Important information about the data: prior to mid 2010, money that went on the credit card never got classified in any category other than credit card. That skews the data for everything from eating out, allowance, pets, house, and misc. I have data going back to 2005, but for now, we’re sticking with what our financial life has looked like since 2008. Why 2008? That was the year I graduated with my MBA, the lastread more…
This is part 2 of a long post about self-promotion. Click here for part 1 Even beyond my fiction writing, I am not great at self-promotion for my blogs and online writing projects. I have mentioned here before that I have two other blogs (a daily micro-blog and a pet blog) and host a weekly/monthly micro-fiction contest. I always feel self-conscious about doing so, but how can I let people know those places exist if Iread more…
Day Amount Place Category Monday $50.50 Gas Car Tuesday $8.00 Lunch Allowance $12.00 Safeway Groceries Saturday $89.00 CostCo Groceries $1.00 Safeway Groceries $5.00 Parking Car Only about $165 in spending this week, and it would have been less if I had remembered to bring our CostCo gift cards to CostCo. Oh well, they’ll keep the spending down another week. There might still be a parking expense this evening. The New Year is notread more…
2011 has been a great year for me. I started this personal finance blog, my third blog, and it has grown faster than either of the others, thanks mostly to the Yakezie network and the amazing people I’ve met over there. I don’t do blog round ups as often as I feel like I should. I promise to try and get better about that in 2012. But what that means is that there have been someread more…
Most of the time, I like to think that I come across as a very confident person. I am comfortable meeting new people, being in large or small groups, and speaking in front of people. I have no problems talking about my opinions on the news of the day, or making small talk about the weather. I am even comfortable talking about myself, with one exception- I am very bad at promoting myself. When it comesread more…
I’ve written before about how it costs more to be poor in this country, but beyond having to pay more often for lower quality items, one of the biggest reasons it costs more to be poor is healthcare. Let me be honest here. I work in healthcare. I work for what is known as a managed care organization or MCO (which is different than an HMO, but not to the layman). My company combines both ourread more…
Our Christmas roast, cooked for just under 2 hours, in the “fryer” we bought for Thanksgiving. I’m pretty sure at two meals it’s been worth the $100 we spent on it. We had a wonderful day with friends, our dogs, and the MythBusters marathon. We still need to put away the roast, ham, and the deserts, and there’s kitchen cleaning to do, but overall, it was a wonderful, quiet Christmas, spent in fabulous company. Iread more…
It is 5pm on Thursday night. This blog is scheduled to be updated at 5:30pm. One slight problem- I have no idea what I want to write about. There are lots of little thoughts going around my head, but nothing fully formed in to a post. I read all the blogs I read today, commented on a number of them, and yet still, nothing really inspired me. I blame the post-birthday, pre-Christmas doldrums. So, since Iread more…
I got a call this weekend from a friend of mine who wanted to share some good news. On Friday, she was called in for an unexpected interview and then offered a new position- one making more money than she’s ever made before. This friend has been underemployed for quite some time. She’s been working as a manager at a comic and games shop (funny, when we were teens, that seemed like a dream job), butread more…
I am starting with this bit from the pet blogging world. If you are one of those (few) people who reads both my pet blog and this one, I’m sorry for the repeat, but this is too important for me not to post on multiple times., and I know the personal finance blog world is full of generous people who love animals. So… The wonderful family at Kissa-Bull lost their home and almost everything they own,read more…
