This article is the fourth of a thirteen-part series that explores the core tenets of Get Rich Slowly. It’s also a part of National Save for Retirement Week.
One of the oldest rules of personal finance is the simple admonition to pay yourself first. All the money books tell you to do it. All the personal finance blogs say it, too. Even your parents have given you the same advice.
But it’s hard. That money could be used someplace else. You could pay the phone bill, could pay down debt, could buy a new DVD player. You’ve tried once or twice in the past, but it’s so easy to forget. You don’t keep a budget, so when payday rolls around, the money just finds its way elsewhere.
And besides: What does “pay yourself first” even mean?
To pay yourself first means simply this: Before you pay your bills, before you buy groceries, before you do anything else, set [...]

A reporter from SmartMoney contacted me a couple of weeks ago to ask me to participate in a little game they were hosting. “All you have to do is guess when the Dow will hit 10,000,” she said. “This is just for fun.”
“I’ll do it,” I replied, “but I want to make it clear that this is just a guess. Nobody really knows.” I told her the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 10,000 again on October 15th at 10:22am Eastern. I was wrong — but not by much. It actually reached 10,000 at 1:21pm Eastern on October 14th.
I know this because I’ve been sitting here for the past ten minutes refreshing my browser page, waiting for it to happen. And it just did:

The Dow has hit 10,000! We’re saved! The recession is over!
Well, not really. But sometimes it seems like that’s how the media reports things. I find it hilarious that of 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 a guest post from Richard Barrington, a freelance writer and novelist who spent over 20 years as an investment industry executive. Barrington is a regular contributor at MoneyRates. Previously at GRS, he shared how to find the right CD or money-market account.
The problem with saving money is that it’s like hiking toward the mountains. The target seems so distant that it feels like you’ll never get there. However, people who start putting one foot in front of the other can get there infinitely sooner than people who are frozen in their tracks.
Like a lot of young couples, my wife and I started out in a studio apartment with no car, no savings, and student loan payments looming every month. It doesn’t seem possible that a quarter century later, we’ve met our financial goals. It helped that we started saving money right away — pretty much as soon as I started earning more than [...]

In early 2008, I put together an e-book. I collected my series of articles about the virtues of the Roth IRA, cleaned them up, added new information, and drafted a 30-page document to serve as a sort of introduction to this important retirement plan.
The great folks at Web Warrior Tools took my work and made a polished e-book. For the past 18 months, it’s been available for $7 from their website. But this information wants to be free. (Heck, it is free if you want to dig through the Get Rich Slowly archives.)

Starting today, The Get Rich Slowly Guide to Roth IRAs is available for free download. No catches. No need to register for anything. Just click and the 518kb PDF is yours. Here’s what the The Get Rich Slowly Guide to Roth IRAs covers:

The power of compounding
What is a Roth IRA (and why should you care?)
How to start a Roth IRA (and [...]

The U.S. stock markets have provided a wild ride over the past year. The S&P 500 stock market index recently posted its best five-month gain since 1938. Yet many people missed out on this. And no wonder.
During the previous five months, the market suffered one of its greatest five month losses, which understandably made investors gun-shy. In fact, many were shoveling money out of stocks instead of into them and so missed the turnaround.
Here are some actual numbers:

From 01 October 2008 to 28 February 2009, the S&P 500 fell from 1164.74 to 735.09, a decline of 36.89% in five months.
From 01 March 2009 to 31 July 2009, the S&P 500 rose from 735.09 to 987.48, an increase of 34.33% in five months.

An investor’s paradox: As I write this (on August 20th), the S&P 500 has closed at 1007.37 — up 37.04% since March 1st. Roughly speaking, the market has now risen as much [...]