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Posted 04/21/2012 8:56 pm
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I was able to pay my mortage off in 7 years, on a single (average) income.
I was able to pay my mortage off in 7 years, on a single (average) income.
Outstanding, Sel, very well done, indeed!
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Lifetime advice from a professional financial advisor:
"If you have a wife, kiss her sweetly every night before you go to sleep. Divorces are expensive."
Lifetime advice from a professional financial advisor:
"If you have a wife, kiss her sweetly every night before you go to sleep. Divorces are expensive."
Agree 100%! Anyone who thinks that trading in a year old car has never traded in a wife. That's where the BIG bucks go. Fortunately, my wife and I both believe that marriage is a sacred trust that must be preserved if at all humanly possible. A good marriage is worthy of a great deal of effort and both partners need to be ready, willing, and able to make that effort.
I understand what a financial strain it is to have 2 kids in college. Fortunately for us, our kids are 3 years apart in age and our son, who is younger than his sister, went into the Marines for 4 years, so we only ever had one at a time in college. It was not a cheap endeavor, even so. I often tease my kids by telling them that instead of paying for college, I could have bought a brand new Jag XJR for the same money. That IS a joke, though. Getting our kids off to a good start in life was part of the contract we signed when we agreed to bring them into this world.
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I am NOWHERE in the good situation as your son, who was smart enough to not only get a good career an education through the military, but save an LEARN to invest as well from someone else who had been there an done it....
I am NOWHERE in the good situation as your son, who was smart enough to not only get a good career an education through the military, but save an LEARN to invest as well from someone else who had been there an done it....
My son and I talk often about investing and he is picking it up very quickly. These days, he has usually already done the due diligence on an investment and only wants to confirm that it is worthy of his money. We use the same basic methods for this, so rarely disagree. When we do disagree, well, it IS his money!
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Key info there, as convincing the significant other that you can be trusted an make it all work, an that of course takes patience an time, and it all wouldn't work without that coordination an understanding....
Key info there, as convincing the significant other that you can be trusted an make it all work, an that of course takes patience an time, and it all wouldn't work without that coordination an understanding....
Yes, a willing partner in such a large decision is a HUGE benefit to anyone. We started slowly and then gradually picked up speed as we went along. It seemed to take for-darned-near-ever to save our first $10k. After that, though, it seemed to smooth out and take on a life of its own. There is a wonderful side to this story that I have to tell you. Although my wife went along with my investing plans, agreement and enthusiasm are not necessarily the same thing. Anyway, a few years after I retired, she came to me one day and said that she was really happy that I had invested for us and that we were financially secure because of it. I was stunned at first but later found out that she had been talking to some of her friends who were having money problems. Most of those problems came from the fact that they did not have a PLAN for saving and investing that built up their savings. Some of them are still working because they have no other option. Another of them had to go through bankruptcy. These people were similar in income to us, so it isn't as if we had a big advantage from simply having more money. It was much more a matter of saving, investing, and carefully watching our spending.
