Plan Your Escape

Personal finance can be a difficult topic for lots of us. It can be tough to remember to take some time each month to track our income and expenses. It isn't easy to reduce our unnecessary spending. Making a lunch each morning seems so much more difficult than just dropping by the local deli for a sandwich.

The trick to making all this stuff easy lies in our ability to turn them into habits. Habits can be powerful allies on our road to early retirement. Let's see how.  ... read more of this story»

If you've ever had the desire to learn a new skill, then you've likely given some thought to taking a course or going back to school. Depending on what you're interested in learning, these courses can be rather expensive. Sometimes the price tag can even be enough of a deterrent to keep you from ever pursuing your dreams.

There might be a cheaper way though. You might be able to find someone who will pay you while you learn!  ... read more of this story»

We all like to treat ourselves to something special every once in a while. Maybe it's a night out, an ice cream, some chocolate or a new video game. All these things can give us a dose of happiness. Today I'm looking at a trick that you can use to boost the amount of enjoyment you get from these sorts of simple pleasures ... it works, it's easy and it'll save you some money to boot!  ... read more of this story»

If only we had more time, just imagine the things we could do! We'd spend all day in the garden, the workshop or the studio. We'd sit on the porch, read the paper and listen to the birds while sipping a hot cup of tea. Life would be great!

Or would it? Would we actually get around to doing all those things? Would we even enjoy them as much as we think we would? Maybe, but also, maybe not.  ... read more of this story»

The Happiness Formula allows us to take the otherwise complex concept of happiness and break it down into smaller more manageable parts. By tackling each of the three parts separately, we make it a lot easier for ourselves to come up with practical steps we can take to improve our overall happiness. Today I'll be reviewing what we've learned from our study of The Happiness Formula while suggesting some ways in which we can use the formula to improve our happiness.  ... read more of this story»

This is the fourth part of our look at The Happiness Formula. So far we've looked at S, our biological set point, and C, our life conditions, to see how they contribute to our overall level of happiness. Today we are going to examine the final variable, V, which covers our voluntary activities. Let's see how the things we do can affect our happiness.  ... read more of this story»

This is the third installment in our series on The Happiness Formula. In part one, I introduced the formula. Then, in part two we took a look at the first variable: S, our biological set point. Today, I'll be moving on to the second variable in The Happiness Formula, C, our life conditions, where we'll see that our happiness can be affected by several external factors, or conditions, in our lives. Happiness doesn't only come from within. Let's see why ...  ... read more of this story»

Today I'm continuing our series about The Happiness Formula by taking a closer look at the first variable that affects our overall level of happiness: S, our biological set point. It turns out that out genetics play an important part in shaping our outlook on the world. Although we can't change our genes, we aren't necessarily stuck with our current set point. Let's dig a bit deeper, shall we?  ... read more of this story»

Formulas are pretty common when dealing with concepts that tend to be expressed using numbers, such as in engineering or in finance. They aren't very common when dealing with less "measurable" concepts such as happiness. This is mostly because we can't easily add or subtract happiness and come up with a numerical total. However, even if we can't place actual numbers into a formula, it doesn't mean that the formula isn't useful.  ... read more of this story»

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." For those of us who do our best to keep our personal finances under control, sometimes it does seem as if money alone might lead to happiness. It can be tough to remember sometimes, but we're not in life for the money.  ... read more of this story»