Hartwell Cole

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How to Build a Zero-Based Budget in 30 Minutes (Step-by-Step)

It's the end of the month. You get paid, pay your rent, buy groceries, maybe treat yourself to something small — and somehow, two weeks later, you're checking your balance and wondering where it all went. You didn't buy anything crazy. You just... don't know. That's not a discipline problem. It's a planning problem. And the fix is a zero-based budget — a simple system where every single dollar of income gets assigned a specific job (spending, saving, or debt payoff) until your income minus your allocations equals exactly zero. Not "spend it all." Assigned. There's a difference, and it's the whole point. Here's how to build one from scratch, in about 30 minutes. What You'll Need Last month's income total (after tax) Last month's bank and credit card statements A blank spreadsheet, budgeting app, or plain notebook 30 uninterrupted minutes Step 1: Write Down Your Total Monthly Income Start with your average take-h...

"Is Flipping Houses Still a Fast Track to Riches? Fact or Fiction"

Calculating read time… If you've ever watched a house-flipping show, you know the formula: buy a run-down place for way under market, spend a weekend and a modest budget on updates, and sell it for a six-figure profit before the credits roll. It's genuinely appealing — who wouldn't want a shortcut to real wealth that also comes with satisfying "before and after" photos? Let's gently separate the parts of this dream that are real from the parts that are television magic. 1. "One good flip can change your financial life" Partly true, with an asterisk. A well-executed flip absolutely can produce a meaningful profit. But "life-changing" usually means the flipper already had capital, contractor relationships, and market knowledge going in. For a first-timer, a solid flip is more likely to be a good learning experience with modest profit than a windfall — and that's genuinely worth celebrating, n...

5 Get-Rich-Quick Myths, Fact-Checked

Somewhere out there, a guy in a rented Lamborghini is telling you that you can turn $500 into $50,000 by next Tuesday — no job, no risk, no "boring" budgeting required. It's the oldest pitch in the book, wrapped in a shinier filter every year. So let's do what this series does best: hold it up to the light and see what's actually gold and what's just glitter. 1. "You can double your money in a weekend" This is the hook of nearly every scheme, from penny stock "signals" to crypto pump groups. Fiction. Legitimate investments compound over years, not weekends. If doubling money overnight were reliably possible, the person selling you the "secret" would be doing it themselves — quietly, not on a webinar with a countdown timer. 2. "Rich people don't budget, they just make more money" Fiction, mostly. Plenty of high earners still go broke because outflow outpaces income. A budget isn't a ...

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