Bobby Bonilla, the New York Mets, Bernie Madoff, Warren Buffet, and You

July 1^st is an extraordinarily special day in the world of sports: it’s Bobby Bonilla day. Every year the New York Mets pay former player Bobby Bonilla more than $1,000,000 despite the fact he hasn’t played for them since Bill Clinton was president. Today I bring you the tale of how an extraordinarily poor plan by a professional baseball team teaches us basic lessons for getting rich over the long-term. You don’t have to know baseball to love this astounding tale.

Get Paid for Your Groceries with iBotta

(This article discusses a shopping app and includes referral links to it. You can read my policy on referral links here. As you’ll learn in the article when you use this referral link we both get paid. If you think the app is a good fit for you but you want to use a non-referral app try this link instead. Do what works for you; the important thing is that you come out further ahead financially each month!)

I once bought over 30 boxes of pasta from my local grocer whose jaw dropped when the entire lot rang up on the cash register for a whopping $0.00. At the very end of the “super couponing” heyday I had been working on a piece as a freelance writer about the phenomenon and part of the research involved learning how it was done and doing it myself to prove it was real. While it was a rush to clear out an entire shelf of spaghetti for nothing what I found was that the effort that went into super couponing was akin to a part-time job for a less-than-minimum-wage rate, produce was difficult to find ANY discounts on, and Big Data was putting an end to the consumer’s ability to pool information in an advantageous way to get their groceries for next to nothing. Recently I field tested a new method for gaining some of your grocery money back, an app that is a lot more convenient than the work that went into super couponing, gets literally every shopper some amount of money back from their groceries, and even offers discounts on produce. I’m talking about iBotta.

Paying for Christmas: Class Action Rebates

You’re getting ripped off. Every year the products you regularly use steal money they rightfully owe to you. In the first of a two-part series I’m going to explain how I get the money I’m owed and use it to help pay for Christmas gift giving. Then, I’m going to show you how make sure you’re getting what you’re owed too.

Should You Hold Onto Student Loans for Tax Benefits?

After we paid off $110,000 in student loans in just four years my wife and I received a lot of nice notes from family and friends supportive of our efforts to prioritize getting out of debt. I was surprised, however, by the few notes I received from concerned friends telling me I was losing out on valuable tax deductions by paying off all that debt! Were they correct? Were my wife and I leaving money on the table by paying off our student loans early? I decided to crunch the numbers to find out.

The Secret Number That Can Make You Rich

Is $100,000 a lot of money to earn in a year? Is $1,000,000? What amount determines if someone is “rich”? The answer? It’s not what you make in a year that determines how wealth you are but an entirely different number that rarely gets talked about.

Reader Mailbag: Acorns and What to do Without a 401(k)

Have money questions? Got a topic you wish I’d cover that I haven’t gotten to yet? Reach out! You can contact me directly through the blog! My email is in my contact information, or you can reach out on our comments section on any article. Today we’re going to tackle our first reader mailbag article (names changed to protect readers’ identities). Here we go!

How to Pay for Your Tesla Now

A few weeks ago we witnessed as a species the largest product offering in history as Elon Musk announced the opening of pre-orders for the amazing Model 3 from Tesla. For $1,000, 325,000 people agreed to purchase the car when it becomes available (and the number of buyers continues to grow). At a price point of $35,000 each that represents a revenue windfall of $11,375,000,000, including an immediate influx of $325,000,000 right now! Today I’m going to explain how you can pay for your Tesla right now and about buying new cars in general.