On Vacation

No post this week or next, as I'm off on vacation in Europe. Happy holidays! See you in 201...

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This Christmas, Ask For Higher Credit Limits

Your credit score is an important number. We all know that is the number companies look at when you want to get a loan or open a new credit card. But did you also know it can affect how much you pay for home and auto insurance? Did you know someone with a poor credit score can pay twice as much as someone with a high credit score for the exact same insurance coverage? Check out this post from FinancialLibre for more info. For that reason, even...

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Goal Update: End of November 2016

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog. Last updated: End of November, 2016 Current value: $25,757 Change from last month: +$157 Percent of Goal:  23.68% Note that the funds in this account are...

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Playing The Long Game

Many people blog to express themselves. Many others blog to make money. Truthfully, most bloggers do it for some combination of both reasons. Those that are trying to make a living by blogging usually go all out learning about branding and content and market share. They treat blogging as a job and they need to learn ways to find their voice and to distinguish themselves in their area of interest to be successful. They know that attracting readers...

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Two Reasons Why I Love Living With A Budget

In the past two weeks, I've had to have new spark plugs installed in my car and my wife decided we needed to get a couple oriental rugs cleaned before the holidays roll around. In short, two major expenses hit us within two weeks of each other. Spark Plugs Ain't Easy To Find Anymore I thought about changing the spark plugs myself. Remember when you could open the hood of your car and see something like this: They don't make them like this...

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Financial Knowledge Survey Results

Four weeks ago, I asked readers to take a financial quiz that I had to take on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I was curious to see how other people scored. The Results The average Road To A Tesla reader taking the quiz got about 12 of 13 questions correct. For comparison, when I first took the quiz, I scored 13 of 13 correct. The person giving the original quiz on mTurk said the average score was 7 of 13 correct. Clearly, readers here have a better...

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Preparing For Death Requires A Lot of Paperwork!

Last week, I wrote about how my wife and I created an estate plan and living trust and the reasons behind that decision. Once the living trust has been created, you get a big folder with a lot of paperwork in it. The trust itself is still empty. To receive the benefits and protections of a living trust, you have to actually move accounts into it. This is done by retitling your accounts out of your (and / or your spouse's) name into the name of...

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Goal Update: End Of October 2016

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog. Last updated: End of October, 2016 Current value: $25,600 Change from last month: +$73 Percent of Goal:  23.54% Note that the funds in this account are invested...

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Planning For Death

(Note: laws vary by state. All details here refer to laws in Arizona. Check laws in your state for applicability of this information. I am not an attorney. Due your own due diligence. Some assembly required. Your parents have to put it together. By Meco.) No one likes to think about dying or making plans for what happens when you die, but as part of a sound financial life (see what I did there?), it is something that has to be done. After years...

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What Is Your Financial Knowledge?

As I wrote about during Side Hustle Week, I’ve started doing a lot more work on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. One of the surveys I took was regarding financial knowledge. I was presented with a couple different stock portfolios with an initial value of $10,000 and asked what I thought the value would be after one year. After that, they asked some questions to gauge my financial knowledge. I thought it would be interesting to see how readers of this...

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Your Money Is About to Get Faster

I've always been bothered by the fact that it takes days to move money between banks electronically and that money doesn't move on weekends or holidays. It's all computerized! Why shouldn't transfers get processed on weekends? It makes no sense and I find it very frustrating. Two years ago, I wrote about this after hearing a Planet Money podcast on this very issue. The problem is that the Automated Clearing House (ACH) system that banks use was...

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Goal Update: End of September 2016

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog. Last updated: End of September, 2016 Current value: $25,527 Change from last month: +$526 Percent of Goal:  23.47% Note that the funds in this account are invested...

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Side Hustle Week Day 5: Udemy

Source Welcome to Side Hustle Week here at Road To A Tesla! Most personal finance bloggers love to talk about side hustles - ways you can make some extra money on the side to help you achieve your financial goals more quickly. These are usually jobs you can do as a hobby or while you are still employed full time somewhere and, with luck, you may be able to parlay them into big-time income producing projects. I tried out my hand at some side...

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Side Hustle Week Day 4: Amazon Mechanical Turk

Source Welcome to Side Hustle Week here at Road To A Tesla! Most personal finance bloggers love to talk about side hustles - ways you can make some extra money on the side to help you achieve your financial goals more quickly. These are usually jobs you can do as a hobby or while you are still employed full time somewhere and, with luck, you may be able to parlay them into big-time income producing projects. I tried out my hand at some side...

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