Category: Hints
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How to Pick a Financial Planner
“Never completely trust any trusted advisor.” — Allan S. Roth A few years back Jeanine started using my financial planner. Our advisor is a SmithBarney Certified Financial Planner that I met during a gay business seminar while living in Atlanta ten years ago. She’s not gay, but gay-friendly which is important to me and I’ve…
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Asking for a Raise: Who Earns What
“It’s not your salary that makes you rich, it is your spending habits.” — Charles A. Jaffe I’ve written in the past about The Great Divide in Compensation and Equal Pay for Equal Work. The net of both posts: do you want to make big money? Then go work on Wall Street or at a…
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Ways to Grow Income
This week I’m going to share my queer thoughts on a couple of web articles that popped up on Yahoo! The first installment will be about Five Ways to Grow Your Income by 20 Percent by David Bach. Mr. Bach wrote the book Start Late, Finish Rich which I bought before becoming a born again…
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Overcoming Emotional Spending
Most of the time we don’t buy things just to have “stuff”. We buy because of how it makes us feel. For some people it is the “stuff” that they have that gives them that adrenaline rush, for others it is the actual act of shopping that does it. If you find yourself in money…
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Unused Gift Cards from the Holidays?
“To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.” — Max Beerbohm I love gift cards. I like getting them and the ease of giving them. My family depends on gift cards during the holidays and I’m often on the receiving end of the bookstore…
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Bereavement Fares – What About GLBT Families?
Imagine this – you’ve got a family emergency and you and your partner need to travel by air and in a hurry. So, you shuffle on over to the bereavement policies only to find you don’t qualify (or shall I say, you don’t count since that would be more to the point). Just the news…
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The Real Cost of Gym Memberships
“Don’t go to the grave with life unused.” — Bobby Bowden Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, the authors of Freakonomics recently wrote an article in the New York Times magazine about The Gift Card Economy and asked, “What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills and a holiday gift card have…
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Personal Finance in the Absence of Patience
It takes a very long time to reach a point in which one can say, “I am financially comfortable.” Unfortunately, patience is no virtue of youth. I don’t necessarily want to have more money for consumption of excess, but I do think about how lovely it would be to have a house someday, my own…
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When Life Gives Hurricanes: Make Hurricane Aid
“Who practices hospitality entertains God himself.” — Proverb Lewis Routh and his long term partner lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the region. This is their story about how they lost everything but found kindness and hospitality through the queer community in Galveston Island, Texas. This experience gained them a new life, a…
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Tax Refunds and Other Lump Sums
I actually look forward to filing taxes each year, and I do it as soon as I possibly can. I just need my W2 (this year available online) and my mortgage statements; everything else like charitable donations and interest earned, my Quicken program tells me. I know, I shouldn’t allow a big refund. I know,…
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