As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s getting to be the time of year where I need to review this year’s budget and start getting ready for next year’s. I personally believe that budgets should be fluid things. Each year, my goal is to take the things that worked and continue them while getting rid of the things that didn’t work. One of the main places I make changes is in my budget categories, orread more…
New website, new name, time to start a new habit with the Sunday Evening Post! The new sub-title is Personal Finance in a World of Excuses, one of my excuses in determining my budget is that if I don’t normally spend in one of my budget categories, I don’t officially budget for it. That can cause budget overruns or I need to find somewhere else to pull the money from. Would you believe I don’tread more…
Exhausted today and just not feeling inspired about anything. I have a post I want to write about how the mortgage world has changed in the last 40 years, and how the rules of the 1970s really can’t apply to today’s mortgages because of the inflation of property values, but it needs a little more research so I know I’m using accurate numbers first. I turned to the blogs I read for inspiration, but while Iread more…
Each month, my husband and I get an allowance. I don’t pull it out in cash, it just gets calculated on a spread sheet, but its there. One of the hard things for people- especially couples – who use an allowance system is determining what comes out of the allowance and what doesn’t. Like any of the decisions people make about their personal finances, I’m not certain that there is a right or wrong answer. Thereread more…
Back in 2010, when my brother took his job in Australia, hubby and I made a plan to go visit him in March 2012. We figured it would take us that long to save for the plane tickets- flying to Australia is ridiculously expensive. When my brother first hinted that he wasn’t happy in Australia and might be looking to come back stateside before March 2012, we said not to worry. We’d just use the moneyread more…
I originally thought of this post in regard to being in a romantic/life partner type of relationship, and some parts of it will still be geared at least a little toward that. But it occurred to me, that regardless of whether or not you share financial responsibility with someone, its important to “know your role”, to understand your relationship to money, regardless of any other relationships out there. Let’s start with me. Like sand through theread more…
Quick Yakezie Challenge Update: My Alexa ranking is below 1 million. Yay! The guest post I wrote for Daily Money Shot was about making choices, about understanding the trade-offs between what you want, whant you can afford, and what you’re willing to give up. For a very long time, we have had HD cable with an HD DVR. Even when the husband was laid off and we were in our crash budget phase, we kept theread more…
I hate saying No to my friends and family. I really hate swaying No to myself. But sometimes, that’s what has to happen. Every summer, my husband and I go to the local Renaissance Faire. It runs three weekends in August, and we try to go twice. For just the two of us, its not that expensive. This year, we have my 19y/o cousin for the summer. During August, her best friend will be visiting asread more…
I started this blog with the assumption that the only people who read it would be people who already knew me. But now that I’ve joined the Yakezie Challenge, I figured that maybe I should introduce myself. Since this is a personal finances blog, lets stick with the things that are most relevant to that. Demographics: Mid-30s, married, 2 dogs, homeowner (or mortgage holder, whatever you want to call it), 2 cars- both paid for, livingread more…
Our Comcast bill has never been cheap. But 2 years ago when the hubby lost his job, we were paying $150/month. We called them and switched to a smaller package, reducing our monthly cost about around $30- not a whole lot, I know, but it gave us some breathing room. Except that, it was only down by $30 for about 3 months. Then it started climbing back up again. By 9 months after we’d lowered ourread more…
