One man’s perspective on why not to get into debt:
“Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours. . . . Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.” — J. Reuben Clark, namesake of the Brigham Young University Law School
February 26th, 2006
Many people believe that the ambitious pursuit of wealth is evil and greedy. I believe that wealth creation is inherently good and improves our society. It’s important to distinguish, however, between the desire to create wealth and the craving for more money. Paul Graham explains the distinction between wealth and money:
“Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money… Wealth is what you want, not money. But if wealth is the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money? It is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of moving wealth, and in practice they are usually interchangeable. But they are not the same thing, and unless you plan to get rich by counterfeiting, talking about making money can make it harder to understand how to make money.”
Seeking and creating wealth is the process of growing the whole economic pie, not taking pie from others so our portion is bigger. Making money is the by-product of adding something valuable to the economy. If we seek to add value to the economy either through our jobs or entrepreneurial endeavors, we’ll make money. When we recognize that the money we make is a result of the value we’ve provided to the economy we’ll be satisfied with our efforts, appreciate our money more, and be better stewards of the money we make.
If, on the other hand, just making money is the ultimate goal, the process of actually providing value will be overlooked and deemed unnecessary. Get-rich-quick programs and pyramid schemes will become enticing and our desire to make money will undermine our ability to add economic value. I believe many of those schemes make a few richer at the expense of making the whole “pie” smaller. Would we be satisfied if the money we make represents our cunning ability to pull the wool over people’s eyes?
Wealth is not evil. The desire to accumulate and add to your wealth is not wrong if your motives are correct. America’s free market capitalism makes it possible for everyone to increase their wealth at no one else’s expense. The key is to seek that wealth by delivering value to the economy and by being responsible stewards of the money we earn. By responsibly managing our money we’ll be even more enabled to grow the economic pie and help others add to their wealth.
February 16th, 2006
One of the principles that seems to be common across many personal finance books is to “pay yourself first”. That is, you should set aside a specific percentage of your income for saving, investing, or debt reduction. It should be a constant percentage that you stick to each month. For example, if you decide to set aside 10% each month to “pay yourself first”, — whether to savings, investment, or debt reduction — you have to simply learn to live off of the other 90%. Contrast that with the attitude “I’ll save whatever is left at the end of the month.” Nothing is ever left at the end of the month!
If you don’t make paying yourself a priority, it won’t happen. (By the way, buying yourself a new pair of jeans or taking a trip is not paying yourself.) If you *do* make paying yourself a priority, you’ll learn to live on less and the income you set aside can work in your favor.
If paying yourself first is such an important principle, why shouldn’t your personal finance program encourage you to do it?
February 13th, 2006
We’ve been receiving a lot of questions about what Firevalt will do and what features it will have. I think the best way to explain that would be to first give you a little more insight into our beliefs of what a web app should be. We agree with the team at 37signals that a simple and intuitive app that solves one or two problems really well is better than a bloated program doing a mediocre job at solving several problems. We know many people prefer the “do-all” apps with a billion features, but we hope to be a pleasing alternative for those wanting improved usability from their financial management software. We feel that Money and Quicken are just glorified bank statements that replicate much of the same data you can find by just logging into your online bank. Firevalt, on the other hand, will present your finances in a way that will motivate you to improve your financial habits. Its design will make your experience simple and enjoyable.
What are your feelings about simple vs. feature-laden apps?
February 3rd, 2006