“Friends are the family that you choose.” –Jess C. Scott My wife and I don’t have kids. We made that choice a long time ago, and I don’t see that ever-changing. While there are all sorts of discussions on the Internet about how society treats the childless, whether or not the childless get the short … Read more

“No man needs a vacation so much as a man who has just had one.” –Elbert Hubbard The first time I deployed to Bosnia, I worked for a while in a headquarters unit before taking over my tank platoon. This was in 1996 when the Internet hadn’t really become ubiquitous. Our office got a satellite … Read more

I recently received a question from one of the subscribers to the 52-Week Financial Game Plan that seemed like an excellent topic to share with all of you. This person asks: Jason, As I read more and more on the topic of financial planning, it seems there are 2 factions. One faction is the adviser … Read more

“Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others.” –Martin Sheen, Wall Street I was going to be a millionaire. That’s what I told myself. I had just read Electronic Day Traders’ Secrets (#aff) by Friedfertig and West. I opened … Read more

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” –General George S. Patton “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” –Henry David Thoreau The first and only time I had the opportunity to invest in a 401k was when I worked at Capital One. I was a freshly-minted graduate from … Read more

“The money’s the same, whether you earn it or scam it.” –Bobby “The Brain” Heenan Recently, Microsoft conducted a study of Nigerian scam e-mails to determine why the e-mails are so blatantly, obviously illegitimate. If you’ve read one of these e-mails, it’s pretty clear that the son of a Nigerian oil baron doesn’t have $53 … Read more

“Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.” –Dutch Proverb I received my first credit card when I was a plebe at West Point. Perhaps there should have been a hazing ritual to go along with it so that I would have been more scared of it than I was, but, hey, I was a plebe. … Read more

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge.” –Edgar Allen Poe Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV. There continues to be a debate about whether or not the “snowball method” of paying down debt by paying off the smallest debt first … Read more

In the company I co-founded, we often worked on group projects. We believed that software was an art best practiced in groups, as a variety of viewpoints was necessary to work through hard problems. Sometimes, though, we got projects which weren’t large enough to justify putting multiple people on the project. In the beginning of … Read more

“Instant gratification is not soon enough.” –Meryl Streep “Instant gratification takes too long.” –Carrie Fisher Have you ever felt buyer’s remorse? Have you come home with a pair of $200 shoes or that $150 designer shirt that you thought was awesome at the time you bought them, but when you got home, wondered what in … Read more