Over the holidays, we said good-bye to an old family member. It was definitely her time to go. She leaked, she conked out at odd times, and she stank. Of course, I'm talking about our old vehicle: a minivan with 182,000 miles on it. I didn't let go of her easily; after all, we didn't get rid of our previous car until it had 264,000 miles on it. I figured we could get the minivan to at least 200,000.

But while visiting relatives in Florida, we had the opportunity to buy a used minivan from my sister's meticulous neighbor for a great price. So we took it. I have to admit, it's been a huge upgrade. It has all kinds of luxury features that our old minivan didn't have, such as:

• When you turn it on, it stays on until you turn it off.
• When it rains, the water stays out of the vehicle.
• There's an electrical device in the cigarette lighter that I can use to charge my cell phone, rather than just an empty hole where an electrical device used to be.
• The speedometer is an accurate reflection of the speed I'm traveling, rather than a number to which I have to add five to 15 mph.
• The brake light comes on only when the emergency brake is actually engaged.
• It has this thing called “air conditioning.”
• It doesn't stink. (The smell in the old car came from water coming in and getting the carpets all moldy.)
• It has a “keyless remote,” which is a device on the key ring with buttons that, when pushed, cause the side doors to slide open.

(Regarding that last feature, here's a trick you can play on the uninitiated: I put the keyless remote in my pocket, and told my mom and my aunt that the doors were voice activated, but you had to use the secret word. In this van's case, I told them, the secret word was “monkey _____.” Since this is a family website, I can't print the actual word, but use your imagination and you'll be close. So I got my 70-something mom and aunt to yell, “Monkey ____!” at the van, pressed the button in my pocket, and — voila! — the doors opened. They just couldn't get over it. “I have to get me one of those!” my aunt exclaimed. I let them yell, “Monkey ___!” at the van for another 15 minutes, closing and opening the doors, until I told them the truth. If I had videotaped it, we'd all be YouTube heroes by now.)

Drive a Lemon, Save

During the 1990s, my financial life was like a Caribbean cruise ship during hurricane season: I was in a cabin at the center of the ship, unaware of the storms approaching from the horizon. By 2001, I'd wandered onto the deck in the midst of Hurricane Debt and Failure; I found myself in financial and personal trouble. It took a few years, but eventually I discovered that I had more control over that cruise ship than I thought.

In 2006, I shared with Get Rich Slowly readers the circumstances that allowed me to start moving in the right direction. In short, I realized that I could no longer sit by and let external forces — the hurricanes: my bosses, a difficult situation at work, my increasing debt, a deteriorating personal relationship — control my life. I learned how to manage my own money, using the basic approaches of earning more and spending smarter. I removed the negative forces in my life — anything that worked against my long-term goals to improve my finances, my life, and my identity — and replaced them with positives.

In my old life, I put the blame for failure or the credit for success on outside forces, such as luck or the economy. But this just made me feel helpless about my situation. In my new life, I shifted my philosophy from an external locus of control to an internal one: the belief that the circumstances in my life were due to choices I made. (Or worse, the choices I didn't make.) This made all the difference.

Yesterday I hosted a guest article about the mortagage-interest tax deduction. As part of his argument that this tax break should not be used to justify buying a house, CJ from Wise Money Matters looked at the savings by tax brackets. What CJ did not consider (and what escaped my notice, and even that of my accountant) was the concept of marginal tax rates.

Although I was mortified to have let such a blatant error pass through editing, I decided to turn this mistake into a positive experience. I spent some time reading about marginal tax rates, and today I'm going to share what I learned.

Marginal Tax Rates

Let's start by looking at the 2009 U.S. federal income tax brackets for ordinary income. (These are the rates we'll use when filing our tax returns in 2010.) For the sake of simplicity, we'll only examine the rates for single filers and for those who are married filing jointly. The same principle applies to all filers.

I mentioned in my last post that I read Barbara Stanny's "Secrets of Six-Figure Women." Stanny interviewed 150 women who earn more than $100,000 annually and sought to find what traits, experiences and motivators they shared in common.

Unlike most books, this one didn't take me three months to finish. It's a fast read, and I think that has a lot to do with how relatable it is. I'm not saying I fit the bill for every six-figure trait Stanny has outlined; but you can't help but compare yourself to the high-earning women she's interviewed.

Although the book is meant to empower women, I think much of Stanny's research is every bit as helpful to men. Here are the strategies and milestones of high earners Stanny outlines in the book. Some of them hit home; others I questioned. Tell me what you think.

Continue reading...

There are plenty of possible reasons you could want to leave the U.S. Perhaps you've always dreamed about making the sand and surf your front yard or longed to master a foreign tongue. Maybe you've been offered a job abroad. Maybe you feel your taxes are too high. I'm not here to question your motives, traveler. I'm just here to pass along what I know and help you get to your new home with your personal finances in order.

Settling Your Accounts

You're going to need a bank account when you first land on that once-foreign soil. Common expat advice is to set up an online savings account before leaving. Start out by keeping your money with a well-established and nationally available bank -- at least until you get a good sense of the banking landscape in your new home.

Be aware, though: If you're still a U.S. citizen while living abroad and ever wind up with more than $10,000 in your new accounts, you'll need to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts with the stateside IRS. You can be hit with serious penalties for neglecting to do this, so do the paperwork or renounce citizenship before you start making any serious money.

Yes, this is another article bemoaning the cost of a college degree, and the amount of student debt that many graduates take with them alongside their diplomas -- assuming they graduate, which doesn't always happen. (Paying off students loans without a college degree must be the epitome of rock-and-hard-place-ishness.)

You've read all the numbers about how the cost of college has risen far faster than the median household income, and how there's now more student loan debt than credit card debt. But besides the fact that debt stinks, graduating with a $30,000 I.O.U. (or more) has plenty of other harmful effects:

Student loans bring future consumption to the present. Debtors (often being paid entry-level salaries) have to devote a portion of their income to what they would otherwise be spending on cars, homes, kids, and iThingamajigs (well, they'll still buy those last things, but put it on the credit card, which is just more future consumption being spent now, with interest). This drains money from the overall economy, benefitting no one but the universities and the student-loan providers.

On Friday, I shared a guest response to a reader question about life insurance. Many GRS readers rightly complained that it didn't do a good job of answering the question. One reader — Mike from Four Pillars and ABCs of Investing — took it upon himself to write this response.

One of the most common issues that people with any kind of dependents face is, "How much life insurance do I need?".

This is a tough question to answer in a simple equation; there are quite a few variables which affect the amount of insurance needed. First off, I'm only going to discuss term insurance. For most people, that's the only type of insurance to consider.