Should Costco be part of your strategy for becoming a smarter consumer? There is no simple answer, but at the very least it’s something to consider. Before you plunk down your $50.00 annual membership fee (or $100 for the Executive membership), it will pay to ask a few questions. Start with these:
Oct
23
For just about everybody, buying a home is the most expensive thing we’ll ever do. The next most expensive? Buying a car. It is generally assumed by “them” that we will be borrowing money in each case. While that may be conventional thinking, our goal at Real World Finance is to be a little smarter than “they” are.
Looking at a big-ticket item like a car gives us a chance to examine one of Real World Finance’s most important principles: earn interest, don’t pay it. If you decide to adopt this approach, you will be paying cash for your cars the rest of your life and saving many, many thousands in interest.
Oct
14
Now that you’ve been exposed to the WHAT-IF game (10/06/09), it’s time for some practice. This first try will be similar to the hybrid vs. gas engine comparison.
This time, you need a portable space heater for your new home office. This makes sense because you live in a moderate climate where the winter temperatures don’t demand that the entire home be heated, especially when you might be out of the office for a couple of hours a week on appointments.
Oct
6
Playing WHAT-IF is a strategy employed by astute individuals and corporations to figure out if spending money now makes sense in the big picture.
I hope you zeroed in on two things in that opening sentence: 1) You can use the same strategy as the big boys, and 2) These people are looking at the Big Picture, which is what you want to do.
