May 2006

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May 31, 2006
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Our Prosper Bids are In!

May 31, 2006

As you frequent readers of our blog will know (all three of you), we’ve decided to lend some money on prosper.com. We’ve blogged about this a couple of times previously, but it looks like things are finally coming together We initially thought about committing $500.00 from part of a family gift we received. We re-evaluated [...]

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James’s grade for Ben Stein: B+

May 29, 2006

Ben Stein has gotten himself a gig as one of yahoo’s superstars of personal finance. Unlike some of the people yahoo has, I always look forward to reading Ben’s stuff. After much consideration, I have decided to include Ben in our personal finance guru rate and have awarded him the grade of B+. You frequent [...]

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Why Does Marriage Build Wealth?

May 29, 2006

Married people are richer. If you read much personal finance literature, you’ll have learned this by now. While it’s an interesting observation, what’s more interesting is why this is: Speculation has involved a variety of topics: 1) Economies of Scale: In married households, there are economies of scale. Basically, its more efficient for two people [...]

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The Great Credit Card Debate

May 28, 2006

James & I have had considerable debate on the issue of credit card use. Here is where we land on the issue: Miel: 1) It is okay to use credit cards if you already have the money in hand for what you are charging, and you pay off your balance in full without getting dinged [...]

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PT Barnum on Debt, Family and Credit

May 28, 2006

PT Barnum wrote the following back in the 1850′s: “Mr. Beecher advised young men to get in debt if they could to asmall amount in the purchase of land, in the countrydistricts. ‘If a young man,’ he says, ‘will only get in debtfor some land and then get married, these two things will keephim straight, [...]

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Negotiating our Joint Budgets

May 28, 2006

James & I have spent lots of time discussing financial matters, but we had never actually sat down and done a joint budget. Yesterday we spent some time during our Saturday morning money chat session and hammered out a joint budget. We did this in a way that is similar the manner we did our [...]

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Prosper.com: Does it really help?

May 26, 2006

In anticipation of our prosper account getting set up, we’ve been doing some preliminary cruising to inform the decision about who to lend to. Some thoughts have occurred to us, so we’re sharing them with you. It seem a bit unethical to charge people who are in distress high interest rates. What we mean is, [...]

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Our Net Worth – May Update

May 24, 2006

As part of our quest to become millionaires, we have updated our net worth for May. I am pleased to report the value of our wealth increased by nearly 9 percent over last month. This appeared to be driven by at least three factors: 1) Our wedding savings: As you may have gathered, we’ve been [...]

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ARMs: We Don’t Like Them

May 24, 2006

Miel and I got an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) when we bought our place last June. It was great because the lower introductory rate allowed us to borrow enough to put us in the price range of one-bedroom apartments in neighborhoods we liked. Now, we are paying the price. Our mortgage is index benchmarked. Now [...]

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