Category Archives: Personal Finance

Articles on “keeping the castle” of your life while constantly assaulted from work — savings, 401(k), family relationships, dealing with a layoff.

5 personal finance actions to do before 2010

The end of the year is my time to review my finances. While I’m not a personal finance expert, I am responsible for my personal financial decisions that I make during the course of the year. In order to get perspective — and not get burned — I take this week to do my personal [...]

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Personal finance excellence is now a required Cubicle Warrior skill

Part of having resiliency in your career is having your financial house in order. The reason is that good personal finances keep desperation away when you are laid off and allows you to make job and career choices because they are right for you, not because you are overwhelmed with bills.
Right now, credit card companies [...]

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How personal finance is career management

When CIO’s start getting articles about personal finance — the basics, not the fancy investments — you know that personal finance has come to career management.
Here’s the basic thrust of Where Personal Finance and Career Management Meet:
Good career management stems from a foundation of good financial management. Career freedom and financial freedom begin with effectively [...]

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4 benefits of practicing a layoff

With job losses continuing, job stress for those still employed continues. Does management know how to distribute the work? What work will we no longer do? Will there be more layoffs? Will I have a layoff next?
For those who are already laid off, the mission is clear: find another job. For those who stay, nothing [...]

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Your personal finance safety net

When dealing with your personal finances, I’ve long recommended saving one year’s take-home pay. I have seen few personal financial advisers favor that amount of savings; most say an emergency fund typically three to six months long. That’s hard enough to do, I understand. But Cubicle Warriors take the challenge and get the savings out [...]

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When will the economy get better – Part II

Part I of “When will the economy get better?” noted that it is sometimes easier for me to see how we are doing through charts and graphs. It referred people to the Calculated Risk blog and the excellent February Economic Summary in Graphs.
What the short article did not do was explain why I use these [...]

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Manage your 401(k) in cash

Part of managing your career is managing your 401(k). Right now, your 401(k) is looking ugly. Should you stop contributing to your 401(k)?
Here are three reasons to keep contributing – and one reason you might stop.
401(k) has company match
Without going crazy on percentages, if your company is contributing a company match to your 401(k) contribution, [...]

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Work longer to make up losses

How many of you have opened up your 2008 401(k) and IRA statements and seen a 30-40% drop in your assets? (Fortunately, I got out in May, 2008, so it wasn’t much of a shocker…)
Too many of us have lost almost half our retirement savings — and along with it, the thought of retiring early. [...]

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2008: End of Company Retirement Plans Begins

While many look forward to the new year, there is at least one item from 2008 that merits attention. It may be the year that the end of company retirement plan support begins.
It all started with companies eliminating pensions, of course. That part is old news. The new news is that more and more companies [...]

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In 2005, we wanted to privatize Social Security

It is worth remembering that government counts and impacts Cubicle Warriors. In 2005, George W. Bush wanted to privatize Social Security — because the returns in the stock market would be so much better than what government could provide. He made a serious run at turning the responsibility of getting Social Security returns to the [...]

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