Len Penzo dot Com

The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.

An Easy Way to Compare Credit Card Reward Programs

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I always assumed the cash-back card to be a better value than the one passing out airline miles, but I never did a detailed analysis to confirm my suspicions.   For me it just made better sense to get a dividend check a couple times per year that I could put to use for whatever I wanted. Since we always pay the card off in full at the end of the month, this is pure profit.   At a penny for every dollar I spend, the dividend isn't much -- but, hey, it's free money!     And who doesn't like free money?   ;-) In 2008, we charged $21,089.93 on our dividend credit card.   That is an average of $1757.49 per month.   The charges resulted in dividend payments to us of $210.89 just for buying things on the card.     :-) But what if I had chose airline miles instead? With my particular card, I would have been entitled to 1 mile for each dollar spent.   At that rate it comes down to a trade between a $250 dividend check for a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental US, or a $400 dividend check for a round-trip ticket to Hawaii.     Of course the airlines would restrict the days and times I could use those tickets, assuming I could get them at all, but that's life.   Right?   :-) A recent check on a national travel website showed round-trip airfare from Los Angeles to Hawaii for as little as $374.     Based on this unscientific survey I would clearly be better off collecting the dividend miles than saving for a flight to Hawaii. When it comes to cashing in miles for a trip within the continental US, this is not necessarily the case, as it all depends on the desired destination.   For example, at the time of this writing, the cheapest round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to Boston cost $414 -- clearly a better deal than the $250 rebate.   Then again, trips could be had to many other parts of the country for less than $250. Based on that observation, those of you who live near airline hub cities such as Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, and Salt Lake City may decide that the airline miles option would be less desirable because hub cities tend to have lower airfares.   It might not be a slam dunk rule of thumb, but it is worth considering. For those who are considering applying for a new credit card but are not so inclined to do all of this analysis themselves, there is good news.   While surfing the net the other day I came across this handy credit card rewards comparison tool at CreditCardFlyers.com. You simply enter a breakdown of your credit card spending habits and it returns a listing and complete description of the best rewards cards on the market.   After entering data such as how much money I charge per month, and estimating how I distributed that spending (e.g., how much I spent on groceries, how much I charged on gasoline, etc), it gave me a rated list of 17 different cards to compare. For those who don't want to break down their spending, it is sufficient to simply give your estimate of how much you charge per month.   Keep in mind, though, that this can affect the analysis because many cards give additional bonuses for buying groceries or gas, for example. The resulting credit card summary separated the winners by the type of rewards offered, be it rebate, points, or miles.   It also provided an estimated first year payout for each of the cards.     The payouts included bonuses and other incentives for signing up. CreditCardFlyers.com also includes comprehensive reviews on various credit card programs, including information on interest rates and annual fees, and a summary of credit card perks and benefits.   Although there are some low rated cards, the majority of the reviews seem to have a lot of 4.5- and 5-star ratings; still, all of the information is there for you to make an informed decision. Hopefully, CreditCardFlyers.com will take a lot of the mystery out of deciding which credit card program is the right one for you. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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My 2008 State of the Household Financial Report (Part 4)

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Today at work I was a bit distracted.   This was entirely due to my anticipation regarding my earlier promise to finish this four-part series with a quick summary of my net worth.   I hope most of you can forgive me; it's just that I feel like the lead actor in the latest Judd Apatow movie.   ;-) Those of you who have seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall or a few of Mr. Apatow's other movies know what I am talking about here.   For those who haven't, quite simply, I was rather apprehensive today about doing my financial blogger nude scene, so to speak.     But after some last-minute moral support from the Honeybee and a couple of other bloggers I have come to terms with it.     So let's get it on.   Lights, camera, action! Well, there it is for all the world to see.   My net worth, that is.   As of 31 December 2008 my net worth was approximately $660,000.     As you can see I estimated our household personal property, which includes things like our two cars,   furnishings, jewelry, and collections.   I also estimated the value of our home at the time.   I know this number is very close because we are currently refinancing and I just had the house appraised.   The appraisal came back at $440,000. Our investments are in good shape as I managed to foresee the financial meltdown coming.   At the end of 2007, I pulled all of our investments out of stocks and placed them into a safe haven, avoiding the big losses that occurred in late summer and early fall of 2008.     We still lost about 5% on the year, because I chose to start putting some of our money back into the market in November after the bulk of the market carnage was over.   Still, as you can see, the bear is still out there. On the liabilities side, we have no loans, credit card debt or any other obligations other than the mortgage.   As the household CEO, I choose to track both our total net worth as well as net worth minus home equity.   I do this as a simple reminder to myself that our house is not to be considered a piggy bank that can be tapped whenever we have an urge to scratch an itch. Well, that's it.   My scene is over.   I hope I did alright. Now, will somebody please hand me my robe?   :-) If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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My 2008 State of the Household Financial Report (Part 2)

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Welcome to Part 2 of my four-part State of the Household Financial Report.   If you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 first! Once again, here is the illustrative breakdown of my "outflow", or expenses, for the year in the form of a pie chart.     The money that makes up the pie chart primarily comes from my take-home pay, which excludes withheld taxes, paycheck deductions for health and other benefits such as additional life insurance, and contributions to my 401(k) plan. The pie chart shown below, in essence, represents exactly how we chose to allocate our take-home pay for the year: As you can see, the chart is broken up into various categories.   In Part 1, I dissected and discussed the four biggest categories that consumed our annual household income.   Those categories being the "Loans", "House Expenses", "Entertainment", and "Savings."   I will now review of the remaining categories which, although make up a smaller percentage of the pie, are no less important.     And as I stated in Part 1, this section includes the most important category of them all.   Did you guess which one?     (Hint:   It will be the last category I address in this post). Groceries In pure dollar terms, my grocery bill has gone up 2.4 times since 1999; that far exceeds the rate of inflation over that same period.   So why the increase?   Quite simply, the main reason can be attributed to my two growing kids who are currently aged 11 and 9. I anticipate that the annual grocery bill will really start to skyrocket once my 11 year-old son gets into his teen years.   Heck, he already is eating me out of house and home!   Scary.   I shouldn't be surprised though.   I know I am guilty of eating my mom and dad out of house and home too.   I guess it's payback time!   I'd be interested in hearing how big the grocery bills are for some of you with teenagers out there so I can properly prepare myself for the coming onslaught!   :-) Miscellaneous Bills Ah, yes.   The old "Miscellaneous Bills" category.   This category could easily be called "Life".   We spent roughly 7% of our take-home pay in 2008 on such things as association fees, life insurance, newspaper and magazine subscriptions, haircuts, stamps and other postage costs, Girl Scout cookies and cash donations to charities. It also includes Christmas, birthday, graduation and wedding gifts, and even the vet and grooming bills for our Rhodesian Ridgeback, Major. Utility Bills Utilities eat up 6% of our annual household take-home pay.   There is really no mystery here as to what this category entails, but for the sake of completeness I'll break it out for you.   In addition to natural gas, electricity, phone, sewer, trash and water, other utilities here include our Internet service, and satellite television.     This category is extremely fascinating to me when I look at the 10-year numbers.   I'll explain more in Part 3 when I will breakdown and focus on the long-term trends.   But if you had to guess right now, how much would you say cumulative utility prices have risen over the past decade?     Can you guess which utilities went up faster than the others? Automobile We're not free of auto expenses just because our household doesn't have a car payment or two.   We still spent 5% of our annual income on auto-related items like gasoline, registration fees, car insurance, the auto club membership, and servicing and maintenance on the Honeybee's 2001 Honda Odyssey and my 1997 Honda Civic.   Luckily they're Hondas, so they are extremely reliable. Taxes This section covers all taxes not already withheld from my paychecks by my employer, although for all intents and purposes, this consists entirely of my property taxes.   In 2008, those property taxes accounted for roughly 4% of my annual take-home pay.     How does that compare with you?   Luckily, I live in California, where property taxes are limited by Prop 13.     For those of us in California and other states with laws similar to Prop 13 who can manage to stay in their home for 20 or 30 years, the benefits can be truly substantial. Medical Bills This category accounted for roughly 3% of our take-home income in 2008.   It does not include the small deductions that my employer takes out of my paycheck for the insurance, but it does include all of the deductibles and other non-covered expenses that we encounter each year. Retail This category covers retail items not covered in other categories that you might get at places like Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Kohl's, etc. ATM To me, this is the most important category of them all; it certainly is the one category that every household should track like a hawk.   In my experience helping others get their household finances in order, cash withdrawals from an automated bank teller machine are the biggest single source of what I call "income leakage."   It seems like not a day goes by when I talk with someone who says they are trying so hard to make ends meet, but for the life of them they can't figure out where all their money is going.   The first place I always tell these folks to look is at their ATM receipts.   Why?   Because cash in the wallet or purse is susceptible to impulsive spending that can bust a budget. In 2008 we withdrew only 1.5% of our annual take-home pay from the ATM.   I strongly recommend all households that have trouble keeping cash in their wallets and purses strive to keep this number to 2.5% of their take home pay or less.     Basically, what this does is put a budgetary cap on your impulsive spending -- assuming you can stick to it, of course.   :-) And yes, I realize that by tracking an "ATM" category I slightly affect the accuracy of my other categories!   For example, money I might spend on a movie with cash I got from the ATM doesn't get tracked in the "Entertainment" category.   But as long as the amount of money in the ATM category remains relatively small, its effect on the other categories will be negligible. It's a trade I am more than willing to live with. I hope you enjoyed going over my 2008 State of the Household Financial Report with me.   Hopefully this may give you some ideas for how to track your expenses and income.   Remember that there is no correct way to do this with respect to how you break out your expenses.   But my philosophy is, if you want to do it right, you should be as thorough as possible. Next, in Part 3, I will look at my long-term trends over the last ten years for these same categories as they pertain to my household expenses.   I am sure you'll agree that the data, spanning from 1999 to 2008, are extremely interesting.   After all, it is those long-term trends where the real insight comes into view regarding the wisdom of living within your means. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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My 2008 State of the Household Financial Report

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As required by our household constitution, the household CFO is required to deliver the family financial report to the household CEO each January.   ;-) As such, the ever-dependable Honeybee has painstakingly tracked and recorded our finances for over 10 years using Excel, which is a Microsoft spreadsheet tool that I highly recommend.   I've reviewed the numbers and I am quite pleased. With her report for 2008 finished I thought you, too, might like to see a detailed breakdown of my household expenses for the past year.     By doing this, hopefully some of you may also be able to gain some insight by looking at exactly how we track and manage our household finances. Since I have detailed records going back to 1999, I will also show you data that reveals longer-term trends applicable to typical households with a genuine commitment to living within their means.   By observing this long-term data I hope you will be able to glean some additional insights regarding the long-term advantages and benefits of sticking to a disciplined budget.   This long-term data should also provide a strong dose of encouragement to those in their twenties and thirties, who may be questioning whether early scrimping and saving is really worth it (trust me, it is)!   :-) So without further ado, here is my State of the Penzo Household financial report for 2008: Let me start off by giving an illustrative breakdown of my "outflow", or expenses, for the year in the form of a pie chart.     As the Honeybee is a hard-working but unpaid stay-at-home mom, the money that makes up the pie chart primarily comes from my take-home pay, which excludes withheld taxes, paycheck deductions for health and other benefits such as additional life insurance, and contributions to my 401(k) plan. The pie chart, in essence, represents exactly how we chose to allocate our take-home pay for the year. Here it is: As you can see, the chart is broken up into various categories.   Let's go over the categories, shall we? Loans The biggest chunk of our household income (17%) falls under this category.   This category is reserved for mortgage and auto loans.   Since both of our cars are paid for, this category basically reflects our mortgage payment.   Followers of this blog know that we are dedicated to paying off the mortgage early; in fact, the plan is to retire it by 2017.     As a result, this number could have been reduced by a few percentage points if we chose to make the standard monthly payments.   However, because paying-off the mortgage early is a no-brainer, our long-term household strategic plan has us making additional payments.     Those who are just starting out will find that this number can be frighteningly high (sometmes as much as 40% or more), but don't depair!   Over time this number will drop considerably, as you will see when I show you my ten-year data in Part 3 of this report. House Expenses In 2008, the next biggest chunk of the expenses pie (14%) was allocated to the house.   Actually, it was a dead-heat with Entertainment percentage wise, but in dollars the house won out by a whisker this year.   For this category, we include home insurance, new furniture, home improvements, and general maintenance.   The biggest expenditures in this category for 2008 went to buying new front doors, repainting the exterior of the house, getting new stair balusters, and re-staining the wood cabinetry.   But anything that is used to improve or maintain the home goes here -- including the two separate occasions last Spring we had to have a specialist come out (at $200 a crack) and remove bee swarms that tried to set up hives in our house.   Is that the Honeybee's fault?   I am still trying to figure that one out.   ;-) Entertainment Another significant piece of the pie (14%) came from this category as well.   This includes movies, vacations, trips to amusement parks, ball games, you name it.   If it's fun, it probably went in this category.   A good chunk of entertainment costs in 2008 were a direct result of our 10-day trip to Maui.   I love Hawaii!   In fact, if I wasn't writing this article I'd probably be on a plane heading back there. ;-) Savings Is savings an expense?   Well, if you want to do it correctly then all of your income has to be tracked. Otherwise, how will you know if you have properly accounted for all of the money that passes through your hands?   It's as simple as that.     The "Savings" category is very important because it is a good indicator of your overall financial freedom. This category represents money that is siphoned off to our emergency savings fund, and also any additional income that comes our way as a result of, for example, employer bonuses not part of my normal salary and income tax refunds.   My goal for this number is 10% per year but, because it depends on a lot of intangibles, I never rely on this number or even use the trend data when updating my household strategic plan. For those of you just starting out or buried under a pile of debt, 10% or more may look like an impossible number to achieve.   Please, let me assure you, once you commit to living within your means this number will not be hard to reach!   I promise!   :-) I've been fortunate to meet this goal most every year over the last decade.     My luck can't last forever though, and therefore it is important that I continue to build my emergency fund to handle the inevitable periods that will require me to greatly reduce, if not forgo completely, saving entirely. So far I've covered the four categories that make up the biggest percentage of our pie.   The most critical piece of the pie has yet to be discussed though, and I will cover that in Part 2.   Can you guess which piece of the pie you should consider to be the most important of them all? Later this week, in Part 3 of this series, we'll also look at my household expenses over the 10-year period from 1999 to 2008.   We'll then close out the series in Part 4 with a look at my overall financial status and current net worth. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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Using a HELOC as an Alternative to Refinancing

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Recently I was talking with a buddy of mine, who happens to be a higher-echelon employee for a major bank, about my desire to refinance into a longer-term home loan in order to provide me with additional financial flexibility in the event I ever lost my job. Eventually, our conversation migrated over to when people want to remortgage with bad credit and then on to the case of my  mother-in-law.     I wanted to also refinance her mortgage for maximum flexibility because she has a very limited monthly income that will become even more limited when she finally retires.   Unfortunately, although she is 65, she has very little saved for retirement and therefore she will be almost entirely dependent on her social security payments in the coming years.   Here is an approximation of her current situation: Monthly Social Security Income:   $1000 Monthly Mortgage Payment:   $400 Remaining Mortgage Balance:   $40,000 Value of House:   $200,000 As you can see, once she retires her mortgage will eat up roughly 40% of her social security payments, making life quite difficult for her. After hearing these details, my banker buddy offered up what I think is an ingenious and brilliant alternative to refinancing that was just too good to believe.   I'll paraphrase his words to me:   Why don't you have your mother-in-law take out a home equity line of credit (HELOC) for the amount of the mortgage and then pay off the mortgage?   If minimizing her payment is the ultimate goal, she can pay only the monthly interest payment on the HELOC. What!   Why would anybody ever do that?   Isn't it true that the interest rate on the conventional fixed rate home loan is lower than a HELOC? It is true that the HELOC carries a higher interest rate than if she refinanced into a conventional fixed-rate home loan.   But the beauty of this plan is that unlike the mortgage on a conventional fixed-rate loan, the HELOC would permit my mother-in-law to pay only the interest due each month.   At current rates, this strategy would lower her monthly payment to somewhere in the vicinity of just over $100 per month. (As an aside: many folks may be interested to know that it is possible to get a HELOC, or even remortgage with bad credit.) But if you only pay down the interest every month you'll never pay off the house! I know what many of you are thinking:   Okay, Len, what is going on here?   Just the other day you were spouting off that for those who want to reduce risk by agreeing to trade the desire of making more money over the short run in exchange for the security and promise of a steady risk-free return, paying-off the mortgage was a no-brainer! And in most cases, that is still true.   But there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule. In my mother-in-law's case, being a senior citizen with no nest egg to speak of and very limited income, minimizing her monthly payments easily trumps paying off the mortgage.   For many senior citizens with limited incomes who are still responsible for paying a mortgage for a home, it becomes logical to ask: what do they have to gain by paying it off, other than providing their heirs with a bigger inheritance? With all that in mind, for my mother-in-law it basically becomes a trade between these two options: 1) continue to work as long as she can continuing to pay down (for her) an expensive mortgage in exchange for owning the house free-and-clear by her 77th birthday, or... 2) pay off the existing mortgage with a HELOC and then make payments of just over $100 over the next ten years, using the resulting savings to build a small nest egg and give her more a little extra money in her pocket to boot. Of course, the key to implementing this strategy requires sufficient available equity exists to tap a HELOC in the first place.   Fortunately, even after the collapse of the housing bubble, my mother-in-law still has plenty of equity to qualify. So why not go with a reverse mortgage? Well, everybody's situation is different.   But in my mother-in-law's case, the HELOC allows her to avoid the steep fees and other loan costs (usually over $10,000) normally associated with reverse mortgages.   In fact, many lenders offer zero or near-zero closing cost HELOCs.   The high closing costs associated with reverse mortgages are attributed in part to FHA insurance required to cover the risk of the loan balance growing in larger than the home’s equity over time.   For my mother-in-law, the savings that the HELOC provides are just too big to ignore. True, unlike a HELOC, a reverse mortgage wouldn't have to be paid off until my mother-in-law moves out or dies.   But HELOC loan terms can run for as long as 10 years.   When that term is eventually reached, she can decide to either sell the house, repay the relatively small balance or refinance. In the mean time my mother-in-law, by using a HELOC to pay off her existing mortgage, can enjoy a little more financial freedom and hopefully some added peace of mind in her autumn years. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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Got a Fixed Rate Mortgage? Root for High Inflation.

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With all the liquidity that the governments of the world have been releasing into the economy, I believe it will only be a matter of time before we begin to experience a nasty bout of inflation that will force interest rates into territory not seen since the late 1970s and early 1980s. With that in mind it got me thinking, if high inflation is inevitable, is it still worth it for me to continue to pay down my mortgage with a goal of completely retiring it by the time my son, God willing, graduates from high school seven years from now?   For me, the answer to that depends on just how long I think the inflationary period will last. So what's my situation?   As I discussed in my previous post on the benefits of living within your means, I bought my current house in 1997 for $199,000.     Over the 10-plus years that I owned the house I have faithfully made extra principal payments in order to ensure that I was mortgage free by the time my first child was out of high school.   As a result, today, I owe less than $120,000. After my latest refinancing goes through, my new mortgage bill will be reduced from $1122 to only $640.   This new monthly payment borders on a level approaching the ridiculously absurd!   By that I mean the new monthly mortgage is so low that I should be able to pay it with little trouble, regardless of what type of job I have. Furthermore, the new lower monthly mortgage also has the advantage of putting a much smaller dent into my rainy day fund than my old mortgage.   Of course, although I will be going from a 20-year fixed loan back to a 30-year fixed loan, my original plan for now will be to stay the course and continue paying excess principal on the loan to ensure that it is retired early. Or will it? Because if inflation goes into or near double-digit territory, as I believe it will, I may be wiser to hold onto that money going toward the extra principal and forget about retiring the debt early. Why?   Because as inflation rises, it erodes the value of the dollar over time. Banks, in particular, hate high inflation because folks with longer-term fixed-rate loans end up repaying those loans with dollars that are worth a lot less than the value of the dollars they originally borrowed.   Normally, interest payments are more than enough to compensate the banks for the costs attributed to benign inflation, but when high inflation appears, all bets are off -- for the banks anyway! High inflation is a blessing for those who find themselves deep in debt -- assuming they still have the means to stay solvent.     And who is one of the biggest debtors among us?   None other than good old Uncle Sam!   Trillions of dollars of debt.   For this reason I believe that the Fed will ultimately determine that the best way to reduce the impact of the multi-trillion dollar debt run-up by the United States is to unleash a managed run of high inflation over a period of several years. Sure they used to talk a good game about reigning in inflation, but I believe they now think that it's their "best" and "only" option out of the debt mess this country currently finds itself in. That's why, as the household CEO, I've decided after a dozen years of doing otherwise, to officially reverse course and abandon my quest pay off the mortgage early. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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What the Heck Does a Household CFO Do?

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Being the household CEO can be a very lonely job indeed, but it doesn’t have to be.   In multiple-person households, there may be others (usually the spouse) who will wish, or even insist, to be a part of the financial management process.   Luckily, in order to keep harmony within the household, the savvy household CEO can delegate many of his responsibilities to a second management position.   This adjunct position is known as the household chief financial officer (CFO). In the Penzo household, it is the Honeybee (my wife) who takes on the role of household CFO, while I function as the household CEO. The role of household CFO is not some honorary position invented just to keep a spouse from getting their feathers ruffled.   Indeed, the position of household CFO is complementary, and certainly no less important, to the role held by the household CEO.   In fact, I will argue that the role of CFO is actually more labor and time intensive than the role of household CEO alone.   Do I acknowledge that fact to the Honeybee?   Of course not!   ;-) So what, exactly, does the household CFO do?   Let's first examine the CFO's role in the corporate world. In the business world, the corporate CFO can be responsible for performing many tasks including investor relations, managing capital, financing purchases, analyzing potential mergers and acquisitions.   The corporate CFO is also responsible for condensing financial knowledge into a form that can be used by the corporate CEO in order to help him make strategic decisions. Like her corporate counterpart, a household CFO is a financial manager.   She is responsible for keeping her fingers on the pulse of the household through careful record keeping.   Furthermore, it is the household CFO’s responsibility to thoroughly understand the household CEO’s vision (or the agreed-upon joint vision of the CEO and CFO).   And if the household CEO ever fails to accurately convey that vision, then it is up to the household CFO to say so.   The household CFO is also expected to notify the household CEO at the first sign of anything that may adversely affect the household strategic plan so that potential problems can be addressed and actions quickly taken to rectify the situation. In a nutshell, whereas the household CEO is responsible for maintaining a strategic vision by looking into the future, the household CFO must look into the past via the maintenance and examination of records such as bank statements.   The CFO tracks every little item -- even when it comes to more obscure things like the cost of delivering a baby! By looking into the past, the household CFO can then help the household CEO budget and plan for the future. So to summarize, the seven primary tasks of the household CFO are: 1.       Understand the household CEO’s vision and strategic plan 2.       Establish financial record archives and databases 3.       Ensure all checking and savings accounts are balanced and accurate 4.       Pay the bills and deposit all income into the proper accounts 5.       Track all household income and expenses 6.       Identify potential negative financial trends 7.       Communicate your data and findings with the household CEO I've already discussed the six primary tasks of a household CEO.   But keep in mind that, in the absence of a willing volunteer, the household CEO is also responsible for performing all these duties too.   In many cases, the household CEO may also unilaterally choose to handle both tasks. However, I want to stress again that when there is more than one person willing to take part in managing the household finances, designating a household CFO provides an excellent opportunity to spread out the overall responsibility and work entailed in running a household.   This becomes especially advantageous in households such as mine where there is a stay-at-home spouse. Because the household CFO has a larger workload, I'd like to strongly recommend that the position of household CFO be taken by the stay-at-home spouse.   This arrangement has worked extremely well for me and the Honeybee over the many years we've been married.   As CEO, I set the household budgets and long-term planning, while as CFO she handles the day-to-day operations and continually tracks our performance to the budget and forecasts trends. If you liked this article, please be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed. ...

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Better Late Than Never

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A recent article in Ars Technica stated that Technorati has tracked 133 million blogs since 2002. Consider this blog number 133,000,001. So what if I am five years or so late getting onto the blogging bandwagon? Better late than never, right? I ...

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