Caroline

Related product in our Etsy shop: 40 motivational journal prompts for your FI journey Continuing our focus on good health (since August is National Wellness Month), I wanted to share one of my favorite stress management techniques. Managing stress feels good, and it’s also one of the five key factors in maintaining brain health. Being calm and collected, after properly taming your stress, is also helpful for negotiating – e.g., [...]

I scored an advance copy of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s new book, Keep Sharp: Build A Better Brain At Any Age, which aims to be a science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline. (If you’re an avid reader, look into building a profile on NetGalley, which is where I get many of my free review copies.) As August is National Wellness Month, it is timely to cover a health-related book, [...]

When we signed the closing paperwork last year to sell our entire Indy rental portfolio, I happened to be speaking at a business conference. When my colleagues figured out that I was dashing in and out from my presenting duties to take care of a closing, I was met with several high-fives and other forms of congratulations, since for many people, a real estate transaction is a major milestone. Unfortunately, [...]

HELOC, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Using a HELOC for investment property so you can look like a cash buyer even when you’re financingSmoothing out cash flow when you’re a small business with lumpy earningsHaving money to tap for emergencies in lieu of a rainy day bank account earning negative return after inflation Apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning for swiping a line from her beautiful [...]

We recently signed up for a course on making printables. My main business is career coaching, so I do a lot of writing, keynotes and training – activities which lend themselves to printable quotes and exercises. We had been thinking about adding a product in our business to give it another stream of income. While most of my work was already virtual, I still did a significant amount of live [...]

A good friend of mine had a rent-to-own agreement on the house she was living in, but her application for a mortgage was denied so she was unable to meet the purchase deadline. A rent-to-own agreement is what it sounds like – it looks like a typical lease, except at a specified date, the tenant has the right to purchase the property for an already agreed upon price. For my [...]

I was recently speaking at a pan-Asian media conference (supposed to be hosted in Singapore in March but unfortunately moved to a June virtual event due to the pandemic), and listening to the keynote by Maria Ressa. She is the founder and editor of Rappler, but also recently convicted in a Philippine court for cyber libel. Her talk really made me appreciate the freedom of the press that we have [...]

As part of our recent estate planning, our assets will be split 50/50 between our kids. That seems fair, but how equally have we provided support, or will we provide support, during our lifetimes? “…if that scorecard of lifetime gifts isn’t roughly equal at the time of the parents’ death, then there’s a problem. Not a legal problem — a family problem.” So says Jeffrey Condon, co-author of Beyond the [...]

I recently finished a new personal finance book, Beyond The Basics, by Sammy Azzouz, a financial advisor out of Massachusetts, and one of his investment topics “beyond the basics” is real estate. Azzouz’ premise is that for most investors their basics will be three things: career, because that provides your earning potential;savings rate to ensure there are earnings left over to invest;building a risk-managed paper portfolio that you can stick [...]