Quality versus crap: Why I bought $80 pajamas

Yesterday, I spent $80 on a pair of pajama bottoms. (Or, as the company calls them, Alaskan guide lounge bottoms.) On the one hand, this feels like an insane amount to spend on sleepwear. On the other hand, my last two pairs of pajamas — both $20 specials from Costco...

Buy it for life: Choosing quality over price

Note: This is a substantial re-write of an article I first published more than twelve years ago. (Yikes, I’m old!) I’ve opted to keep some of the older comments if they had good suggestions. Earlier this week, I wrote about my quest for quality pajamas. I...

The boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness

When I wrote about my $80 pajamas, I never imagined it’d spark a three-part series of articles. Yet here we are. On Monday, I wrote about why I chose to buy high-quality pajamas. (I’ve been wearing them all week, by the way. They’re awesome.) On...

Should you pay off your mortgage early?

My friend Amy recently wrote with an interesting dilemma. “Should I pay off my mortgage early?” she wonders. Amy has a high-paying job and has managed to save enough that she could be completely debt-free if she wanted to. And she kind of wants to! But is this the...

How to get traffic on your blog (in just 2 steps)

Today, I’m going to share two strategies I’ve used to get traffic to my websites from extremely high-traffic blogs like Lifehacker and sites like the Wall Street Journal. These strategies are the same ones I used to 10x my blog traffic in just one year. IWT traffic...

When to sell stock: 3 reasons to sell

The two most common questions I hear about stocks are: What stock should I buy? When do I sell? I’ve covered the first question before (check out my article all about stocks and bonds). That’s why I want to answer the second question: When the heck do you sell your...

How mutual funds work

Mutual funds are baskets filled with different types of investments (usually stocks) that allow people to invest while mitigating the risk of choosing individual securities. Instead of requiring investors to perform the Herculean task of picking individual stocks...

6 easy ways to make your money work for you

Many people think that the only way to build wealth is with a job. While it’s a great way to earn more money, it’s not the only way. In fact, there are a lot of ways you can make your money work for you to build a Rich Life. With the right systems, you can save and...