When I last worked at the University, I heard how much the parking pass was for my building (which wasn’t part of the University parking systems) and simply determined I would take the bus. At first I took the light rail into downtown. There’s a light rail station just a couple of minutes from my house, and during commute hours, trains run every eight minutes. I then caught an express bus from downtown to the Universityread more…
From June 16 to July 31, we spent almost $9,500 dollars outside of our regular budget. I have been unemployed since January 10. C has not worked since May 2009. And I do not regret any of it. I will admit, my stomach dropped as I watched our savings account balance fall more in those six weeks than it had in the previous 5 months of unemployment combined. And yet, our balance remains at about halfread more…
Since May 2013, I have spent six months working, and almost nine unemployed. Two of those months were last summer, but I have had almost seven straight months of not working as of right now. Was this intentional? Not by any means. It never occurred to me when my boss and I made the mutual decision for me to leave my last position that I would spend this long not working. I have been struggling withread more…
No, I am not yet working. You perhaps figured that out by the fact that I am not blogging. For some reason, I am much better about blogging when I have a job, and a daily schedule, and I plan my blogging into that. When I have no job, and no schedule, I have no plan, and therefore, do not blog. The job I really wanted that I mentioned at the end of the last post?read more…
In my two previous posts I talked about the costs of adopting our daughter. But those are one-time costs, we now have the full time costs of having a child, so our budget has to change. Now, you might argue, somewhat rightly, that these changes actually took place 6 months ago when our daughter was placed with us. That is both true and untrue, partly because of the nature of being a foster parent. At thatread more…
The Latte Factor® is an idea/phrase that came from financial advisor David Bach. I mention this because I think you might not know. Despite having heard the term and seeing the idea both praised and debunked, I did not know who to attribute it to until I looked it up for this post. The main idea of the Latte Factor ® is that by giving up your daily latte habit, you could save an extra millionread more…
August was a month of car repairs for us. We got new shocks on the wagon (original factory shocks and struts on a vehicle with over 180k miles on it) and our 90k service on the sedan. We save for these things and it doesn’t hit our budget hard, but I always end up with some pet peeves around car service. In this case, it was the 90k service on the sedan. When I made theread more…
Welcome to The Kid Ate My Wallet (KAMW) Parenting Guide, a place where I talk about some of the financial challenges of being a parent and trying to navigate them without feeling like you should be watching your child’s bowel movements to see if any loose change is making its way out. This is not a guide for raising your kids. Trust me, if I could create an owner’s manual for kids, I’d be so richread more…
This summer, we went a little overboard with the spending. It was not just adding SP to our lives, either. We added a new hobby and have spent silly amounts of money on it (though C also sold some stuff on eBay for around $1500 total to help offset those costs). We also purchased my tablet, less than 6 months after I had bought a new laptop. Went on a weekend getaway where we didn’t stayread more…
It is hard for me to even write the title of this post. Now should not be the time to spend money. I am not working, and while job hunting is going quite well, I don’t have an offer on the table, which means no guarantee of any new job, let alone a new job that pays more than the last one (which is the goal). And yet, now is very much the time to spendread more…
