Jackie writes in with the following question about student loans and the mortgage: We’ve been using Dave Ramsey’s formula to pay off debts, not incur new debt, etc. We are down to 2 debts:  Student loans (consolidated) with a $151,000 balance @ 3.875%, and the home Mortgage, $165,000 balance @ ...

I spent the latter part of last week in bed with a nasty virus. Because I was so wiped out, the only thing I felt like doing was lounging and watching old movies. In between Godfather DVDs I caught an episode of My First Place on HGTV. I’m fairly confident ...

For most of my adult life I have avoided calculating my net worth, mostly because the number at the bottom of the calculation was always red. The thought of owing more than I owned depressed me. Looking back, I wished I had tracked net worth to show the positive gains ...

For some, the idea of walking away from a mortgage presents quite a moral dilemma. Others feel duty-bound to fulfill their contractual obligation to continue making payments to the lender, regardless of how much (or how little) their home is worth. Personally, I believe if one has the ability to pay ...

One could probably build a small library for the books written on the subject of financial independence. It’s a subject many of us like to fantasize about, but few of us will see materialize in our lifetimes. Why? Mostly because we allow competing priorities, egos and financial peer pressure dictate ...