All You Need to Know About Personal Finance on a 3 x 5 Inch Index Card – Really?

A few years ago, a University of Chicago college professor named Harold Pollack remarked that everything you really needed to know about personal finance could be fit on a single 3×5 inch index card. Someone asked him to prove it, the result went viral, and Pollack actually ended up co-writing a book about it called … Read more

My Stewardship Practices – Part Two:  Saving, Investing, and Protecting

In this second of two articles on my stewardship practices, I discuss my saving, investing, and protecting (insurance) approaches. The stewardship principles that are most applicable to these areas are as follows: There are a few other more granular ones that apply here and there, which I will highlight in the appropriate sections. My practices … Read more

So You Want to be an “Everyday Millionaire”?

Author and speaker Chris Hogan, who is part of Dave Ramsey’s team, just came out with a new book titled, Everyday Millionaires. In some ways, it is a follow-up to his earlier book on retirement, Retire Inspired. The book summary says it will show you: …how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth—and how you can too. … Read more

Some Thoughts on “Key Retirement Planning Birthday Milestones”

A friend recently sent me this link to a chart on PNC Bank’s website titled “A Timeline for Achievement” that provided a helpful list of age-based retirement planning milestones. (Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement for PNC, although I am sure they are a good bank, I just found the chart interesting. This kind of … Read more

New Year Retirement Stewardship 10-Point Check-Up

Happy New Year! Planning is a wise part of retirement stewardship. But no matter how well we plan, we must always remember that “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9). And now that we are closing out 2018 and looking out ahead to 2019, I thought I would share some thoughts … Read more

Reflections and Lessons from 40 Years of Stewardship

As I shared in a previous article, I decided to retire from my full-time paid position a few weeks ago. I will do an article about how my “transition” to retirement is going and what I am up to in a future article. In this post, I want to share the main lessons I have … Read more

5 Ways to Prepare for the Next Big Correction (or Recession)

In our last article, we looked at some of the causes of the “Great Recession” of 2008 and suggested that there are signs that we could be headed toward a market correction or even a recession based on an over-valued stock market, increasing household and government debt, and rising interest rates. There are differences between 2018 … Read more

10 Years Later: 5 Stewardship Lessons from the “Great Recession”

This month could be considered the ten year anniversary of the start of the “Great Recession.” Most of us will remember the trials and tribulations of the financial upheaval that worked its way through the U.S., Canada, and Europe in 2007-2009. Only in the last few years have we seen a significant recovery in all … Read more