This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.
My husband and I are in the early stages of building a house. As we modify our floor plans, the amount we’ll need to borrow to build is on our minds. It’s probably going to be the most expensive thing we’ll ever purchase, and we need to decide what we want to borrow and what loan term we’ll want.
The main differences between 15- and 30-year loans are straightforward. Fifteen-year loans have higher monthly payments, but you pay less interest, while 30-year terms have lower monthly payments, but you pay significantly more for the house in the long run. As with most areas of personal finance, however, this decision is about more than just the math. There are other important considerations, such as retirement savings, risk tolerance, and discipline.
First, let’s take a look at the hard figures.
Crunching the numbers
Let’s say that a 30-year-old borrower is buying a house [...]

Mark Frauenfelder is the co-founder of my favorite sites, Boing Boing (which is a “directory of wonderful things”). Mark’s also a GRS reader. He dropped me a line the other day to tell me about a new project he’s been following.
Today, Credit.com is launching a free new online financial tool called Credit Report Card. This tool is designed to provide users with a quick snapshot of their credit reports. According to the site’s FAQ, “it breaks down your credit report into five simple-to-understand categories and gives you a letter grade for each one.”
In his e-mail, Mark offered a personal example of how the service works:

Here’s a screenshot of what a Credit Report Card looks like. It’s my own credit report card. (I’m only showing part of the report card, as I don’t want to share my personal data.) As you can see, I have excellent credit :), but I’ve made too many “Inquiries” in the [...]

This is a guest post from Robert Brokamp of The Motley Fool. Robert is a Certified Financial Planner and the advisor for The Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement service. He contributes one new article to Get Rich Slowly every two weeks.
Quick! If you had to choose just three types of assets that should be in a well-diversified, long-term investment portfolio, what would they be?
If we polled the Get Rich Slowly audience, we’d get a range of responses to that question. However, I think plenty of folks would have answered “bonds, U.S. stocks, and international stocks.” Which is perfect, because those are the investments in the demonstration of asset allocation that I’m about to embark upon. (You are all so accommodating!)
Let’s look at the returns of three mutual funds from 30 June 1989 to 30 June 2009: The Fidelity Intermediate Bond Fund (FTHRX), which holds bonds that mature in five or so years; the Vanguard 500 [...]

This is the first of a fourteen-part series that explores the core tenets of Get Rich Slowly.
I had a group of old high-school friends over to the house last weekend. As the daylight faded and the cool of the evening settled, we sat around a blazing fire talking about life. We shared the good things we’ve done over the past twenty years — and we shared the bad. Inevitably, the conversation turned to money.

One woman confessed that she’s a shopaholic. When she feels stressed, she buys things. To prevent her husband from finding out, she’s the one who pays the bills.

Another woman has more clothes than she will ever wear. Her closets are packed so full that she’s begun to pile new purchases on the floor — but still she buys more.

One of my friends admitted that he’s sunk thousands of dollars into online videogames. After his divorce, he spent years addicted to his computer. [...]

This is a guest post from Karawynn Long, who writes about personal finance at Pocketmint. Karawynn is a semi-regular contributor for Get Rich Slowly. She has been blogging since before “blogging” was a word.
Here at the Koke-Long house we’re in the market for some furniture. Our living room is currently semi-furnished with a comfortable but deteriorating Ikea couch and some leftover dining chairs; we’d like a nice armchair or two and some tables.
I’ve mostly gone for Ikea ‘cheap and new’ furniture in the past, but I’ve been disappointed by its (understatement alert!) lack of durability. This time I’d like to try buying used but higher-quality. As I began to look around, though, I realized that I knew very little about what makes for a strong, long-lasting piece of furniture.
Anyone can identify a rip, scratch, or stain, or decide whether they like a certain color, without special knowledge. But judging whether a [...]

At AskMetafilter last week, a user asked a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Now that I have my finances firmly under control, now that I’m building wealth, is it ever okay to finance fun? Here’s the question (with minor edits for clarification):

When is it okay to finance Toys? We have a budget, all bills are paid, we are saving $100 every month, the only debt we have is our cars and house. No credit cards. Each month we have about $900 left over. Between the both of us, we have a wishlist including:

a four-wheeler
a vacation
cosmetic home improvements

Facts and opinions welcome. Should we save ’til we can pay cash? Or is it okay to finance some or all of our wishlist?
I believe that in general, it’s not a good idea to finance Toys. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t buy Toys (as long as you have a balanced financial life), but that buying [...]