It's hard for me to say much without knowing your circumstances. But I would also offer this: we've been fortunate in many ways - for example, growing up in stable families, living in an inexpensive part of the country, and both my wife and I being savers rather than spenders.

I don't worry too much about Social Security. They'll make adjustments, maybe scale back some benefits, but it will still be there. You can't have generations of people giving up 6.2% of their salaries for others their entire careers and then pull the plug on the program. There would be anarchy, and rightfully so.

I see reports like this and I worry for the future of our country. I realize that sounds so cliched but it's true. I was raised in a solidly middle class family whose standard of living gradually increased as I grew older. Now as an adult, I've still considered myself and my family middle class - maybe upper middle,…

1:15 by itself isn't bad, but throw in extra jobs like I mentioned in my original post and it's almost always a 2+ hour job. Especially considering I have to shower after. And no, my mower isn't self-propelled although my yard is gently sloped so it's not a huge issue.

Timely post as I am struggling with this issue right now. Our lot is just under 0.4 acres (16,500 sqft) including the footprint of the house/driveway and takes about 1:15 for me to mow with a push mower. If I have to trim, which I usually do every other mow, add 30 minutes. If the grass is especially tall and I have…

No. It has nearly 35,000 students total - grad, undergrad, and vet med.

I have but one quibble. Iowa State isn't a "small school." It's got nearly 35,000 students and is the largest university in the state of Iowa.

I played for a small high school in the Midwest in the mid-90s. I'm 6'3" so I played the post. During the regular season we always played schools in our own class, but in the spring and summer we routinely played schools 4-5x or more our size in AAU ball. We held our own, beating most of them.

But how do you actually sync Google contacts? On my calendar I have created and shared a family calendar with my wife. But not contacts.

My kingdom for the ability to share contacts between people. I'd like to make my contact list purely digital but I need to share a good chunk of those names with my wife so we don't ever have to duplicate. But we can't do that so much of our information languishes in a spreadsheet.

Should be interesting to watch this play out over the next few months. I'm very curious to hear what Citi offers. But you know American Express will be making an attractive play to retain those customers. And since Costco will be accepting all forms of Visa now, I also wonder if other Visa card companies (looking at…

I have known this to be true for a few years now and it's a great convenience. It's nice to be able to keep books beyond their lending period because it's rare I can finish an audiobook of any length (10+ hours) in 14 days.

Dear God no. Of course, we have kids now so we never go anywhere anyway. But even back in our first years of dating, we decided Valentine's Day is a sham. In fact, most years we order cheap pizza as an anti-Valentine's Day gesture.

It's a good book and I am very much in agreement with Bernstein's philosophies, but this book is also a bit of a slog. Not for beginners, and heavily focused on investing, not personal finance.

This (or an earlier edition) was one of the first books I read 12-13 years ago and it helped spur my transition into full personal-finance-geekdom. Great resource for beginners.

I would second this book. It's a straightforward, simple, sustainable system that is difficult to achieve, as it should be. It's heavily research based. I agree wholeheartedly with ohyegads' recommendation post.

I do this exact thing...take our average annual spending in a category (gas, electric, natural gas, water) and budget for that each month. If we end up spending less, I'll roll it into the next month. Then there's always enough money for the peak spending season in a given category - like water in the summer, natural…

Re: EverBank...read my post closer. I didn't say EverBank changed its ATM reimbursement minimum balance for everyone. I said when I inquired, they waived the $5,000 minimum balance requirement for me specifically. So if another customer inquires, they might do the same for them.

Absolutely, you could need the app on your phone. I use Twitter a lot so I want it on my phone. But I use it frequently enough that I don't need it to push notify me when I get a notification. I'll get the notification when I get into the app.

By push notifications I assume you're talking about noise or vibration, not simply the blinking light or icon that you only notice if you look?