My best finance tips

Cut up your credit cards
Sure, some of us can handle them, and you can get great benefits like rebates or airline miles, but for me credit is another word for magical thinking. No money in the bank? I’ll just charge it and think about how to pay the bill tomorrow! I always paid off my balance, but usually from my savings account. The ability to spend money I didn’t have was too much of a temptation, so I stuck my cards in the shredder.

Do your own taxes
Unless you have an extremely complicated financial situation, Turbo Tax can handle it. Don’t be afraid! Is the emotional comfort of paying someone $300 to fill out the Turbo Tax form really worth it?

Buy used cars
New cars immediately depreciate. Buy a nice, recent used car, preferably in cash, and put your money into something that actually increases in value.

Stick with index funds
You generally can’t beat the market. And if you find someone who does, they’re going to want to be paid for it. The likelihood of their expenses outweighing your gains is highly dubious.

Buy a house in Los Angeles in the late 1990s
The condo I bought in L.A. in 1998 was the single best investment I’ve ever made. It appreciated $400,000 in seven years, and I had a nice place to live in the meantime.

Keep it simple
Pay attention to your money, but don’t overdo it. I recently revamped my Quicken files to track only my day-to-day checking and savings accounts. That’s the money I have to watch. Everything that’s in retirement or other investments is best left forgotten.

Live a little
Pay attention to the big things and the little things will work themselves out. Your time is the only really limited resource. Don’t waste it driving all over town to find bargains or obsessing over every penny.

[This my entry into Dumb Little Man's Personal Finance Tip contest. Wish me luck!]

What world are you going to retire into?

All the money bloggers talk about retirement. How much should I save? Which investment strategy should I follow? How can I save more by reusing plastic bags? Should I turn off the burner after I’ve brought the spaghetti to a boil to save on energy costs?

But what if the world is going to change so radically that our current idea of retirement/old age is completely irrelevant? Thinkers like Ray Kurzweil, Joel Garreau, and Eric Drexler believe that technological innovations such as molecular nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and genetic manipulation are going to radically extend our lifespan, allowing us to live hundreds of years if not forever -- not to mention ending scarcity of all kinds and completely transforming our understanding of economics.

I once spoke with Christine Peterson, head of the Foresight Institute, at a conference. My boyfriend and I asked her if we should be saving for retirement, and she looked at us like we were insane. “Of course not!” she told us. She agreed that for now it’s good to have money, so we should be saving something, but argued that a better investment would be to spend resources on improving ourselves.

In a future where nanotechnology has ended economic scarcity, such thinkers argue, humankind will value intelligence, knowledge, skill, and creativity. With time and money scratched off the list of limited commodities, your personal reputation and ideas will be far more important than your Vanguard balance.

Of course, no one knows whether such a radically different future awaits us, or at least which one, but it’s well-worth thinking about. Read Radical Evolutionand let me know what you think.