Author Archives: Money Reasons

About Money Reasons

A offbeat personal finance blogger that comes from the tech world.

Morphing Of The Money Reasons Blog

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While I always wanted to talk about finances, the “Money Reasons” site primary purpose wasn’t intended for me to be a blog.

Yep, main reason for the existence of the website MoneyReasons.com was not to convey financial information to the blogosphere.  Hard to believe with a name like “Money Reasons” huh?

Back when I first started this site, it was an Apache server that existed in a virtual machine on my workstation.  Other than the domain name (which cost about $10 back then) everything else was free since it was hosted on my workstation at home.  I called the site Money Reasons because I wanted to talk about financial topics that I thought I excelled in and as a secondary reason because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on my little website experiment!

If has been both life changing and a fabulous success in my eyes.  While it might not have statistics like “Free Money Finance” (one of my favorite sites), it still has been a great little experiment and an incredible tools for learning about technology (which I’m still learning today).

But that all being said, I’m finding that I’m starting to be spread thin.  Originally, I was posting posts everyday, currently my goal is every other day, but now I’m throttling back to just a few times a week.  Life it too busy to be writing all the time for me at my current stage in life.

But on the other hand, that means that hopefully the articles that I do write provide more of a punch in the value perspective.

Enjoy the final days of summer!

Don

 

Is A Roth IRA One Of The Best Protection Against High Future Tax Rates?

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Roth IRA Tax Protection!

If taxes are going to raise and especially on dividends from stocks, is the venerable Roth IRA the only protection that we as middle income/class folks have against getting gouged by the (T)ax man?

What if you are relying on a dividend or some other type of income stream in the future, and all of a sudden you retire and instantly the tax rates double?  Or maybe the tax rates rise slowly over time to a point where you can never really live on a money steam without the fear of running out of money before you die, so you work forever?

Is that really any way to live?  I dread having to worry about my money so much, isn’t there enough in live to worry about already?

But even if they tax rates jump to a ludicrous combined total percentage (let’s pretend 90% for everybody), in a Roth IRA, you are for the most part safe against taxes!  You are safe because even if the tax rate increase to such an unbelievably high level, when you pull your money out of your Roth IRA, its tax-free!  And that makes all the difference when it comes to retiring comfortably and living with less stress!

Actually, in the finance world, a Roth IRA is some what of a superhero versus the run of the mill retirement instructions out in the market place.  The extra benefits of owning a Roth IRA makes it a financial instrument that everybody should consider!  Read my previous articles why I consider the Roth IRA to be such a superior product in my previous article titled: Roth IRA Unusual Benefits.

With the debt and overspending happening in the United States, it’s inedible that eventually taxes will get raised, and perhaps to a very high rate to boot.  So while you might not sole reply on a Roth IRA for your future, perhaps it would be a wise choice to diversify your retirement paths and start or if you already have one, channel more of your hard-earned money into such a superb financial device?

Bests,

Don

Credit Card Reward Points Paid For My New TV

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We’ve been using credit card reward  points to pay for electronics and appliances for the past few years!

The last purchase made with my credit card reward points was a new computer (6 core processor woot!).  But I’ve always wanted to pitch my old CRT 200+ pound TV!  It’s an eye sore, and very heavy to move around when cleaning behind it, not to mention it’s not HD.  But being the green person that I am, I kept it saying that I’ll replace it whenever it finally breaks and we need a new one.  A benefit of waiting meant that I’ve been able to save my credit card reward points too.  In fact, we were able to save $900 work of such points over the past few years!

So last week, our TV finally stopped working, and instead of being sad about spending the money to buy a new one, I was actually excited to go Best Buy to purchase a new one!  After a bit of debate with my wife about the size that we needed (my wife won by the way) I broke down and bought the 46 inch HDTV instead of the 50 inch (or over) size that I wanted.

I have to admit, even though I don’t watch TV much, it was good to finally have this purchase out-of-the-way because the old TV was an  embarrassment.  I mean, we have to be the last family on the block with such a relic…

So what did I get?

Samsung LED, 120 Hz, 1024p – 46″ model

Samsung TV

 

That’s the beauty of reward credit cards like the American Express Blue Cash Card, if you pay your balance in full each month, it can be like a forced spending budgeting plan!  For me I don’t like to spend money so this is one way that I feel like I’m not even paying for it!

Do you take advantage of your credit cards too?  For me, they make me both save and spend money (well points) at the same time!

Bests,

Don

Summer Time Financial Process Reflection

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Summer is a tough time for bloggers, at least if you live in a seasonal state that has a snowy winter period.

It a time to be busy with family, friends and life in general.

During the business oriented and financial slowdown for the summer, often it’s also a relaxed time to examine your current financial strategy and see if it can’t be improved upon.  I think that since a lot of us let our financial planning go on autopilot during the summer, the occasional thought about how we go about things is relatively bias-free!

Gulf of Mexico Sunset

Captiva Sunset

By bias-free thoughts about your business/financial processes, you are able to make optimizations on the processes by looking at your current processes from different perspectives.  I think it’s easier during such times to make some great discoveries and improvements on such processes.  You might be wondering why this is a great time to make improvements since you are most likely in vacation mode…  I’ll explain:

When you are your day-to-day processing of the system currently in place, you are more concerned with managing the transactions (like income and expenses) that use your system and you try to optimize the inflows and outflows of that system.  At that point in time, most likely, you are too busy working with and managing the system to take time to think about redesigning the system for the better.  And therein exists the paradox, while we are resting and enjoying your summer,we’re passively thinking about our existing system and how to make it better!

Funny how life works out that way…

Enjoy your summer my friends!

MR