INVESTING

The Most Important Personal Finance Concept?

Posted on by Kipp

thoughtsThere are many important factors to consider in personal finance. Opportunity cost, rate of return, interest on loans or investments. But if you asked me to select the single most important factor in making decisions, what would my answer be?

My answer would be cash flow.

This is really what all of our efforts boil down to. Generating the largest amount of free cash flow so that we can retire when we want to. Now there are really three ways to increase your cash flow, assuming you have debt. One is to decrease reoccurring expenses, another way is to invest, and lastly pay off your debts.  So lets go over some of these areas and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of these things when trying to increase the spread in cash flow. Continue reading →

Live Like You’re Dying Day 9 – Automation

Posted on by Kipp

automaticContinuing with this month’s theme of living like I were to die at the end of the month, I think it is important to try to setup your significant other for success.  And this leads me to think about automation and streamlining processes to help them.

Financially there are many things you can automate.  You can have automatic payments, automatic savings, and even automatic investing.  But you can use free tools such as mint to help track spending spending and growing their net worth when you are gone. Continue reading →

Recent Stock Purchases

Posted on by Kipp

MoneyTree

I mentioned in my post about Loyal3 that I have added some positions in Microsoft (MSFT) and Kraft (KRFT).  I also have some small auto purchases being made, just $10 a month, into several stocks.  The purchases that occurred during September include Coca-Cola (KO), Walt Disney (DIS), Pepsico (PEP), Walmart (WMT), Unilever (UL), and McDonald’s (MCD).

The only positions that had subsistence really were the purchases of MSFT and KRFT.  Being that Loyal3 is fee free, I am able to put in just a few dollars at a time.  Also, the added bonus is this makes my financial planning easier as I now have 10 automatic purchases set up I will automatically earn interest in my checking account which is usually over $15.00 a month.  Now I don’t need to worry about the amount of times I use my debit card at the store and I can focus all of my purchases on reward credit cards while knowing I will be maximizing the return of my cash.

With that said, let’s go into a little detail about these stocks that I am purchasing. Continue reading →

RANT WARNING – WTF – What the Fee!?

Posted on by Kipp

frustratedI have been looking to optimize the wife and my investment options, which is why I am in the processing of transferring her ROTH IRA to avoid the fees on her loaded fund.  So when the option to join her work 401(k) opened after a year of employment I figured it can’t be worse than throwing more money into the ROTH at Edward Jones, right?

WRONG!

Continue reading →

Disadvantages and Advantages of Loyal3

Posted on by Kipp

FREEI have read a few other bloggers talk about Loyal3 and it seems like they are a pretty good way to invest, but only in a few select companies. Other bloggers talking about them include Retire Before Dad, who uses a credit card to earn rewards on his monthly purchases from Loyal3.  Dear Dividend is perhaps the first place I read about Loyal3 in his post about cheap or no fee investing.  Also Ryan at impersonal finance did a great summary about Loyal3 as well.  So if everyone is talking about it, it must be all good right?  Well there are a few things that I don’t like about the service but also many things that I do like. Continue reading →

The Road to Financial Independence

Posted on by Kipp

Road

I have had a vague idea of when I would become financially independent.  Somewhere between age 46-50 was the general idea.  I can’t say when it will happen for certain, circumstances change, inflation happens, or life events.  But I can say if everything cost wise and lifestyle wise were to move in the same direction as where I am today, that I know when I can retire.  The good news is I am a bit of an optimist and I hope I can create a larger spread in savings, paying off debt, and make a little more income than inflation.  Who knows, if this blog starts to make a little money a couple years into the journey that is all money that will speed up this process.

After reading a detailed post from Big Guy Money on his journey to financial independence I thought maybe I should share my thoughts on the time frame for my journey here. So this post will kind of give you an idea of where I am going now and how I plan to get there.  Kind of like a travel guide subject to changes due to unforeseen circumstances. Continue reading →

August Stock Purchase and Dividend Update

Posted on by Kipp

MoneyTreeInitially I was not planning on purchasing stock this month.  But a single investment stuck out to me and made me think if paying off debt faster than the minimum payments is the best move financially.  That stock is AT&T (T).

I purchased 29 Shares of T for $34.91 a share after fees, $1012.51 total, after fees.  This purchase will increase my annual dividend yield by $53.36.

If you looked at my most recent net worth update you will see that currently I have just over $117,000 in various forms of debt.  However, on that page I did not include interest rates, one of the reasons is because the student loans are at 3 different interest rates.  The one student loan I plan on paying off next month carries a 5.35% interest rate, and is the higher rate loan I have.

After that my rates are 5% for the mortgage, my weighted average student loan payment will be at 3.52% interest (original amounts at $5,500 at 4.25% and $11,000 at 3.15%).  So why is that important in making a decision on buying this particular stock? Continue reading →

Frankly Frugal Finance: Weekender Edition #4

Posted on by Kipp

IMAG0067

Here we are with the first weekend of August and I am quickly approaching one month in the blogging world!  Time just seems to fly by when either you are busy or having fun, or both.  I like to think it is the both part.  Anyways, if you have checked out my posts this week you can cheat and just click on the links below:

Life is Short – You Only Live Once

Choosing a Broker for the ROTH IRA

Earn Money Over 10 Times in a SINGLE Transaction

 

Now it is time to honor those other great bloggers out there!  I try to keep this list short with just five, but I do tweet articles throughout the week as well.  You can follow me on twitter @FranklyFrugalFI to see them as I find them.  Also the blogroll is a great place to find blogs with great content as well.  Anyways, the articles I want to highlight this week are:

Continue reading →

Earn Money Over 10 Times In a SINGLE Transaction

Posted on by Kipp

BonusThe system is rigged in your favor.  There are multiple ways you can make money when purchasing an item.  If you don’t think so, I am going to walk you through backwards as to how you can make money over 10 times in a single transaction.

Lets say you found an extremely nice fancy camera on Amazon.  You are a camera addict so you don’t use point and shoot cameras, no you want that fancy Nikon camera.

You can simply just pay for this on your debit card and be done with the transaction, get the camera, and be happy with your purchased that you thoroughly researched.  But you are a frugal shopper, and you wouldn’t just pay with a debit card. Continue reading →

Choosing a Broker for the ROTH IRA

Posted on by Kipp

QuestionSo, you may have read that I am looking to transfer my wife’s ROTH IRA and I have been looking at options as to where to transfer this to.  So I decided to pull together a few options to compare.  Although there are many brokers, there are a few in particular I wanted to take a closer look at and go through some of the reasons why I may choose a certain broker for the ROTH IRA. Continue reading →