Feed items

On Father’s Day, I visited my dad, who is in the process of moving out of the house he has shared with his long-time girlfriend for the past thirteen or so years; she had been living in the house for about forty years, if I remember correctly. We met at the house, which was clear of almost all of its furniture, and walked into town.

Maplewood is a township in New Jersey with a cute downtown area, with several good restaurants and shops. There’s a convenient train to New York City. It’s not a cheap place to live, though. In 2011, the mean price for detached houses in the township was $570,158, and property taxes are typical for New Jersey. In other words, high.

Naked With Cash is an ongoing series at Consumerism Commentary in which readers share their households’ finances with other readers. These participants benefit from the accountability that comes from tracking their finances publicly and the feedback of the four expert Certified Financial Planners (CFPs).

For more information, read this introduction.

The issue of healthcare is one that keeps people in jobs far longer than they’d like. I’ve seen up close how someone with chronic health issues must deal with these choices, and in certain situations, the choices can be difficult.

Medicare coverage doesn’t begin until age 65, so where does that leave someone who stops working prior to that birthday? The issue of being able to afford health insurance on one’s own, even with the potential for subsidies through Obamacare if one’s income is low enough, can prevent people from leaving bad working environments. If you’re a working professional in your sixties but not a top executive, your chances of being able to quit one job and start fresh in another are quickly diminishing. Companies can’t discriminate against employees or potential employees based on age, but if you’re perceived as being close to retirement, you’re going to have a hard time getting hired in a new job.

I can think of two fairly recent instances in publishing that elucidate just how “the rich” or “the one percent” are different from everyone else, and we should all do ourselves a favor by studying their approach to money so we, too, can be monetarily wealthy.

Steve Siebold wrote a book, How Rich People Think, and the author was a guest of Tom Dziubek on the Consumerism Commentary Podcast a few years ago. Prior to recording the interview, the author sent a copy of the book for me to read and gather ideas for the podcast interviews. I no longer have the book; it was part of a significant collection of financial books I recently donated to a local library.

But as I remember, it was an easy read, filled with a contrasting generalizations about “rich people” and “average people.” Here’s one: