Wealth...Uncomplicated

Wealth...Uncomplicated in 2010 - it's all about principles and processes

This year, I'm happy to announce that Wealth...Uncomplicated will be changing formats ever so slightly and focusing more on content that is centered on the principles and processes that lead to a more secure financial life.  Throughout 2010, you will find posts designed to illuminate the guiding principles of sound personal financial planning and management as well as some very practical processes to help you stay on target.  Of course, the big bonus is that once you have the right processes in place, it become incredibly simple to accumulate wealth...systematically.

Case Studies

While the blogosphere and financial media is littered with short articles that discuss various aspects of personal finance, there is little in the way of detailed case studies that allow readers to understand the full range of complexities involved with planning and managing money.  The case studies presented on Wealth..Uncomplicated will illustrate common situations and the best ways to work through them.  These situations will be varied, but primarily focus on issues faced by individuals and families between the ages of 18 and 45.

Technology

In analyzing these cases and examining possible courses of action, a variety of technologies will be used and recommended to help you address your individual situation.  Most of these tools are readily available to you at little or no cost, while a few of them are considerably more expensive and traditionally available only to financial professionals.  By exposing you to both consumer and professional driven technologies, you'll be able to see the full range of technologies that can be used to help you plan and manage your finances.

Processes that Work

While technology is useful in revealing the numbers of a situation, it is also incredibly useful in helping us establish processes that work.  This ranges from creating or examining your current financial position to developing workable investment strategies that can help you reach savings goals.  In addition, some emerging technologies can help you automate many of these processes, improving the likelihood of accomplishing your goals.

Timeless Principles

Underpinning all of this are a series of timeless principles that are literally as old as civilization.  While personal finances as we know them today are incredibly varied and complex, the cure for what ails us is usually something simple and easy to understand.  These timeless principles drive the financial planning and management process and without them, financial misery can result.

Final Notes

If you would like to be the subject in one of the upcoming case studies, please feel free to send an overview of your situation and your most pressing questions and concerns to me via email on the 'About' page.  All names and locations are changed to protect the identity of the subject and the case study is completed at no cost.

Wealth...Uncomplicated Moves from Feedblitz to Feedburner for Email Subscribers

Just a quick note that Wealth...Uncomplicated will no longer support Feedblitz email subscriptions and this will be moving over to Feedburner.  The primary reason is that Feedburner provides a higher quality email that has significantly better formatting than Feedblitz.  After doing a little testing, it's very clear that Feedburner is a superior provider for email feeds.

TodayForward Blog Launched Today

The official blog of TodayForward was launched today at http://www.todayforward.typepad.com.  As many of you know, I have been developing a personal finance website for more than a year and a half now, and we're getting very close to our public debut at TechCrunch50 on September 14th and 15th in San Franciso.

TechCrunch50 is the largest and most important event of the year for technology startups like ours.  As a semi-finalist in a pool that had over 1,000 companies from 40 countries, we beat the odds and will be in the DemoPit in just two short weeks.

While I will continue to write on topics of interest in personal finance here at Wealth...Uncomplicated, you can follow the progress of TodayForward through the new blog.  If you'd like to find out more about the project, please go to http://todayforward.typepad.com/todayforward/what.html to learn more about this new personal finance solution and sign up for site access in advance of our public release late this year.

Thank you,

Michael

P.S.  TodayForward.com will be online after we finish converting from our project site at DitoAdvisor.com

26 Weeks Remaining - what have you done to move forward?

Half of the year is officially in the history books and it's a great time to ask yourself the all important question, "What have I done to move forward?"  There are many areas in your life where you can make meaningful progress to better your life and I'm not just thinking of personal finance.  There is a terrific book titled The Power of Focus that I have been using to setup and accomplish my personal goals for several years and I breakdown my life and goals by the following major areas:

1. Health
2. Education
3. Professional
4. Financial
5. Family
6. Personal
7. Contribution
8. Fun Time

While it's not important what order you put these in, it is important to address these areas so you can lead a balanced and more enjoyable life.  The focus I use is to always try to move forward towards my goals each and every week.  Some weeks are better than others, but over time, continually reminding myself of my goals has been a surefire way to lead a more fulfilling life.

So far this year, I've done the following:

Health - I'm on a treadmill, pavement, or golf course walking the equivalent of a marathon a week or more.  My diet has drastically changed just in the last month with a 90% reduction in meat intake or to put it another way, an 800% increase in plant food consumption.  I'm not a true vegetarian at this point, but getting awfully close in a short period of time.

Education - I've been taking courses regularly in pursuit of the end goal of holding a PhD in Economics that I might be able to obtain by the time I'm 39.  The only reason I want to do this is so I can teach in other countries after my kids leave home when I'm 44.  Having this level of education transfers well to other parts of the world and I can't think of anything more fun than experiencing other cultures by living within them.

Professional - I continue to write this blog and for CiN Weekly, and have moved our personal finance web application closer to launch.  We estimate that we could be ready for a full release somewhere between September 1 and November 1 of this year.  More on this when the time is right.

Financial- Our financial goals of living debt free and getting to a 20x net worth-to-expense multiple remain unchanged.  This year we've made some great strides thanks to my frugal and now corporate ladder climbing wife.  She received a promotion and as she puts it, "We're not participating in this recession."

Family - Having traveled in excess of 100 nights annually just a few years ago, I now enjoy being home with my kids everyday and see them more now than I ever have.  They're seven and ten so it's a very good age to be around.  Of course, this includes doing the homework, making them do their chores, etc., but that's a big part of what makes it fun.  Plus, I've gone out with the wife a lot more and our family dynamics are great.

Personal - I've played more golf this year than I have in the past five combined.  This has been very enjoyable on a personal level even if I get some grief for the expense of it.  Hey, I use coupons, but it still ain't cheap.

Contribution - While I haven't dropped off a big check to any charities of late, I do believe that the web application I'm working on will be a game changer for a lot of folks trying to figure out how to get ahead financially.  Contributions aren't always about writing checks or making donations, sometimes you can make a great contribution to your community through your work.

Fun Time - I've definitely had a lot of fun this year with friends and family.  We haven't gone on any swank vacations, but we have spent a lot of time together.  We are going camping with the family at the end of this month which should be a lot of fun with my boys and will go cabrewing in August with a pretty large group of friends.

Alright, I just put my little mid-year report out there for you to see, so what have you been doing this first half of the year?  Are you getting closer to your end goals?  If not, what's holding you back?  Regardless of your answers or your progress, we still have half the year left to go, so let's use it to move forward.

Next Week: Financial Illiteracy

Next week, I'll be posting a short series on the topic of financial illiteracy in America.  While we have the largest economy in the world and earn more per capita than all but a small handful of countries, the hard truth is that most of us are financially illiterate.  I will argue that this is one of two fundamental problems that plague this country and it has created a looming disaster in the form of entitlement programs and enormous debts.

If you're already a financially savvy consumer, feel free to tune it out.  Otherwise, please join me next week for a healthy treatise of this important issue.  Until then, have a great weekend!

March Roundup - subscribe via RSS

Over the course of this month, readers of Wealth...Uncomplicated received 33 posts on a wide range of topics ranging from the $10,000 education tax credit signed into law last month to how to improve portfolio returns by eliminating bum industries like airlines, auto manufacturers, and rental car companies.  If you've enjoyed reading this blog, I ask that you go ahead and subscribe through one of the three options available.

Email Subscription

If you like all of your information consolidated into your email, simply enter your email address in the FeedBlitz box at the right of this page.  FeedBlitz will email posts from this blog each day and runs one day behind the actual posting date.

RSS Readers

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RSS Feed Subscription

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Thank You

For the many who have already subscribed, I want to thank you for your readership and if you should ever have a topic that you'd like to have illuminated, please don't hesitate to contact me here.  Thank you again, and I hope this post finds you well.

Useful Links

To review the articles posted in March, click here for the TypePad archives.

To view the posts and a short summary of each, click here for the PFBlogs archive--this one's easier to use.

44 Weeks Remaining

There are 44 weeks remaining in 2009 and the question I have for you is, "What are you going to do with your time?"  How are those New Year's Resolutions working out for you?  Have you fallen off the wagon?  If you have, don't despair, there's plenty of time left to move yourself forward this year.

A Mind/Body Experience

For those of you that know me, you know that I'm not exactly a workout freak--I leave that to the Globo Gym fitness guru wife.  However, I do possess a membership that has been of greater benefit to my gym's profit margin than to my rather 'average' physique, and I am now resolved to start getting my $19.95's worth each month.  If I start going to the gym three days a week and walk four miles in one hour, over the course of 44 weeks, I will lose about 18 pounds.  That sounds pretty good to me.

In addition, as many of you know, I am working on a project that does require some talents and knowledge that I do not currently possess.  To fill this gap, I'm going to use some informal educational outlets--primarily audiobooks--to gain a working knowledge in the area of marketing.  Three hours of listening per week for 44 weeks adds up to 132 hours of learning and I should be able to cover 33 books by the end of the year.  I don't know about you, but reading 33 books in any subject area should give you a pretty good bit of knowledge.

To begin my exploration of marketing--a subject I know very little about--I've decided to use Audible.com's service for downloading to my mp3 player.  My first book will be Blue Ocean Strategy:  How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.  Six hours and six miles on the treadmill will have this book uploaded to my brain and down the road, I might actually understand what our marketing firm has been talking about.

So there it is.  My mind/body experience for the next 44 weeks.  Of course, this whole thing could go to pot at anytime between now and the end of the year.  That's why I'm posting it up here so you can all have a few laughs at my expense should I fail to execute my plan.  

What are you going to do with your 44?

Next Week: Focus on Debt

Starting Monday, I'll be writing a special ten part series focused on the elimination of debt.  As you well know, debt is the greatest financial problem that we face individually and as a nation.  With our national debt in excess of $10 trillion and household debt at record levels, it's important to know the ins and outs of moving towards a debt free lifestyle.  If you're in debt or know someone struggling with it, I invite you to join me next week.

Thanks,

Michael

Storefront Installed

To support this blog with some great reading, checkout the storefront that was just installed today and can be found in the top navigation bar.  These books and magazines are some of the better ones available in helping you build wealth.

Thanks,

Michael

Download 2009-08-11 15.41 Meet Now

The Purpose of Wealth...Uncomplicated

Over the next 365 days, you will have the opportunity to learn more about personal finance than most people learn in a lifetime.  Each and every day, I will faithfully post new content designed to take the complexity out of building wealth.  Along the way, we will explore the fundamental philosophies, tools, and behaviors that lead to lasting wealth and perhaps even have a few laughs to boot.

In exchange for this valuable information, I ask that you spend 10 minutes with me daily in reading Wealth...Uncomplicated, participate by posting your thoughts, and of course, use the advertising links provided to support my efforts.

I thank you in advance and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Michael