Foolproof Investment Advice: Avoid Fad Stocks (Updated)

In general, picking individual stocks isn't a great idea for the average investor. There's a lot of risk involved and it is best left to the professionals on Wall Street, although, even they can't beat the market. However, there's one type of stock that you should be especially careful to stay away from, the fad stock.

Practicing What We Preach: Splurging

Almost everything I bought or borrowed to keep our truck running properly.

I recently wrote about when it's reasonable to splurge on something. The conclusion of that post was there aren't that many things worth splurging on, however, there are a few. This post is about putting our money where our mouths (keyboards?) are. Read on to learn about our recent splurging.

Our Budget Helps Us Spend More, Not Less

The vast majority of people who have created a budget for themselves did so to help limit their spending, or in other words, help them spend less. Fortunately, we have never really had a problem with spending too much, so when we were working, we never had a budget we tried to stick to. Now that we're "retired" we do have a budget, but I created it more to help us spend than to save. Read on to learn what I'm talking about.

Spending Update - January 2018

Just over a year ago, I claimed I would start doing monthly spending reports. That didn't happen, and I'm going to blame it on 2017 being a very busy year. However, this year is shaping up to be a lot more relaxed, so I'm going to try to get monthly reports up. I'm off to a good start with the January report, although our spending is off to a bad start. Read on to see the numbers.

How to Get a Free Activity Tracker (a.k.a. Fitbit)

Fitbits and activity trackers became trendy a few years ago and continue to be pretty popular. Chrissy and I each had one. We got them free through the HumanaVitality (now called Go365) program where I worked and used them to get more than $400 in rewards from that program. However, my Fitbit was recalled and Chrissy's died, so we lost our activity tracking abilities. I'm the first to admit tracking your steps isn't terribly important, but as an engineer, I appreciated having that data. That's why I was thinking about getting a new activity tracker, but I didn't want to spend any money. Luckily, I found a free alternative, Google Fit.