get Rich Slowly in 2006. Roth wrote Your Money: The Missing Manual and is the "Your Money" columnist for Entrepreneur magazine. His latest project is a year-long course on how to master your money, which explains how to slash costs and boost income so that you can pursue early retirement and other goals. This article is one piece of this course.

As Chief Financial Officer, one of the toughest challenges you face when planning for the future is knowing how much to save for retirement. If you save too little, you could find yourself working at Wal-Mart during retirement or living with your son-in-law. Save too much, though, and you'll sacrifice some of the good life you could be enjoying today.

Traditionally, financial planners and retirement calculators have suggested you'll need 70 percent (or 80 percent or 100 percent) of your pre-retirement income to maintain your current lifestyle when you've finished working. But this doesn't make any sense. Assume You, Inc. earns $80,000 per year. Standard retirement advice says you'll need $56,000 per year (70% of $80,000) in order to retire. But what if You, Inc. spends (and continues to spend) $70,000 per year? Following traditional advice, you won't have saved enough. And if You, Inc. spends a thrifty $20,000 per year? Well, then you'll have oversaved, which means you could have used some of that money to enjoy life more when you were younger.

There's no doubt that you'll need a sizable nest egg for retirement especially if you plan to travel or play golf every day but don't be fooled by the constant refrain that you need to save 70 percent of your retirement income to retire well. That's no way to prepare for the future.

How much should you save? Begin by looking at how much You, Inc. spends each month. According to the 2010 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute:

• Nearly half of retirees spend less in retirement than before (23% spend much less).
• Roughly 37% spend the same in retirement as they did when they were working.
• Only 13% of people spend more in retirement than before -- and of these, six percent say their expenses are only "a little higher".

In other words, your pre-retirement expenses are good indicator of how much you'll spend when you've finished working. Take some time now to run the numbers for You, Inc. At a minimum, compute the following:

• How much do you spend? Review recent income statements. On average, how much does You, Inc. spend each month? (Don't include retirement contributions or business expenses.
• How much do you save? On average, how much profit does You, Inc. earn each month? (Again, you'll find this on your income statement.)
• How much have you saved? For the sake of simplicity, you could use your net worth. If you'd prefer, remove the value of your home from the equation, which will yield the total of your liquid savings.

Once you know how much You, Inc. spends, it's easy to calculate how much you'll need to save for retirement. All such estimates are based on some basic assumptions about inflation, investment returns, and your lifespan. These arguments and calculations can be simplified to the following statements:

• If you have a high tolerance for risk and make some bold assumptions, you might decide to retire when you've saved enough to cover 20 years of expenses.
• If you're more cautious, you might wait to retire You, Inc. has enough in the bank to cover 30 years of spending.
• Most people should aim to retire when they've saved enough to fund 25 years of expenses, it's probably safe to quit your job.

This is why it's so important to keep control of your monthly spending. For every dollar you spend per month, you need to save between $240 and $360 in order to retire. If you spend $1000 per month, you'll need to have a nest egg of between $240,000 and $360,000. If you spend $5000 per month, you'll need between $1.2 million and $1.8 million in the bank.

If you want more info, go online to explore the dozens of retirement calculators scattered across the web, each of which is a little different. No one calculator is necessarily better than any other, but I've found the following handy while planning for the future of JD, Inc.:

• The Motley Fool has two useful calculators, one that estimates your retirement expenses and one that lets you see if you're saving enough.
• Bankrate's retirement calculator bases its results solely on your savings. Moneychimp has a similar, but simpler, calculator.
• Choose to Save has a ballpark estimate tool that can be used online or off (or on your smartphone). It's the best of the calculators that use income instead of expenses.

For a great combination of simplicity and complexity, check out FireCalc.com. Although the site can seem overwhelming, its method is fairly elegant. It gives you an idea of how safe your retirement plan is based on how it would have withstood every market condition we've faced since 1871.

By plugging your numbers into several calculators, you can get a better feel for how much you'll really need in retirement. But don't just play with the numbers. Talk with the people you know. Chances are they'll tell you to save. But if the Retirement Confidence Survey is any indication, they'll also tell you that things aren't as bad as you'd think.

Determining how much to save for retirement is actually one of the key tasks you face as Chief Financial Officer. Some would argue it's the most important calculation you'll perform, and that everything else you do for You, Inc. is in support of this.

This is a modified excerpt from "Be Your Own CFO", the 120-page guide included with the year-long "Get Rich Slowly" course. The guide includes tips for boosting revenue and cutting costs so that you can maximize profit in order to achieve your dreams, whether those are to retire early, send your kids to college, or travel the world. Want to know more? Buy it now.

In Case You Were Wondering

You may have noticed that my site has been down for the past few days.

Typepad, the service I use to run this blog, was attacked system-wide and most, if not all, of their blogs have been down since the weekend.

Thanks to those of you who emailed or tweeted me. I appreciate your concern and thank you for looking out for me.

Anyway, I hope we're back to normal and things will proceed as usual.

Thanks for reading FMF.

Update: Here's a newly posted piece featuring advice from top personal finance bloggers. Click through to see what I had to say. :)

A Money Expert Who Knows What She's Talking About

In contrast to many financial "experts" in the media who know very little about money management (I noted this in Money 101: How to Measure and Track Wealth and Another Financial Media Mistake), Business Week magazine interviewed Ann Kaplan, a woman after my own heart.

Here's what started off the interview:

What’s the biggest financial mistake people make?

The biggest mistake isn’t bad investment choices, it’s overspending. Most people are very surprised when they analyze their spending to discover that a lot of it doesn’t reflect their priorities. Maybe they’re eating out a lot when their priority is travel. Most can cut one-third of their budget by eliminating things they don’t really need, whether that’s buying jewelry or theater tickets. The goal of thinking about this isn’t to encourage you to necessarily cut back but to understand that you can. That helps eliminate fear.

Couldn't agree more. Several years someone asked and I wrote My Best Financial Advice: Spend Less than You Earn. I followed that up years later with The Ten Worst Money Mistakes Anyone Can Make. FYI, the worst mistake was "over-spending."

I'm also on the same page as her here:

If you have a financial planner you trust, shouldn’t you leave the decisions to him or her?

You can hire wonderful advisers and use magnificent products, but at the end of the day no one cares about your money as much as you do. You always need to be the chief financial officer of your life.

Again, couldn't agree more. That's one reason I write this blog -- so all of us (me included) can learn more about managing our money and thus not be at the complete mercy of a financial planner who may or may not have our best interests at heart.

Any extra thoughts on either of these subjects?

The Importance of a Thank You Note

There's a newsletter that gets passed around our office that recently quoted the following:

According to a CareerBuilder survey, 58% of employers said it's important to send a "thank you" after an interview; 24% said it's very important.

We've discussed this issue a lot in the past. Here are some highlights:

• Another Plug for the Thank-You Note 
• Do You Send a Thank You Note After a Job Interview?
• And Yet Another Recommendation for the Lowly Thank-You Note
• Thank You and Follow-up
• An HR Professional Recommends Thank You Notes

Here are a few thoughts from me in case you've missed them throughout the years:

• I'm a believer in thank you notes. I used them in my most recent job search (to get my current job), so I actually put my own advice into action.
• I use them primarily because I think sending them is the right thing to do. Someone took time to talk with me about a job opportunity. Doesn't that warrant a simple 10 minutes to write a note?
• And if you're opposed to writing a note because it's the "right" thing to do, how about this reason: it can separate you from the pack of other candidates. And when you get down to the interview process, anything and everything you can do that separates you (in a positive way) from the group is a very good thing.
• I personally go old school and send a hand-written note via snail mail. But I'm personally ok if people use email. However, a paper note is classier and carries more weight IMO.
• I also send hand-written notes (as well as email) for many simple things that some people might ignore. But my personal opinion is that you can never say "thanks" enough, even for simple kindnesses.

Those are my thoughts. What's your take on the issue?

How Bad Americans Have It

Money magazine released the following stats in their April issue. This set is for households making below $100,000 a year:

• 55% are living paycheck to paycheck
• 66% couldn't handle an unexpected $10,000 expense
• 47% couldn't live comfortably even three months if breadwinner lost his job
• 47% would find it tough to get new job if laid off

Now here are the percentages for households making more than $100,000 a year:

• 37% are living paycheck to paycheck
• 38% couldn't handle an unexpected $10,000 expense
• 32% couldn't live comfortably even three months if breadwinner lost his job
• 37% would find it tough to get new job if laid off

And my results:

• I am not living paycheck to paycheck
• I could handle an unexpected $10,000 expense (though I wouldn't like it)
• We could live comfortably for many months if I lost my job (some would argue that I have enough to retire now)
• I don't think it would be difficult to get a new job if I was laid off, but it would certainly take some time

And some general conclusions about the numbers above:

• All the percentages seem low to me for the top group
• I'm surprised (though I guess I shouldn't be) that the "over $100k" group is doing so poorly

A few more facts from Money:

• 64% of people with household income below $100k are worried about their family's economic security. 49% with household income over $100k are.
• 54% of men are worried about their family's economic security. 66% of women are.
• The most pressing money worries people have are: 1) having enough money to last through retirement, 2) how to manage if a real financial emergency arose, and 3) living from paycheck to paycheck

Reading these numbers, it's amazing to me that our economy is afloat. With people being in such bad shape, I'm surprised they spend a penny. Then again, maybe it's because they spend, spend, spend that our economy is doing at least "ok."

What's your take on the info above?

Are You in Your Dream Job?

A reader wrote the following comment to Money magazine in its April issue:

One of the facts and figures packed into your March issue stood out: the Money Poll item that 14% of people are in their dream career. So 43 out of 50 commuters are going somewhere other than where they would like. Wow. If these people only knew that when you like your job, it isn't really work at all.

I have a few thoughts on this one:

• I certainly like my job. I've been here eight months now and am so glad I made the move.
• I don't think it's my "dream career." My dream career would be where I made $10 million a year sitting on a beach in Hawaii. Or maybe playing quarterback for the Denver Broncos (though I hear they have a good one). Or playing video games from my yacht sailing around the world. Honestly, I'm surprised that 14% said they were in their "dream career." Either these people dream very low or they only polled Fortune 500 executives.
• If they had asked how many people "liked" their jobs (which the commenter mentions in his last sentence), I think the response would have been much higher.
• I'm not sure it's true that "when you like your job, it isn't really work at all" is true. I think it's true that liking your job makes life better. I think you can certainly like your job more often than you don't like it. And you can even like it to the point where you'd say you enjoy it. But saying it really isn't like work at all? That seems a bit far-fetched. Then again, maybe I'm just too literal.

So I'm going to do my own (unofficial) survey. Let me know in the comments if you love, like, or hate your job and what you think about the quote above.

It should be an interesting discussion. :)

Share Your Financial Experiences with FMF Readers

I love sharing stories from people who are working through financial issues, have made significant financial progress in their lives, or just need a bit of advice. And FMF readers like these as well, as evidenced by the comments I receive on these posts.

If you'd like to tell your story or get some advice, there are many ways to do so including:

• Reader Profiles - Answer a few questions and ask for advice (if you like) in the process.
• Millionaire Interviews - Is your net worth over $1 million? If so, FMF readers would love to hear from you and learn from your experience.
• Six Figure Interviews -  Do you make over $100,000 a year? If so, FMF readers would love to hear from you and learn from your experience.
• Retiree Interviews - Are you retired? If so, we'd love to hear what you did to get there, how it's going, and so on.
• Help a Reader - Do you have a financial question for FMF readers? If so, ask away and we'll all share our thoughts.

If you'd like to participate in any (or several) of these, drop me an email and I'll get you started.

Thanks!

A Simple Portfolio of Three Funds

MSN Money lists a simple portfolio of three funds as follows:

Some experts are pushing a back-to-basics approach to investing. As drastic as it may sound, they say it's possible -- even at times desirable -- to construct a very well-diversified portfolio using just three low-cost mutual funds or ETFs.

Which three funds to use? A classic trio provides exposure to U.S. stocks, foreign stocks and U.S. bonds.

Many "Bogleheads" -- a group of investors who favor index investing as inspired by Vanguard Group founder John Bogle -- suggest a three-fund portfolio consisting of the U.S.-focused Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX)fund, Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGTSX), and Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX). Together, the three mutual funds, which also offer ETF shares, track more than 15,000 global securities.

This is a very interesting piece to me for a couple reasons:

• They suggested something similar to this in 2008 and I posted on it in An Investment Portfolio Using Only Three Index Funds.
• I implemented that plan but took it one step further from the above. I lowered expenses even more by investing in Vanguard Admiral shares. 

If you look at the results over the past several years, you'll see that this plan has worked out quite nicely. :)

I have altered my investments a bit over the time I first wrote on this issue and now. For instance:

• I've lowered the amount I have in bonds. I now have very little in bonds. I've always been on the aggressive side with my asset allocation and have never had a large amount in bonds, but given their low returns, the chance that interest rates will rise at some point (thus lowering the value of current bonds), and my willingness to deal with stock volatility, I don't have much need for bonds at this point in my life.
• I've moved my bond money (plus some!) into what I think is a better income producer -- real estate. In addition to trying to be smart about real estate investing, I also had a bit of luck, I invested in the right market (where I lived at the time). Here's a piece (from the firm that manages my properties) that talks about Grand Rapids, Michigan being a great place to invest in real estate. Yes, it's a bit "sales-y" by someone with a vested interest, but the case is compelling, no?
• I've also put some money into Vanguard's Small Cap Index fund (VSMAX) as I want some money in new/growing businesses.

Anyway, I prefer simple investing and thus really like the three-fund plan. How about you?

Is Social Security Stealing Your Chance Of Being A Millionaire?

The following is a guest post from Marotta Wealth Management.

I have edited it a bit to tone down the political rhetoric and just focus on the facts.

I've previously brought up the issue that I wish I had been able to keep what I have invested in Social Security. I know that society (and me as a result of that) benefits from people having a retirement safety net. But that doesn't change the fact that what I could have done with the money would have been much greater than what I'll get back from the system.

After you've read the piece below, leave your thoughts on the costs and benefits of Social Security as well as any comments on how it could be made better for all savers.

Imagine a man named William Jones, born in 1948, who is celebrating his 66th birthday today by filing to collect Social Security at full retirement age. William's final salary was $50,000 per year, although when he started working in 1968 he was only earning $7,304 annually.

For the past 46 years William has had Social Security withheld from his paycheck. When he first started, the total Social Security withholding was only 7.6%, which for William was $46.26 of his $609 monthly paycheck. On his last pay stub, the government took 12.4%, or $516.67 of his $4,167 monthly salary.

Because William was not subject to the current 12.4% withholding during his entire working career, his Social Security benefit will receive a more generous return than any of today's young people will receive.

Social Security withholding is split into an employee portion and an employer portion. But practically speaking for the employer, both portions are just additional costs of hiring the employee. Neither gross nor net wages would change if technically the employee or the employer were paying the entire amount.

William's lifetime withholding totaled $152,068. In today's dollars, that means William paid $260,163 to Social Security.

This withholding qualifies William to receive $24,180 a year, just under half of his former salary. When he dies, only if Williams has a surviving spouse whose earning record was smaller than his will this benefit survive him.

Many have said that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme with no lockbox that is going bankrupt. But the real way to test is what would have happened had William been allowed to keep his Social Security benefit and invest it in a private IRA account.

We computed this hypothetical return in an age-appropriate portfolio between the S&P 500 Stock Index and the US Aggregate Bond Index. With only a monthly contribution of his Social Security withholding, by age 66 William's portfolio would have grown to $1,431,487.

With a safe withdrawal rate at age 66 of 4.43%, this IRA would give William an income of $63,415 per year rising with inflation. On average this withdrawal rate would be sustainable until William's 101st birthday. But at his average life expectancy at age 84, he would leave an estate that would still be over a million dollars in today's dollars.

To be clear, Social Security offers William only $24,180 a year, half of his former salary. In contrast, this IRA account would allow him to retire with $1.4 million and a 27% raise as well as leaving a legacy for his heirs.

Workers under age 60 should tilt heavily toward stock investments. But even if William had blindly invested in 40% bonds, his portfolio would still have grown to $1,186,472, a yearly income of $52,561 rising with inflation.

Every 46-year investment horizon since Social Security was made law would have produced better returns had the withdrawals been invested privately. Even the Social Security withdrawals of average workers would produce millionaires if they were allowed to be saved and invested in private accounts.

The Conversation About College is Turning in the Right Direction

This piece from the Wall Street Journal is one of the first I've seen from a mainstream media outlet that really digs deep into the cost/benefit considerations associated with going to college. Just a decade or so ago most media outlets bristled at the notion that money/economics/payback should play much of a role in selecting a college. Now here's a whole conversation on the next level of education-related financial issues: should someone's MAJOR and the earning power of that major be considered as a student selects a college and field of study?

I think you all know my thoughts on this issue, but if not, here are some pieces to remind you:

• College Freakonomics
• College and Cost
• How to Make the Most of a College Degree
• Four Keys to Making the Most of College
• A Game Plan for Making the Most of College

This issue is one I'm very close to dealing with myself. My kids are within a few years of selecting a college and a field of study. As you might imagine, we are having many discussions about what they think they want to study, where they might want to go to school, and so forth.

My daughter will likely enroll in a community college this fall as a junior in high school to begin her college career (we homeschool, so we have the flexibility). My son is already taking classes at a local high school supplementary school that could earn him college credit. Both of them want to get as many credits as they can while they are in high school -- so they can begin college well down the road. We've given them a financial incentive to do so, telling them they can keep the difference between what we have saved for their college education and what they spend.  

That said, they are just taking the basic classes, so the decision of what they want to study as well as where they will eventually go to get their degrees is something we need to decide. They won't have as much worry as others about paying for college since we've saved for it, but they certainly want to get the best degree they can without it costing them much.

I'll keep you informed as we make progress down this path.

Thoughts on Being a Millionaire and Retirement

Here's an interesting piece from the NY Times that takes several views on being a millionaire:

They begin with the "a million dollars isn't what it used to be" argument:

In 1953, when “How to Marry a Millionaire” was in movie theaters, $1 million bought the equivalent of $8.7 million today. Now $1 million won’t even buy an average Manhattan apartment or come remotely close to paying the average salary of an N.B.A. basketball player.

I'm not sure comparing something to an apartment cost in New York or what an NBA player makes for a good argument, but I get what they're saying. Imagine the difference today in having $1 million versus having $8.7 million. Big difference, right?

They go on to admit "while it's not the fortune it used to be, it's more than most people have":

Still, $1 million is more money than 9 in 10 American families possess. It may no longer be a symbol of boundless wealth, but as a retirement nest egg, $1 million is relatively big. It may seem like a lot to live on.

A millionaire household lives in elite territory, even if it no longer seems truly rich. Including a home in the calculations, such a family ranks in the top 10.1 percent of all households in the United States, according to Professor Wolff’s estimates. Excluding the value of a home, a net worth of $1 million puts a household in the top 8.1 percent.

The rest of the article notes how $1 million isn't the huge amount it may seem to be when it comes to retirement saving. The summary of their thoughts:

Consider this bleak picture: A typical 65-year-old couple with $1 million in tax-free municipal bonds wants to retire. They plan to withdraw 4 percent of their savings a year — a common, rule-of-thumb drawdown. But under current conditions, if they spend that $40,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, there is a 72 percent probability that they will run through their bond portfolio before they die.

A few thoughts here:

• I think the 4% rule has been de-bunked enough that it's not really reasonable even as a guideline, so I wouldn't put much weight on it. If anything, I think you need to plan to take LESS than 4% out.
• It would be nice to invest in muni-bonds and live off interest during retirement, but you need a whole lot of money to do that. That's why I think most retirees will need to invest in equities (at least to some degree) well into retirement.
• $40k could be supplemented with Social Security and working part-time and get a retiree up to an average income, so it's not the disaster the piece makes it out to be.

The article goes on a bit more, but here's a quote I found especially compelling:

“The bottom line is that people at nearly all levels of the income distribution have undersaved,” Professor Wolff said. “Social Security is going to be a major, and maybe primary, source of income for people, even for some of those close to the top.”

Yikes!

Scary, but true!!!

A couple final thoughts:

• Those who don't save enough will likely have a very poor retirement.
• The best retirement strategy IMO is one where you amass enough assets and then distribute them so that you can live off your savings alone and not spend and principal. This is the retirement plan I'm working on.

Comments?

The Key to Happiness

Yahoo asks if saving is the key to happiness. Some of their thoughts from a recent survey by Ally Bank:

The size of an American’s bank account is a better predictor of happiness than the size of their salary, according to Ally Bank’s research, released this week.

U.S. adults who save money are happier than those who don’t, and those who save the most report the highest rates of happiness according to Ally’s survey of 1,025 U.S. adults over the age of 25.

Americans who have no savings are about one-third less likely to say they are happy than people who have at least some savings. Only 29% of those with no savings say they are happy, compared to 38% who have at least a little money saved up.

“Happiness continues to grow as savings accumulate,” Ally said in a blog post about the results.  “In other words, a big savings account may contribute to happiness more than a big paycheck.”

In fact, the survey hints that saving money is among the healthiest things a person can do. When asked which activities made them happy, saving money got a higher response (84%) than exercising (59%), enjoying work (68%) and eating healthy (74%).

It's a stretch, but let me rephrase the first sentence in red above as follows: "The size of an American’s net worth is a better predictor of happiness than the size of their income." Do you think that's what this is saying?

This is true for me. I would be much happier making $50,000 a year and having $1 million in net worth than I would be making $250,000 a year and having $100,000 in net worth.

But I could be wrong. That's why I'm asking you for your thoughts. :)

And just to muddy the waters a bit, for me personally, I am happier making a larger salary than I would be at a smaller one. Scores of articles I've seen say that happiness stops going up as salary increases once a person hits $70,000 or so in annual income. This was not the case for me. The more my salary goes up, the happier I am.

How about you?

Happy Birthday to Me (It May Be My Last)!

Today is the 9th anniversary of Free Money Finance! Yes, nine short years ago I began this blog with one simple post -- on how to contact me. :) I followed that one up with a short piece noting what the site would be about. I summarized it as follows:

This site is about one simple thing: growing your net worth.

And that's what I've written about for the past nine years.

But it may be time for a change. Let me explain.

Most of you know that I took a new job last summer, moved from Michigan to Oklahoma, and pretty much changed everything in my life over the past eight months. It's been a good move overall, but there is so much to do to transition the lives of four people from once place, where they lived 14 years, to another hundreds of miles away. Initially I thought we'd be "all settled" in six months, but I've revised that to a year now, and it may eventually be longer.

Work is great but much more challenging. The kids are older, approaching college, and need more guidance. We bought a new house (literally new -- no one else has ever lived in it) and none of our furniture matched. So we're decorating the entire place. On top of that, EVERYTHING is new. Where we shop for groceries, where we go to church, where we have our dry-cleaning done -- EVERYTHING.

And we still have so much to do. It's an almost endless list of stuff to do.

Something has to give. It may be this blog.

You've probably noticed that I'm down to three posts per week. This is the maximum I'll have for the near future and probably all of 2014. I may post fewer times some weeks. I might not post at all.

In my last job, in the other state, where all was settled and comfortable, I had lots of time. I don't have lots of time now and it may be that FMF will need to take a break or even go away.

But it may not. I'm not sure yet. But I wanted to let you all know where things stand because this may be my last blog birthday.

I guess we'll find out together. :)

Whatever happens, I want to take this chance to thank all the readers, commenters, guest posters, and everyone else who has helped make Free Money Finance a resource for us all. You all have helped make this site much more than I ever thought it could be and you've been a blessing to me.