I received a lot of great comments in response to my post, What I Have Learned Since Starting My ‘Finance and Fat’ Turnaround. Here is a compilation, in the order they were posted, with links to the bloggers who shared their wisdom. Enjoy these tips and be sure to visit these sites as well. I read them all regularly and highly recommend them.
Single Guy Money - I’ve learned that I in order for my financial position to improve, I must get rid of DEBT!

Mrs. Micah - I’ve learned a lot–including that I’m going to be in debt for years (but I can influence how many) and it’s hard to attack debt when you’re in an flexible income situation.

Making Money Journal - If you are part of a couple, both have to be on board the get our of debt bandwagon, otherwise the climb will be nearly impossible.

Quest For Four Pillars - What have I learned? Maybe not to over-analyze too much. Most bloggers do this (that’s why we are bloggers) but it doesn’t necessarily help us in our decision making.

I’ve Paid for This Twice Already - Don’t define your journey by your setbacks but by your triumphs.

Dawn @ Iowahippiechick - I think what I’ve learned the most since starting financial blogging, is to make every dollar count. Making that a mantra of some sorts, helps me think a little, before spending it frivolously.
Also, as savingdiva does, putting the bits of money that I may earn on the side towards a specific goal.
In other words…making every dollar count
I think there is a lot of financial power to that frame of thought!

Debt Diet - I’ve learned that I’m not the only one in this situation, and that I have what I need to be able to change it.

It’s not too late to share what you have learned on your journey- whether that be with a financial or ‘fat’ turnaround or any other tips for breaking bad habits and starting good ones. Thanks to all who have participated!

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, happens to be a billionaire and a blogger. His public persona comes across as a bit wild at times, but I think he has some very solid wisdom behind that. His blog is worth reading (usually) and he wrote a really interesting article yesterday, Warren Buffett, Taxes and the Presidency.

Warren Buffett has been all over the business press recently suggesting that the very rich, those on the Forbes 400 list, are taxed advantageously to the rest of the workforce. That it makes no sense that his tax bill as a percentage of income is lower than that of his secretary or housekeeper.

He is absolutely right.

Is this a fair system? I don’t know if that is the right question, but I think it would be hard to make a case for the above scenario being the right way to do things.

Its also wrong that those who must live paycheck to paycheck find themselves paying the same amount of taxes on consumables as the super rich. That 8pct sales tax on life’s basic necessities is real time cash out of pocket, a far greater percentage of income and much more expensive money than the federal taxes we pay the following April 15th.

This is a brilliant point. 8% on every purchase for people making under $30,000 a year is going to hurt the wallet quite a bit more than it does for the person making $300,000. A consumption tax is often touted as the most fair tax system, but I think it clearly is not (at least not a flat consumption tax without considerations for income).

Right now I hate paying taxes because I feel like I’m giving money to a known crack addict. However much you give, its not enough. They will buy their crack, get a short term high and soon be back asking for more.

The federal government , whether in Republican or Democratic hands is the same way. No matter how much you give, they are always asking for more, more, more. Always spending on the ridiculous, without remorse and without the ability to restrain itself. Just like a drug addict.

If you are going to raise my taxes, I want somethings in return.

Raise my taxes by 1 pct, by every 1 pct you cut federal spending. Your choice of raising taxes on luxury items, or on annual income of 10mm dollars per year or more. Cutting spending means the government needs to raise less which allows you to raise the income threshold on which you charge this “Forbes 400 surcharge”

This is really the problem. Our government is simply out of control with spending money and nothing can change for the better until that problem is solved.

I also have one more tax suggestion that I think will create so many jobs in this country that it really wont matter what else our politicians do.

If we really want to stimulate job creation in this country, take the same approach to small business with fewer than 25 employees that we take to Internet taxes. Outlaw them.

No taxes of any kind on small businesses with fewer than 25 employees. No employer payroll tax. No state or local taxes. No taxes on earnings. Nada. The business owners will pay income taxes on their personal income they pay themselves, but not corporate earnings

Wow! I really like that idea. Mark Cuban for President anyone? 

There is a lot more in the article worth reading and I recommend you check it out. How often can you get the opinion of the super-rich on taxes and things that could actually affect their bank accounts in a big way? Kudos to Cuban for taking the time to write this.

I posted a while back about the My Mile Marker website. It’s a simple online application for tracking fuel efficiency and fuel costs. Today, Clever Dude wrote an interesting article about the rising costs of fuel and that made me think this is a good time to review my history. After tracking my fuel costs for almost two months I have a decent amount of data to review.

My first recorded fill-up was on September 28, 2007 and I paid only $2.519 per gallon. My most recent fill-up was today, November 16, 2007 and I paid $2.939 per gallon. I don’t always use the same station, but I do always make an effort to go where the prices are on the lower end. That is a 16.7% increase in less than two months. If only my salary increased at such a rate!

So now the good news. My fuel efficiency has also increased, starting at 28.86 miles per gallon and hitting 29.97 miles per gallon on my last fill-up. That’s an increase of 3.8%, sadly not keeping up with the rise in prices. I’m not sure what I’m doing differently to increase my efficiency, but maybe just having this extra awareness in the back of my mind helps me to drive a little more efficiently. Now that I’m so close to 30 miles per gallon I want to see if I can break it!

You don’t need to use MyMileMarker.com to track your fuel efficiency, it’s just an easy to use tool and I like it very much so far. I’m on the Internet all the time so it’s not really any extra effort for me. I make sure to get a receipt when I buy gas and I write my odometer reading on the receipt and enter the information later on the website when it’s convenient. Whatever you do, I do think this is valuable data to have and if you see a drop in your mileage you can do something about it right away.

This isn’t an attempt to whine about fuel prices, I generally don’t give them much thought because I have to get to work so I have to pay the going rate. However, it is good to look back and see the trends and know where you stand. I just hope prices start to trend back down soon so we have a little more spending money for the holidays.

Review of Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin

Book’s website - www.yourmoneyoryourlife.org

Amazon.com link - Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence

I actually started reading this book around the start of the year, but stopped after a couple of chapters because I found it too dull. Thanks to Trent at The Simple Dollar running an online book club with this book I decided to try reading it again. I think it’s true that this book gets off to a slow start, but I also think I gave up too soon before because I had no problem reading through the whole book this time.

Bottom line, this is a must-read personal finance book no matter where you are currently with your money. If you want to know more before you read it, I’ll cover the main themes of the book below.

Are you making a living or making a dying?
The first important theme deals with how we trade our life energy for money and figuring out just what it is we do with that money and why. Do you work 50-60 hours a week just to keep up with the bills and have money to blow on having ‘fun’ on the weekend? Do you know how many hours of your life you are actually giving up for the ’stuff’ you own? Do you know how much you actually earn per hour at your job? This section shows you how to calculate your real hourly wage, which is likely much lower than you think, and how to start tracking every penny you spend and creating a budget. This section is laying the foundation for a sound financial plan, however the process of determining your real hourly wage and figuring out how many hours of you life you trade for ’stuff’ was eye-opening for me.

How much is enough? Finding fulfillment.
The next big theme is figuring out what is ‘enough’ in your life. What do you spend money on that provides fulfillment and what do you spend money on that works against finding fulfillment? Not only does this apply to how you spend your money, but also to how you spend your time (life energy). Is your job fulfilling? Do you have to spend money and time doing things for your job that you wouldn’t do otherwise? These are important questions to answer because they lead to the ultimate question of determining what you should be doing to make a living and how you need to think differently about it.

Tracking your progress
You could do this on a computer, you could do this on a paper wall chart (as the book suggests), but the key is to somehow track your progress and keep a visual reminder. I use a number of things to track my progress- this website, an Excel spreadsheet, Quicken, and a whiteboard on my refrigerator with my current total debt and how much I have paid down on it since starting my financial turnaround. Whatever you do, do something and make it easy to see on a daily basis. Not only is this an empowering step on it’s own, but it leads to the next great theme, the Crossover Point.

The Crossover Point
This is the most exciting part of the book. If you are tracking your income and expenses like the previous section told you to do, you will be able to add a third component to your chart, which is income from investing or any source of passive income. The goal here is to add your passive income to the income and expense chart (it is likely a tiny number at the bottom of the chart now), but to project it out into the future and find a point where that passive income number crosses over your expense number. This is the crossover point, the point at which you no longer need to go out and earn an ‘active’ income. If you are anything like me, that crossover point is a very long way off right now, but it is the ultimate goal of taking control of your money and finding financial freedom.

Summary
The book isn’t perfect, and I would guess you could cut about 50 pages out to make it really great, but the overall message was truly life-changing for me. I highly recommend it for anyone who thinks that maybe they could be doing better with balancing money and life.

My Money Blog highlighted this article, 10 Great Reasons to Carry a Big, Long Mortgage, published by Ric Edelman under a section of the website titled Education. I don’t believe that My Money Blog was endorsing this author or article, but simply sharing the information. I’ve included both references only to show how I discovered it.

Before I go any farther, just think about the phrase “10 great reasons to carry a big, long mortgage”. How do you react to that title? Does it sound wise? Does it sound logical? I know what I think, but lets look at some of the information from the article to see if it sheds any more light on the subject.

Never own your home outright. Instead, get a big 30-year mortgage, and never pay it off - regardless of your age and income.

In today’s economic environment, a big, 30-year mortgage is the best thing you can have.

So: Never pay off the mortgage. Reject 15-year loans, never make extra payments, and forget about those biweekly mortgage payment plans.

First, understand that everything you know about mortgages — and particularly what you fear about them — is wrong. The myths you believe were told to you, bless their hearts, by your well-meaning parents and grandparents. They told you that mortgages are dangerous, that having one means you can lose your home. They told you this because they remember the Depression era, a time when millions of Americans lost their homes.

How do those excerpts sound to you? Wise? Logical? Here is what seems to be the main argument presented- things are different this time. Where have we heard that before? Right around the top of every stock market bubble is one time you will regularly hear that phrase. Basically, everyone before was wrong, but now we have it all figured out because we are so much more advanced than those silly little people before us (you know, like the generation of Americans who actually had a positive savings rate).

Still, mortgages are expensive, and you’d rather avoid paying all that interest. That’s why you like the idea of sending in extra cash with your monthly payments. You know that paying off the mortgage early will save you huge amounts in interest charges. Although that’s true, you need to turn that coin over, because there’s another side you have overlooked.

Here it seems the author admits that having a mortgage isn’t a good thing, but wait…now he will tell us why it is. Confused  yet?

That’s why owning your home outright is like having money buried under a mattress. Since the house will grow with or without a mortgage, any equity you currently have in the house is, essentially, earning no interest. You wouldn’t stuff ten grand under your mattress, so why stash two hundred thousand into the walls of the house? Having a long-term mortgage lets your equity grow while your home’s value grows.

I don’t think you can compare cash to a home, but lets play along- IF you had ten grand under your mattress, would you go to the bank and take out a loan against it so you could invest it? Now this argument is a bit tricky because stuffing cash under your mattress isn’t really wise either, but you don’t need a mortgage to let your equity grow! That makes no sense at all.

There’s no way you can avoid debt in today’s society. Cars and college – let alone big screen TV’s — virtually require you to have loans. And you’ll find that mortgages offer you perhaps the cheapest way to borrow.

This one  really takes the cake This quote is so funny it got me wondering if this article was in fact an anti-debt satire piece of some sort. Did I read this right- “There’s no way you can avoid debt in today’s society“? I think Visa and Mastercard would love that quote. If you really think this is true, please stop offering ‘financial advice’ to anyone in any way, shape, or form.

Not only are mortgage loans low in cost, the interest you pay is tax-deductible. You can save as much as 35 cents in taxes for every dollar you pay in interest.

Yep! What a deal! If you think that is a good idea then please start sending your checks to me and I will pay you 35 cents for every dollar you send me!!!!

Honestly, that’s about all I can take of the article. Please visit the link and read the whole thing and please tell me where I am wrong because I just don’t see any sound arguments to support the title. Just think about the advice and see if it really makes sense to you. Don’t let someone tell you you aren’t sophisticated enough to understand it- apply simple logic and reason and draw your own conclusions.