When I grow up, I want to run the economy.  When I grow up, I want to be a central economic planner.  We all said those things when we were little, didn’t we?
What are we talking about, running the economy.  Nobody runs our economy, it’s capitalism for crying out loud.  Well, guess again.  When the stock market hinges on every Fed policy statement and examines its adjectives and nouns for insight into “future planning” and the market reacts with 100 point swings in either direction based on the analysis, we …

Everybody believes in an emergency fund, but what if you couldn’t get access to such funds in an emergency?  There are many possible scenarios that could occur and prevent you from having funds needed in an emergency.  As such, I believe you should keep some cash hidden at home for use in an emergency.
In the event of a major disaster or blow to “the system”, you could easily see one or more of the following situations occur:

Bank failures which could delay withdrawal of your money while the FDIC sorts out …

If you follow this blog, you know that turning this blog (and other websites) into a sustainable, growing income stream is a huge priority for me. I document my progress each month with a monthly blog update. The blog updates typically include traffic growth, income numbers and other general strategic thoughts on the blog.
Traffic & Readership
I like to break my traffic down into three categories: visits, page views and eye ball time. Since page views per visit can depend on a look and feel and how a blog is organized, …

If you’re a reader or a subscriber of 20smoney.com, will you please write a quick review of the blog at THIS LINK.  It will only take you about 20 seconds, and I would REALLY appreciate it!
Thank you for all of you in advance that take a few seconds and review the site.

Alexa is one of the most widely used “rankings” on the web today.  The lower your Alexa ranking, the better since it indicates a higher-trafficked website.  Take a look at a few rankings to better understand Alexa:

Google.com – Alexa rank: 1
Facebook.com – Alexa rank: 2
ESPN.com – Alexa rank: 70
DrudgeReport.com – Alexa rank: 471
Wisebread.com – Alexa rank: 11,294
20smoney.com – Alexa rank: 126,992

Note: Rankings as of 3/3/10
There are many noted issues that people have with Alexa rankings.  The biggest one is that it’s determined by web surfers who have the Alexa toolbar …

Today, I present an entry in the Financial Plan Writing Contest. Just a reminder that you can win $250 by participating.  Here are the brief guidelines, to read the full description of the contest, click the link above.

Answer the question: What is your financial plan for the next 10 years?
Be sure to to hit on things such as income, job security, budgeting, expense management, real estate, investing, retirement planning, etc. – the more detailed within specific areas the better!
Be sure to discuss how the economy might affect your plan – …

Whenever we hear proposed legislation being debated, we typically see the politicians reference CBO numbers and estimates.  This is because the CBO, or the Congressional Budget Office, is a non-partisan group, therefore, they can be trusted to not have an agenda.  They do still have their limitations in their estimates as I’ll let Paul Ryan explain in the video below.  Specifics to what I’m referring to are at the 2:50 mark of the video, although I encourage watching the full interview.

From my point of view, Ryan is one of the …

Time management is one of the most best things that you can strive to get better at in your life in my opinion.  Improving your time management can be the difference between an increase in income, the ability to build and manage a second income stream and a quality work / life balance versus a poor one.
When it comes to developing a second income stream, most fail to do it not because of the difficulty or the lack of skills.  Most fail to develop a second income stream due to …