Impact of Home Purchase on Future Expenses
This blog will be useful for first time home buyers and long-time renters.I recommend those in he age bracket of 25-30 years that are staying with your parents/ guardians to…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Should I Invest in Emerging Markets?
Investments in Emerging Markets has been on attractive investment avenue for several years. Emerging markets provide an opportunity for faster growth of your portfolio. BRIC report published by Goldman Sachs…
How Does Spending Correlate to Child Age?
This blog is useful for parents/ to-be parents that plan to have their children stay with them. Pre-read: Expense Trending & Budgeting - Myfinancejournal You have now created a detailed…
Cash Flow: How to have money for savings and investments?
This blog is useful for most of the readers as it helps them improve their cash available for savings and investments by making small changes to your habits and improving…
Posted inCash Flow Expenses Personal Finance Basics Savings
Expense Categorization, Trending & Budgeting
This blog will increase your awareness about income, spending and will help you set a budget and eventually a plan to manage your finances better, This is a fundamental step…
Posted inCash Flow Expenses Personal Finance Basics Savings
Can sound financial habits adversely impact your credit score?
This blog will be relevant to you once you have reached a good maturity for managing your finances but are still unsure why your credit score is not increasing. Pre…
Posted inExpenses Personal Finance Basics Savings
All you need to know about Credit Score
When apply for a loan or home mortgage, your lenders would refer to your credit score to determine the interest rate. The lower your credit score, higher will be your…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Taxes & Fees: The Silent Killers of Return on Investments
Just like anything else that includes money, the money managers and governments bodies would like to get some portion of the share of your profits. Over the years and geographies,…
Investment Considerations (When? Where? Why? How? How Often?)
Investments are essential part of our Financial Strategy. They help us save for the future and also provide a decent growth of our monies over a period of time. Prudent…
Asset Classes for Mutual Funds
Shares are a great way to invest and will provide in some cases "abnormal returns" over short to medium time periods. They also carry market risk as they can wash…
Posted inInvestments Personal Finance Basics
Importance of Regular Investments
We have gone through all details of how to manage your expenses, cash flow and reduce the cost of your existing mortgages. You should be familiar with all the tricks…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Home as an Investment Property
Just like other assets (bonds, stocks, mutual funds), home can also be used a potential avenue for investments. We need to be aware of Investment Rule 1: Do not use…
Posted inExpenses Investments Savings
How to Determine Budget for a New Home?
You need to prepare a home purchase spreadsheet similar to the below illustration: Table: Calculating Down Payment Purchase Price$532,410Down Payment to Builder($19,370)Credits and Incentives($12,943)Outstanding Balance$500,097Down Payment Rate (% of Purchase…
Posted inAlternate Investments Expenses Investments Savings
Should I Rent or Buy a Home
Staying in your own dwelling is always a nice thing to do once you are settled from a personal milestone perspective. You need to do a thorough financial evaluation on…
Posted inCash Flow Expenses Investments Savings
Maintain Minimum Balance in your Savings & Checking Accounts
The prime reason for us to have a balance in Current and Savings accounts to help with liquidity and easy access to money when we need it. Usually Savings and…
Posted inExpenses
When Not to Take a Line of Credit
As explained earlier, HELOC option is better compared to Traditional Mortgage if you play the game right. This is a critical assumption when comparing HELOC and Traditional Mortgage. You may…
Save Even More with Balance Transfer Card and HELOC Account
Combining the HELOC with the concept of 0% Balance Transfer Card, you can take even more advantage of your balance transfer card by making only minimum payments to the balance…
Posted inAlternate Investments Cash Flow Expenses Savings
How to Reduce overall Mortgage Cost
Balance Transfer Cards If you shop around, you will usually come across companies providing you balance transfer cards that will have a $0 transfer fees and 0% interest for 18…
Posted inExpenses
Caveat Emptor for Mortgage Shoppers
Mortgages are the cheapest available credit for your home. Although they may sound lucrative, they may not be attractive for a few reasons and may not fit all borrowers. Below…
Posted inExpenses
Should I Refinance?
Interest Rate You have an option to refinance your home when the interest rates fall sharply. This will help you reduce your EMI and/ or pay off your loans faster.…
Posted inExpenses
Selecting the Right Mortgage
Typical quotes for mortgages are for 15 years or 30 years (180 months or 360 months). You can literally select any time period up to 360 months and get a…
Posted inExpenses Personal Finance Basics
Mortgage Basics
Introduction When it comes to debt, Home Mortgage is the biggest debt in your portfolio and stays there for several years. This is precisely the reason you need to be…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Individual-controlled Retirement Schemes
The other avenue I was referring in the earlier section where you would have more control over your investments are the IRA schemes which you can purchase any time during…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Comparing 401K and Equity Investment
Assumptions: Annual contributions are $18,000 each year (these contributions increase slightly).Money is invested in the same portfolio through 401K and Investments.Returns are based on the actual past 15 year returns…
Posted inAlternate Investments Investments
Special Purpose Investments
I had briefly covered special purpose investments as an objective earlier. I will detail out the products available and their relative benefits and disadvantages in this section. As the name…
Optimizing Cash Flow
At this stage it is appropriate to understand the impact that cash flow will have on your investment returns. Simply defined, cash flow is the difference between Income and Expenses…
Posted inPersonal Finance Basics
Common Investor Biases
Over the years, I have made several mistakes and had a few biases which made me make incorrect investment choices. I am sure you would have had similar experiences in…
Posted inInvestments Personal Finance Basics
Investment Avenues
There are several areas where you can invest your money. Our choices depend on our Objectives and Orientation. Stocks Historically, stocks indices have provided the highest returns over long period…
Posted inExpenses Investments Personal Finance Basics
Factors Influencing Spending & Investing
There are several factors beyond your control that will determine the allocation of your investments or provide you an indication if time is ripe for large borrowings, home loan refinancing…
Posted inCash Flow Expenses Personal Finance Basics
Debt & Mortgages
Most Americans live on credit. The average debt per US family is $6,270 in 2020 (the total debt for all Americans combined is a staggering $14.3 Trillion of which the…
Posted inInvestments Personal Finance Basics Savings
Recommended Allocation
Now that we know the Categorization of our money based on objectives, it is appropriate to discuss what factors would dictate investment in one objective over another and what triggers…
Posted inPersonal Finance Basics
Demystifying Personal Finance
Overview Managing your own money and making it work for you is as important if not more compared to earning money. We all need money to live a financially comfortable…