One of the resources I’ve begun using as I’ve waded into the waters of real estate investing is an organization called BiggerPockets, which was created to encourage real estate investment by building a community and disseminating educational and other information about how to go about real estate investment. Probably the biggest hurdle (outside of having…
Recently at a music competition two of my kids were participating in, I was chatting with one of the organizers about my family’s busy Saturday going between sports activities (including two basketball games and a baseball practice for two of my boys) and music oriented items on our calendar, which involved a practice for an…
Wix is a popular, relatively new platform for creating a website and publishing content on the internet. If you’ve spent any time on YouTube recently, chances are you’ve seen the Wix ads showing you how easy it is to build a website using the Wix hosted website builder. While it’s true that Wix is simple,…
Several years ago I had a conversation with a relative of mine who was considering a new hobby for his young son after the boy decided that he didn’t like wrestling. Having learned to play the piano in my early adult years, I volunteered to give the kid a few piano lessons and give him…
The past decade has seen a mad rush “to the cloud”, as performance requirements (speed and availability) for apps, websites, and other technology have increased. For me, it seems like I’ve been looking for a solid place to host my websites for as long as I’ve been building them, as far back as 2000, when…
Several years ago, my wife and I owned an online sporting goods business. We shipped a lot of products, which meant we spent a lot of money on shipping. As any online retail knows, shipping costs continually are on the rise, and people don’t like to pay those costs, especially since Amazon has trained the…
My wife and I currently homeschool three of our four school-aged kids. We plan to ultimately homeschool all of our children for at least some portion of their early education, possibly through high school. We often have had to defend our decision to homeschool over the past six years following our decision to take our…
Student loan debt is having a crushing effect on current students and graduates, whose college dreams often have turned into nightmares as they realize that the job and career for which their specific degree has prepared them is likely not worth the cost of obtaining it. There are over one million people each year who…
Nearly two decades ago I visited my wife’s family in Texas to propose to her. The vetting process for her family involved finding out about my plans for college and career. I remember staying up until four o’clock in the morning debating with her grandpa this question: Is college necessary? His argument was unequivocally this:…
My husband asked me to write a companion post to his Beginners Guide to Raising a Family for Fathers article. My first reaction was to feel a little inadequate. After all, at the ripe old age of 34, I really do not consider myself an expert at anything. I have made many rookie mistakes along…