Chapter 11. Personal Finance

One of the first things a financial advisor typically will tell a new client is, "If you wish to improve your financial situation, you must know your current financial status." This means knowing how much money you have coming in (your paycheck, for example) and how much money is going out (such as your bills). My financial advisor, Blair, told my wife and me that we were going to be shocked the first time we saw a pie chart showing the breakdown of where our money was being spent. Dining out, a weekly movie rental or two, that daily coffee shop visit—they all add up.

One of the very first instructions I received from my financial advisor was to install a money management application on my computer. Blair told me that ...

Get Don't Spend a Dime: The Path to Low-Cost Computing now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.