Personal Finance Overview

It has been a little more than a year since I first started this blog, and I think it would be appropriate to summarize the main takeaways from all the information I have so far compiled on this site.  The overarching problem I try to address is that we are going to need money for our entire life over our entire life.  The problem is that the time when we earn money isn't as evenly spread out with most of us earning a lot more in the middle of our lives rather than near the beginning and end.  When we are kids, our parents help provide for us but when we grow old, we will rely on our middle-aged selves to push some of the income into retirement through saving.  And we look at the process through the lens of personal finance.

The Best Way To Earn Money

The best way to earn money is sometimes to spend.  I have talked a lot about utilizing credit card rewards, but that is just a way to earn some cash on your normal expenditures.  There are often lots of opportunities to be made by just spending all the money in your wallet or maxing out your credit cards.  There is a saying that you can't earn money until you spend, and whether you are running a business or just looking to consume goods, that can't be more true.  The extra benefit that we get out of just making a purchase can often help us be better at our jobs and give us more earning power to get more money in the future.

Best of May

The Best of May
1. How to Budget
2. Why Budgeting
3. Diversifying Your Risk
4. Credit Card Recommendations
5. Introduction to Bank Accounts

I thought I would take a post to go back through the best of May, at least in terms of viewers.  I know that it is biased for posts that were made earlier on since they had more days available on the website to be read, but I sincerely believe some of these most read posts are what people are looking for in terms of learning something new about personal finance.

Why "The Smart Nickel"

I'm going to spend a post just talking about my blog to give my readers a better idea about my goals and what I hope to achieve as well as why I decided to go with "The Smart Nickel" instead of "The Smart Billion Dollars."

I sincerely believe that it is not impossible for anyone to generate at least a 5% return on their money.  With credit cards and their cash back, it is even possible to earn back 5% of what you spend.  But hopefully, my blog is able to convince many college students the importance of saving for the future and the potential your money has to grow itself over time.  So the nickel comes from the possibility to make a nickel on each dollar, which may not sound like very much but it adds up.  And that's how I made the name, but please continue to learn about the goals of this post.

Update

Hello all my readers.  I apologize for not updating very frequently the past few days.  Unfortunately, the power brick for my laptop seems to have stopped working and I will be unable to go to a store to get a new one for a while.  Until then, I'll have limited access to the internet so I probably will not be able to post very often.  Hopefully, after I get that fixed up, I'll be able to continue with the stocks and bonds series and talk more about investment management.  Feel free to check back infrequently until then.

Introduction

Hello readers,
I am currently a college student and I am creating this blog to post some personal finance management tips for anyone out there.  I am currently pursuing a degree in finance but much of my experience will be from real world applications instead of academic study.  Hopefully, the posts I make will be relevant and helpful for those who read this.  I will be including basic personal finance advice such as how to invest money, manage credit, budget and save, and other random tips that may help earn a few dollars on the side (which hopefully add up to a nontrivial sum).  Most of my friends see me as kind of an extremist when it comes to managing personal finance (I often give advice unasked for) so hopefully I will be able to use this blog as a channel for my passion.  I have always enjoyed making the most of limited resources.  Ever since I was small, I have enjoyed playing games and figuring out what is the best way to maximize whatever objective I had in front of me using what resources I had.  This eventually led me to business school where I am learning how to maximize the value of the dollar.  Eventually, I hope to maybe give stock recommendations and economic analysis, but that day is probably very far off.  Also, I will probably see what is the most convenient frequency for me to post on my blog.  I will try some happy medium between daily and weekly although since classes are out, the frequency over the next few months won't be consistent with the entire year.  And my blog is currently very simple and I'm not sure how fancy I will make it, but seeing how my main discussion topic is more practical, I will probably try to have a layout that facilitates reading if anything.