James & Miel

Savings Bonds RIP

September 13, 2011

(Guest post from James, original founder of DINKS Finance :)) As many of you long time readers of personal finance blogs will know, the U.S. Treasury department recently issued a press release saying they were eliminating paper sales of savings bonds, effective January 1st, 2012. This move comes as little surprise as some personal finance [...]

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Handing Off

April 7, 2010

Folks, I just wanted to let you all know that we’ll be handing off management of the DINKs blog to our friend and colleague J Money from budgetsaresexy.com. The reason for the management change is that I’ll be finishing up my degree at the University of Maryland and will be taking a job in Baghdad, [...]

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You don’t have to be ready – just go.

April 5, 2010

So, a few days ago, I ended up donating a ton of my old books to the public library. The great thing about cleaning out your bookshelf is you are forced to make decisions about what’s important and what isn’t. Once book I kept was Loral Langemeier’s The Millionaire Maker. Langemeier’s work is great because [...]

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13 Ways to Save Money

April 2, 2010

Folks, It spring time in DC. The weather is beautiful here, it partly cloudy and nearly 80 degrees. Spring is typically a time to do some cleaning but its also a good opportunity to start saving some money. Why? People tend to get out and about more, so you might have some extra spring travel [...]

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You Are What You Read

April 1, 2010

Folks, Main point of today’s posting is: you are what you read. There is a ton of finance and investing information out there. Don’t pollute your mind with bad investing strategies and philosophies. The quality of what you read and listen to is far more important than the quantity. So it makes sense to learn [...]

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Taking Care of Business

March 30, 2010

Hello Folks, If you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that we’ve been working on closing on another property in the district. Well last night we sold our stock to raise the down payment funds. The closing date is April 13th, but we wanted to have the funds in cash so there won’t be worries [...]

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Dealing with Competing Goals

March 29, 2010

Hello Folks, Lets face it, many people have aspirations that are often at odds with each other. For example a typical conundrum that many people are faced with is balancing their retirement savings needs with non-retirement financial goals. Since most people are constrained in their ability to do more than one thing with their money, [...]

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Real Wealth Requires Sacrifice

March 28, 2010

Hello Folks, So, I was browsing through a copy of Felix’s Dennis’ How to Get Rich. If you haven’t read Dennis, its well worth the time to do so. At any rate, whenever I come back to Felix’s book it makes a ton of sense to me. For example, check out this quote: “Never yet [...]

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Investing In REITs

March 26, 2010

Its trite and tired, but if you want to invest in real estate and don’t want to deal with directly managing your property, then your best option is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). If you feel your portfolio could use some exposure to real estate, here is a quickie from Kiplinger to get you [...]

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Four Reasons Why Gift Cards Are A Bad Idea

March 25, 2010

Hello Folks, When it comes to gift cards, forget the card: give cash. There are a ton of reasons why you should give cash instead of cards. Here are four: 1) People Don’t Use Them: According to a 2008 consumer reports survey, nearly 1 in 4 Americans didn’t use their gift cards. This is up [...]

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