Every now and again when I read through the headlines on my favorite money news sites, I see the same desperate-for-attention headlines proclaiming that “retirement is dead” and that we basically have no hope of ever saving enough money. How do they draw those conclusions? The usual suspects cited are the decline of pensions, the deflating of Social Security and the rise in costs as reasons why none of us can save and why we’ll all need to work until we are 80.
And then there is my personal favorite: The 401k. They talk about the 401k like it’s a James Bond villain. When they compare the pension vs 401k, they describe it as a horrible and inefficient means for retirement. Basically, their message is that the 401k killed retirement.
That is complete nonsense. The 401k didn’t destroy our chances at the American Dream … we did.
Sometimes when you have a hard week at work, the only thing you look forward to is getting home to spend a quiet evening with your spouse. Not going out or painting the town. Just curling up together with some wine and watching “This is 40” together … which was incredibly hilarious by the way.
If you think that having $1,000 or so in your emergency fund is going to cut it, think again! I’m normally not a huge promoter of this topic, but over the last 2 weeks, I’ve had to dip into my stash more than I’d like. And if I didn’t have access to emergency money, I’d be up a creek either paralyzing one of my investments or taking on unnecessary debt.
Talk about kicking a guy while he’s down … Not only was it another stressful week with work, but we also got hit in the wallet with one of the worst kind of expenses: Car repairs. I’m not talking like you took the car in and they want $500. Try 4 digits! I’ll have a post to follow telling the whole story. I hate you car …
The following is a guest post by fellow personal finance blogger William Cowie from the site 
When it comes to planning for retirement, people both young and old always ask the same simple question: When can I retire? It’s a seemingly harmless question, but it is also one that can be ambiguous to find a direct answer for. The reason is because retirement isn’t something that simply comes with age. You could retire today or even ten years from now if you really wanted (with the proper plan in place). Unfortunately, I hate to answer a question with a question, but the response to “when can you retire” is simply “how badly do you want to”?
It’s been a while since I used the “Weekend Wind Down” title for my weekend posts, but unfortunately my jar of originality is running pretty low. I hate to be really dull, but this week was all work, work, work! I barely had any time to write new posts, research material, or comment on other blogs. But that’s the way it goes though, right? Whenever things get busy like that, it reminds me how important my financial efforts truly are.
In this month’s issue of Money Magazine, I came across an article entitled “When the Wilder Ride is Worth It”. The article was addressing how sometimes a company’s stock and dividend payment can be a better prospect for stable income than its bond. To make this comparison, they looked at the return of the bond against the dividend appeal (which was largely based on the dividend payout ratio) and any inherit stock risk based on the company itself.
If you’ve had a website for any length of time, then you’re probably already aware that every 3 months or so Google will give you “grade” called a PageRank. Your PageRank is simply a score of how prominent your website is, and it can have a lot of implications on other factors like your earning potential, rank placement, and more.
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