I’ve recently written some posts about evaluating income based on the number of household members and about assessing the cost-of-living to income ratio. It is more accurate to think about your income per person relative to your neighbors than to simply compare overall household income numbers. We also talked about the 50/30/20 rule that says that your cost-of-living… Read More »
Congress has a low approval rating but if you think that term limits would fix this problem, then you’d better think again. According to termlimits(dot)com, 83% of Americans want term limits applied to the House and the Senate. Not only will such a move not help fix what people don’t like about Congress, it will make things worse.… Read More »
I’ve been trying to find a cost-of-living to income ratio that will define the ability to be financially healthy (meaning: pay all your bills, save properly, invest properly, and stay out of debt). If you make $100,000/year but the cost-of-living is $100,000/year then you aren’t able to save or invest. When expenses arise that exceed the usual cost-of-living,… Read More »
Overview Some people have difficulty understanding the difference between the causes of the War Between the States and the causes for secession. To many, these are all one in the same. But they are not. There are actually two waves of secession in 1861 and they occurred for decidedly different reasons. The first wave started in 1860 when… Read More »
It seems to me that the states who seceded from the Union in the first wave from 1860 and 1861 did so in the belief that the problems they faced in the Union could be better solved from outside of it. However, I do not think that was a very wise idea and I think that they should… Read More »
I don’t know about you, but I can get mentally and emotionally stagnant. Life goes on and I tend toward a sedentary existence where laziness leads me to the path of least resistance. I need a way to break out of the chains of habit. One thing I have started doing in recent years, is seeking out external… Read More »
When you read, watch, or listen to a creative work, you are having a mind-sharing moment with the creator of that work. It’s a good idea to not spend too much time or perhaps to not spend any time at all in the mind of a bad person. I have come to view books and movies not as… Read More »
When I was in community college studying information technology, most of my classes were at the Woodbridge campus not too far from the National Museum of the Marine Corps where I worked. However, one of my classes was at the Manassas campus and it wasn’t even the main campus in Manassas but rather a satellite location off of… Read More »
Now that I’m commuting daily again, I have plenty of time to ponder the amount of time wasted sitting in traffic congestion. Now you can ponder it with me. D.C. area commuters lose about 62 hours a year due to traffic congestion. Dividing this by 365 days (I can’t find a source on weekend hours lost), we have… Read More »
How Much Money Do You Need To Make? (Eventually) How much money do you need to make per year to function as an independent adult? To figure this out, I start with the 28/36 mortgage rule. The 28/36 mortgage rule says that your mortgage payment should be no more than 28% of your gross monthly income. So, look… Read More »