The Dog Ate My Wallet

The Dog Ate My Wallet

Personal Finance in a World of Excuses

Article

What I’m Reading: Winter is Here Edition

Here’s the honest truth- I’ve lived in Seattle for 10 years now. Roughly every other year we get a major winter storm. It makes no sense to me why we are so ill-prepared every time it happens.

Fun fact: Washoe County, NV (where Reno is) has more snow plows than the entire state of WA. And most of WA’s plows are in the central and eastern parts of the state, not the western edge.

For the first time, since I’ve lived here, though, my house actually lost power for a relevant amount of time (by this I mean over 12 hours). We were without power for 34.5 hours- from noon on Thursday until 10:30pm Friday night. We used the fireplace and then used our propane powered deep fryer to make chicken (3 uses and counting since we bought it for Thanksgiving). The house got down to about 45 degrees, but even that’s not bad with blankets, doggies, and good company.

 

But even with the power outage, I’ve had some time to read a few blogs this week, so here are a few of my favorite posts.

 

We no longer actively invest in Prosper, though we do still have money there. I love to see how other people are doing with their adventures in Peer to Peer lending, so was thrilled to see that Beating Broke is still going strong in their Lending Club Returns Update

I’m afraid I’m often a downer for Derek over at Creating a Passive Income, as I seem to always point out the downside of his ideas. This week he wrote about Creating a Passive Income with Writing– something I’m trying to do, so I was excited to see that. AND My brother is starting out on a passive income adventure that I’ll be writing about this week, keeping Derek in mind while I do so.

I’ve made no secret here that I work in health insurance. I work for a company that is a combination Managed Care Organization (MCO) and Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). I believe in the work we do and the reasons behind why we do it the way we do. Still, insurance is tricky. HMO plans cost a little less for a reason. And sometimes, they have some rules that are hard to understand. Over at Buck Inspire, they ran into this problem with their new HMO plan/nightmare. My best advice- it is your job to know how your insurance works, not the doctor’s office. And if you don’t know, call your insurance company. You’ll see that once Buck and his wife were working with an insurance company representative- someone whose entire job is to help people like them transition successfully onto the plan, things started going quite smoothly.

I want to be an actual investor. I do. It just doesn’t seem like we have the money to do so right now. (I know, that’s an excuse, and one I’m working on getting past.) I love reading what Dr. Stock has to say over at Invest in the Markets, because he shares good information that is relevant to new investors (or wanna be investors), like this post on how to diversify a small portfolio.

Money Beagle’s dishwasher started to leak, so now they’re in the process of buying a new one. I’m jealous. My tub is not draining properly, but instead of buying a new tub, I have to hire a plumber. (Not the same thing at all, but I covet new appliances and major household upgrades, so I am still jealous.)

The Happy Homeowner is one busy gal- so busy that she’s afraid of burning herself out in the next couple of months, so she’s put together a list of goals to maintain her balancing act.

 

That’s it for today. See you again tomorrow when I reveal how much money we spent to survive Seattle’s “snowpocalypse”

Date: 21/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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Encouraging Your Child’s Inner Entrepenuer

It’s a Blog Swap! Today’s topic is How to raise a millionaire – developing your child’s entrepreneurial aptitude. I am very excited to be swapping blogs with Money for College Project, where they recently changed their focus from paying for their own college costs to saving for college for their soon to be child. I hope you enjoy this take on the topic, and don’t forget to hop on over to Money for College Project to see how I handled it.

Apologies to everyone for the lateness of this post. I live in the PNW, and the ice storms yesterday knocked out power to my house. Hopefully we’ll have it back sometime this weekend.

 

How to Raise the Next Warren Buffett

When I was growing up I always got annoyed with my parents because they never seemed to stop. It was not that I was lazy, but rather that my parents never seemed to slow down. We did not have any evenings where we all sat down around the tv to watch our favorite show. Rather, I was out helping my Dad cut grass for his side landscaping business. Rather than take a vacation to a resort, we would take road trips and stop at every antique store and yard sale along the way. All of the items would then be brought back home and re-sold. It annoyed me at the time but looking back, I would not trade this childhood for anything

My parents were serial entrepreneurs. I did not realize this until after I graduated from college, and my now wife pointed this out. Sometimes it takes a fresh third party perspective to give you real insight. But looking back over my childhood, and still to this day, my parents always had their hands in multiple business ventures at one time. Their lifestyle firmly planted the entrepreneur bug in me.

My mom buys and resells on Ebay. My Dad fixes antique furniture and resells on Craigslist. My parents invested in a local restaurant start-up. My parents own two rental homes. My Mom started her own home cleaning business and my Dad is a member of the local town council. Oh, and they both work full-time jobs.

Watching my parents pursue their passions in side hustles over the years has taught me what it means to be an entrepreneur. Bottom line, if you want to help your children develop an entrepreneurial mindset, you have to mirror that in your own life.

 

Are you born with it?

Are people born with the spark to be entrepreneurs? I would say to a certain degree, yes. Some people are simply born with the strong desire to create something out of nothing, and to take complete control over their financial future. Many entrepreneurs however, are pushed into becoming entrepreneurs by their life experiences.

Mainstream media loves stories of children who develop a booming business by their fifth birthday. For the vast majority of us however, that simply does not happen. Learning how to be an entrepreneur is a skill that is cultivated over time.

Parents can help develop this skill and mindset in their children by modeling it in their own lives. You can teach your kids what it means to be an entrepreneur from a young age.

 

Business can be Simple

Becoming an entrepreneur does not have to be difficult. In fact, starting a lemonade stand would qualify you as an entrepreneur. Disclaimer: I am not a parent. However, when I have children I do not plan on sitting them down in front of the tv or video game system and letting them entertain themselves that way for hours on end. Rather, I want to involve them in the business ventures that we, as parents, have started.

You can teach your children what it means to be an entrepreneur by being very open and frank with them about money from a young age. I always knew where my parents stood with money. This allowed me to rejoice with them when they landed a new business venture that took off. It also propelled me to work harder at our family businesses to make them more successful.

Sharing the details of how your business works, and how you make your decisions will teach your child what it takes to start their own business one day.

 

Every Financial Decision is an Investment

One of the best money lessons that I believe you can teach your children is that every financial decision they make is an investment of some sort. If they blow their allowance on a new video game, then they invested in entertainment. If they saved their money for a new bicycle, then that becomes their investment. As children get older, they may save their money for a car, or for college.

Teaching your children to treat every expense they have as an investment will help them to actually think about the opportunity cost and reward of these decisions. This is an invaluable skill as an entrepreneur as they will be faced with the decision of where to invest capital within their business venture.

This simple change in mindset can be taught from a young age, and will pay huge dividends in your child’s entrepreneurial future.

Raising the next Bill Gates or Warren Buffet may not be your goal, but instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in your children is an admirable goal!

Date: 20/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , Category: On the Job, Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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Announcing the Pets & Personal Finance Carnival

Tomorrow I’m participating in a blog swap, so today’s post is just a simple announcement-

I’m hosting a Carnival!

 

That’s right, to celebrate my Alexa ranking making it under 200k, I’ve decided to host a Pets and Personal Finances Carnival. The carnival will go up on Saturday, January 28. If you’ve got a post about pets and money or money and pets, send it on in.

Just head on over to my Contact page for the email address to send the link to. Please make sure the subject line says Pets/PF Carnival so that I don’t lose it.

Date: 19/01/2012 Author: Tags: , Category: blogging, life by pets, Pet Finances, Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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Get a World Class Education- For Free

Remember how I talked about how you could donate to charity for free, or volunteer from the comfort of your computer chair? How would you like to be able to get a world class education for free, from the comfort of your computer chair or couch? It’s possible.

While the series on online learning from Broke Professionals is what got me thinking about this, I want to be clear, I am not talking about earning a degree. That little piece of paper costs money- your’s, your parents’, the government’s, or some private foundations’. Someone is paying for a degree.

If you’re looking for better ideas about how to get that degree without paying too much of your own money, or taking out loans, or whatever, I suggest you go see My University Money or Money for College Project, as they are both excellent resources.

This is not about getting a degree. It’s about getting an education.

 

Over ten years ago, a little place called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, (you may have heard of it), launched their OpenCourseWare initiative. The intent was to publish educational materials from all their classes openly online. And they’ve done it. They have shared materials from over 2000 courses.

I learned about this just this last summer when C was taking an individualized math course. Everyone in the class was at a different level and studying different things, so the teacher couldn’t really do comprehensive lectures. Instead, since C was learning Linear Algebra, part of his homework was to watch the MIT lectures for the course.

Would you believe this became household viewing?

C used the Wii and watched the lectures on our big screen TV in the living room. My cousin K was staying with us for the summer, and she would watch with him. The weekend one of her friends was staying with us (that friend being a physics type major) she was glued to the lectures.

 

As C was looking at the youtube comments for the lecture series, he saw a ton of people from Europe commenting about how amazing this was, and how there was nothing similar to it inEurope.

Stop and think about that, because I’ll bet you have the same thoughts about higher education inEuropethat I do- that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, that European students don’t graduate buried in debt to their governments. That higher education there is affordable, which makes it seem like it should be more open.

That may or may not be the case. I don’t know. What I do know is that the MIT OCW project is a hit worldwide, that it provides a world class education to anyone who has internet access and can understand English, for free.

In the first ten years, OCW has reached over 100 million people. What is MIT’s goal for the next 10 years? They want to start rivaling McDonalds. They’re looking to reach over one billion people.

 

And lest you think, this is MIT, I’m a liberal arts kind of person, nothing they have will be geared toward me, take a look at the course selection. You can take classes in History (my major), Writing (my minor), Anthropology (C’s original major), or even from their Sloan School of Management (their MBA program).

They even have a special page for materials that are must useful for high school students.

 

We’ve all seen Good Will Hunting, how Matt Damon’s character was a natural genius who learned by cleaning the classrooms during lecture. Now, you don’t need a janitorial job to sneak in to an MIT lecture. You can watch it from home.

Date: 17/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , , Category: Free Things Bookmark: Permalink
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Sunday Evening Post #25

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$21.98

Albertsons

Groceries

Wednesday

$4.39

Lunch

Groceries

Friday

$17.00

Olive Garden

Eating Out

Sunday

$4.00

Starbucks

Allowance

$41.00

Gas

Car

$560.00

Vet

Pets

 

Spending this week is kind of illusory. We went to CostCo on Monday and Friday, but used our gift cards, so we didn’t spend any money out of the account.

On Tuesday, while on his way to class, C was in a car accident. A woman pulled out of a parking lot and hit him. Luckily, he saw her and was able to stop, so it was a very low speed accident and no one was hurt. But, our VW is now in the shop for repairs. We started the claim through our insurance company so that we could get things started, but the other insurance company has agreed that they are the responsible party, so while we will pay our deductible, we will be reimbursed. In the meantime, we have a Nissan Leaf as our rental vehicle. We like it, but we’re not getting a new car anytime soon, and we miss our Jetta TDI.

Wednesday’s lunch is being charged to the grocery budget because I tried to eat the lunch I brought. However, the soup decided to explode and then tip over in the microwave. Since not eating was not an option, I bought chili from the cafeteria.

C’s mom is back a skilled care facility, and was doing really well, except that she now has pneumonia. Still, her mental state is better than it had been in a while.

And then, because we’re not dealing with enough, on Saturday, while C was at class, and I was getting ready to head to a birthday party for a 3 year old, I noticed something was wrong with Junebug. She was not interested in food (and if you know Beagles, you know that means there is something wrong) and she was shaking uncontrollably. So, off to the vet we went. Her temp topped out their thermometer. They kept her overnight on IV fluids. We got her back today, with more anti-biotics. Best guess is a really bad stomach bug. We did have an $80 credit with them, so that brought our bill down a little bit. But I am tired of vet bills. I have young dogs, I am not supposed to have this many vet bills.

Oh, and we had to drive through Seattle snow on the way home from the vet today. 23 minutes to go 1.25 miles.

Hopefully the snow will be gone tomorrow, as I’m supposed to have a pedi/lunch/shoe shopping day with one of my oldest friends tomorrow. And I could really use that.

 

 

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: expected by Feb 14

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

The artist I intend to work with started a real day job last Monday. I need to contact her this week to see how things are going. In the meantime, it occurred to me that I can do a book using the pictures I’ve taken for my pet blog, with a pet focus. So I need to start compiling my favorite photos for that.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

Current Allowance balance: ($57.00)

Gift Cards: $115

Total: $58

And the number will go down tomorrow as I use gift cards to pay for the pedi/lunch/dress shoes

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

Alexa ranking: 197.966 I MADE IT!

Does Sam know who I am: I think yes

Yakezie Member References/Yakezie Challenger References: I plan to go through and figure out my references this week.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $18 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

I tracked calories pretty well. I don’t eat a whole lot during the day- a breakfast shake, a banana, a yogurt, soup for lunch, a granola bar or pretzels in the afternoon. Dinner (with the exception of Tuesday when it was 4 meat pizza) tends to be pretty healthy, too- chicken and rice in a curry sauce, or pasta in a homemade sauce with green beans. Even the night we ate out, I ate soup. Tonight’s dinner will be vegetarian stir fry.

We went to the dog park on Monday. I walked the dogs on Tuesday and Thursday. I think we did the dog park on Friday, too.

Date: 15/01/2012 Author: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
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What I’m Reading: First Week of Class edition

Today is C’s first Saturday of classes this quarter. I’ve got a ton of stuff I want to get done today, like starting at least 2 loads of laundry, ding a load of dishes, putting away laundry (my least favorite chore), and I have a birthday party for a 3 y/o later this afternoon.

So there’s no time for idle chit chat, let’s get on with the links.

 

One of the many things I have always wished I had the hand eye coordination to learn was to be a better seamstress. I can do counted cross-stitch, but anything that requires me to be in charge of making a straight line is beyond my abilities. That just means that I admire Debt Free by Thirty that much more for being able to repair half of her children’s wardrobe.

 

Sandy over at First Gen American is back after a bit of a hiatus. (We missed you!) And naturally, she’s back with some absolutely fabulous advice that all of need after dealing with our families at the holidays: How to Take a Break from Toxic People

 

My Broken Coin’s Alyosa is an admitted shop-a-holic who often struggles with her long term financial goals. Truth is, most of us do. We all have to find a system that works for us, so I love that she’s figured out that she is much better at running sprints than marathons.

 

Everyone should head over to So Over Debt and congratulate Andrea on having one of her posts picked up by Reader’s Digest! Lots of people are talking about this one, as well they should. In fact, it even won Average Joe’s Post of the Week (making her their first ever two time winner). Andrea has worked really hard for this and deserves the success she’s seeing. Congratulations!

 

Since I also work in healthcare, I often find Dr. Dean’s posts over at The Millionaire Nurse interesting on a professional, as well as personal, level. But this week, it’s all about the personal side. I love his Home Grown Mushroom Project. What I love even more is that he knows he won’t be the one doing it. It’s all about getting the wife to agree. Isn’t that the way it always is?

 

The Virtual Travel Planner is not a member of Yakezie, though I do know her through the Women in Red finance message boards. Still, PF blogger or not, she gives great advice that all of us can use about how to travel for maximum enjoyment/minimum cash outlay. And guess what? Just like in your finances, it’s all about having a plan.

Date: 14/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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What I Love about Wednesdays

Have you heard of the six item clothing diet? Google it if you want more information, but basically, it’s this idea that you don’t really need more than six items of clothing (apart from undergarment type stuff), and that if you do go down to only six items, no one will even notice.

Now, I am not good enough to get down to six pieces of clothing, even if all the camisoles I own do not count toward the total. Still, I hate that I have so many clothes I don’t wear. I try to purge my closet twice a year and donate anything I don’t wear. And I have the rule that if I bring a new clothing item in to the house, at least one, and possibly two, items of similar clothing have to go. I did break this rule when I got myself a second pair of jeans, but that was because I specifically needed a second pair of jeans.

So what does this all have to do with Wednesdays? Well, one of the premises of the six item clothing diet is that no one will notice that you’re wearing the same pieces over and over again. One woman claims that her husband- who does the laundry for the house –didn’t even notice. And in my experience, this is true. You see, I’ve been wearing the exact same sweater every Wednesday for the past 6+ months.

If I’m being really organized, I will plan what I am wearing to work the night before. Sometimes I’ll even pull it out of the closet and lay it neatly on the bed (the spare bedroom serves as my dressing room) all set and ready to go. But most of the time, I don’t decide what I’m wearing until I’m hitting the snooze button.

But on Wednesdays, I don’t have to think about it. I know. The sweater goes with all of my skirts and slacks (not that I’m likely to wear a skirt). It is short sleeved, so in the summer can be worn over a camisole or in the winter over a long sleeved knit top. There’s almost no decision making involved.

At first I wondered if people would notice. I expect that some of them (most of the people I work with are woman) at least recognize the sweater as something I wear regularly, but as far as I can tell, no one but knows I wear it every week, on the exact same day of the week. Or if they do, no one cares.

The no one cares part I think is the hardest for women to understand. We care about our clothes. We care that we’ve worn the same outfit over and over again. And we see sitcoms where everyone notices when someone is wearing the same outfit as the day before (walk of shame type comments), but honestly, stop and think about it. Even as a woman, do you really pay that much attention to what the other women in the office are wearing?

Sure, if it’s something really cute, you’ll comment. But will you remember next Wednesday that they wore that same shirt last Wednesday? If they wear some kind of professional attire, can you really tell one suit from another? I stopped worrying about if anyone would notice that I was wearing the same top every Wednesday when I realized that I wouldn’t notice if someone else was doing the same.

So what is this doing in a personal finance blog? Think about it. Think about how little you would spend on clothes if you only had six items of clothing. (Or at least, only six items of work clothing.) And even if you’re like me and can’t cut down quite that much, think about the money you’ve spent on something you’ve worn only once or twice. Why do you need to spend that money.

My advice- when it comes to work clothes, do not own anything that doesn’t fit, doesn’t look good, and doesn’t make you feel fabulous. All of those things lead to a more professional presentation of yourself, and trust me, that’s what gets noticed, not that you’ve worn the same sweater every Wednesday, for the last 6+ months.

Date: 12/01/2012 Author: Tags: , Category: Lessons Learned, On the Job Bookmark: Permalink
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Giving Back

For those of you who are not already mired in the world of personal finance blogs (ie my friends and family who read this), you may have noticed a new badge over on my sidebar this week. (Okay, so you all would have noticed, but you PF people already know what it’s about.) The badge is the Bloggers Give Back badge, and it is a movement started by my dear friend Jana over at Daily Money $hot.

The basic idea behind it is to make sure we are giving back to our communities. Jana and many others have dedicated to giving 10% (or more or less) of their earnings from their blogs to charity. I don’t have any earnings from my blogs at the moment, so I’m not promising dollars. Instead, my goal is to volunteer through Sparked.com at least once a month.

Each month, Jana will be choosing a general charity category and challenging the members to donate to a group that supports that category. (She encourages people to donate to their local organizations.)  Since I’m donating time, not money, a lot will depend on what volunteer opportunities exist over at Sparked. However, I am going to try and support the category she chooses as a way to force myself to participate in volunteer activities I might otherwise skip over.

Still, if I can’t find one I think I can do in the chosen category, my goal is still going to be to participate on at least one project.

On the first Sunday Evening Post of each new month, I’ll post what projects I helped on.

 

Date: 10/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , Category: Helping Others, yakezie Bookmark: Permalink
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Sunday Evening Post #24

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$2.00

Starbucks

Allowance

$36.00

Half Price Books

Allowance

Tuesday

$16.00

Qdoba

Eating Out

$5.00

Parking

Car

Thursday

$10.00

Dentist

Medical

Friday

$23.00

Zoopa

Eating Out

$32.00

Hockey Tickets

Allowance

$5.50

Office Depot

Allowance

Saturday

$4.00

Parking

Car

$52.00

Gas

Car

$5.00

Fiction in 50

Allowance
 

 

Spending this week ran about $190, without us doing our grocery shopping.

I actually consider this week’s spending to be on the win side- we only ate out twice. You might think that’s a lot, but it was a really awful week, which often leads to us not having the energy to cook, and thus eating out.

The reason it was so awful? A big part was the yo-yo effect of what happened with my MIL. On Christmas Eve, she was walking 150ft, and a week away from being released from the care facility to go home. On New Year’s Eve, she was in the ICU on a breathing tube, and we weren’t certain if she was going to live. (And the doctors weren’t hopeful.) Amazingly, she pulled through, and as of tomorrow should be out of the hospital and back in a rehab facility. We need to have a serious talk with them about what we consider vital for him to go home (vs what they may think), because we need to have her out of there ASAP. It is not the fault of the facility, but if she has to stay in one much longer, it WILL kill her. And C just isn’t quite ready for that.

In addition to the yo-yo life, I had a difficult situation at work, that put me in a place I never wanted to be in as a manager. It left me drained pretty much all week, with little emotional energy to deal with anything. At the same time, I needed to be supportive of C, because if what was happening with his mom was hard on me, well…

 

So that’s where we are, and why I’m proud of the fact that we only grabbed two meals on the run. One on Tuesday on the way to the hospital, and then one on Friday night to just decompress.

 

As I wrote in last week’s post, I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am going to start tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 1

Responses: expected by Feb 14

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

The artist I intend to work with starts a real day job tomorrow. The job has her working very close to my house, and gives her a regular schedule for the first time in years. Need to give her one week to adapt, but hope to meet with her next week.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

Current Allowance balance: ($53.00)

Gift Cards: $115

Total: $62

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

Alexa ranking: 228,358

Does Sam know who I am: I think yes

Yakezie Member References: (I think 2, but I haven’t focused on this yet)

Yakezie Challenger References: (At least 1, but again, this isn’t where my focus has been)

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $17 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

C and I have a plan to start eating more veggies, and have at least one protein-less meal a week.

Starting tomorrow, I am going to track my calories (as best I can) for the week to see how much I’m actually eating. I don’t think my diet is that bad, but it’s like thinking you don’t have a spending problem when you haven’t been tracking your spending. You can’t know for sure if you don’t have the actual numbers. So numbers it is.

I walked Tuesday, Saturday, and today (dog park/walking the dogs).

Date: 08/01/2012 Author: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
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What I Read: New to Me Edition

One of my goals for 2012 is to be better about sharing what I’ve been reading. While I’d like to promise I’d do this every Saturday, that’s a promise I’m not sure I can keep past C’s first quarter of school (when he will have a Saturday class, so I will be home with nothing to do but post links to other blogs). So I am going to aim for developing the habit during this first quarter, and then shoot for posting links here every 2 weeks, and on the other weeks, posting links on Life by Pets.

 

Among financial bloggers, it’s very common to buy used cars or shop thrift and consignment stores in order to save money (or at least that’s the advice that’s commonly given). It results in something new to you, but not actually new. In today’s list of links, some of the blogs have been around quite a while, and are, in fact hugely popular. Still, I’ve never linked to them before, making them all New to Me.

 

Broke Professionals is run by Suba. Suba is the absolutely lovely person who has organized the Yakezie teams that I have been part of and that have been invaluable in growing this blog. And yet, until this week, I wasn’t reading her blog. Disgraceful, I know. And since we all know that I’m a flaming feminist, I thought I would start by sharing her post on Women’s Work

 

I met Budget or Fudget via twitter. And this week was able to help her out with one of her goals. Volunteering: Long Distance

 

Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff is my kind of girl. She started the new year at a board game convention. I am kicking myself for not cluing in to her awesomeness sooner.

 

So Sam at Financial Samurai is the founder of Yakezie so he doesn’t need any traffic from me, and his post on why the Ideal Body Weight Pissed [Him] Off certainly doesn’t need any more link love, as it was picked up by the Consumerist. But I still want to mention it, not because of the subject matter but because of the conversation he and I had in the comments section. This is an issue we view very differently, but I think we were both able to remain polite and respectful, and that matters a lot.

 

I’ve mentioned Frugal Beautiful here before, but never linked to any of her specific posts. I’ve only recently started following her blog, so I loved that just this week she posted something that helped me get to know her- Blogger Confession: I Have No Clue What I’m Doing. Sweetie, if it helps, most of us don’t.

 

Here’s my confession, Krant, of Krantcents, was the first major Yakezie blogger to come over here and comment all on his own (not due to teams), and yet, I don’t think I’ve ever returned the favor. It doesn’t help that for some reason, IE7, which I am forced to use on the office computer, doesn’t let me post comments on his blog, but that’s still not really an excuse. So Krant, first, thank you, second, I’m sorry, and third, I promise to be better. And now, on to his Landlord Nightmares

 

The name of the blog is The Finance Geek, so you know it speaks to me just on that. And one of her Goals for 2012 is to get a puppy! Plus, she’s going back for an MBA. I’ve been there and done that, and wish her the best.

 

I keep myself accountable for debt payoff over on the Women in Red. Sandy at Yes, I Am Cheap, is braver then me and posts her Debt Check In on her blog for all to follow. It doesn’t matter if you’re the tortoise or the hare, Sandy, just keep on going, and you’ll get there!

 

Well, there you have it, the first post in my new What I Read series. I hope everyone is having a great weekend, and we’ll see you again tomorrow night for the Sunday Evening Post, which will have a couple new features to help me track my goals.

 

Editor’s note: while I have not posted a link under any of the bolded words, you can find links to them on the left, via the blog roll, forums, or badges

Date: 07/01/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Category: life by pets, Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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