Build wealth. Love your life
Tonight, while walking Suzi the Dog, I got chatting to a neighbour we’ve known for close to a decade. She is one of my favourite people in the park: always nice to talk to, never complaining about life and hardly ever obviously feeling down. This time was an exception. I…
Editor’s note: Many people believe, somewhat misguidedly, that their future prosperity depends on spreadsheets, calculators and the iron discipline to squeeze the living hell out of your life. I’m not one of those. Yes, I have spreadsheets and I know my day-to-day money; what I find most helpful in the…
Does your teen think that you are poor even when you’ve just come back from a nice holiday in the sun? They may be displaying early symptoms of what is known as poverty mentality. And if poverty mentality was only mildly unpleasant and offensive to you, I won’t be telling…
You may think that John and I are an ordinary couple, going around our everyday endeavours and trying to live life as best as we can. You’d be wrong: we have been a quasi-bank – or the bank of mum and dad – for well over a decade now. You…
It’s been some time now that I’ve had a proper sleepless night about money. Yes, I still have them but usually about other things. Also the source of sleeplessness has changed. When thinking about money, I used to have the kind of night where you drop off into a tensely…
Do good news about money and life come in three as well? The way I see it, they should do. Then again, if this is so I’m still waiting for the third piece of news. But let me back track a bit and tell you what this is about. (And…
Recent news reports that the family of beloved UK comedian Rik Mayall, who passed away last Summer, have fallen into a nasty inheritance tax trap – as the comedian died without having a valid will in place. Intestacy – dying without a will – can cause undue stress and a…
Recently we realised that our older sons, the ones supposed to be independent and make their own way, have been getting in debt. Yep, both of them. Because I realise that young people today have it rather hard – jobs gone, pay gone down and the rest – I got…
In blogging, there are posts that we all sooner or later write. In personal finance blogging I reckon two posts that serve like a ‘rite of passage’ are ‘the latte/coffee post’ and the ’emergency fund’ one. If you have read The Money Principle for any length of time you,…
Yesterday I was chatting to a friend of mine on the phone; many friends gossip or make trivial arrangements. But I am a personal finance blogger and had just looked at out budgeting spreadsheet…so I mentioned how proud I am that couple of years ago managed to get higher insurance…
Renting, on both sides of the property divide, has been a lot on my mind lately. Why you may ask? Well, after five years of boomeranging sons (I am not even sure that this is a proper verb but I mean that they moved in back with us multiple times)…
OK, let’s say that the going is really tough; I mean financially. Remember the choices I was talking about in my post about not having any money at all? When it comes to this it is probably easier to cut costs rather than go for increasing income. What would you…