It seems like ever since my husband and I have been married, we’ve had a goal of getting $15,000 in what I like to call the “Oh crap, I lost my job” fund. Every year I think we’re going to hit it and then every year we miss. This past year we barely managed to [...]
Archive for category budget
The Never-ending Goal
Jan 22
New Year; New Start
Jan 15
Every year at the first of the year, I like to take some time to evaluate what happened financially the year before. I use my finance software and make a spreadsheet of how much money we spent in each category each month.
It’s quite enlightening. I was able to see that we’re much more likely to [...]
Annual Credit Report
Nov 15
If you haven’t already, I recommend getting your free credit report. By law, you’re allowed to view your credit statement one time per 12 months. The website is: http://www.annualcreditreport.com.
This is not your credit score, but instead gives you a list off all the accounts that are open in your name. For an extra $5 to [...]
A note on Warehouse Stores
Apr 23
Trent at the Simple Dollar is always writing stuff that I just nod and think “Yeah! That’s what I do/did too!”
Here’s one such article about having a membership at Sam’s Club or Costco.
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/04/21/is-your-local-warehouse-store-worth-your-while-heres-how-to-find-out/
My budget isn’t so much a budget as a detailed spreadsheet of where the money from each paycheck is going to go. When you think about it, that’s what a traditional budget is. You earmark $50 for this, $100 for that, etc. The way I do my budget is a little bit more [...]
Monthly Financial Meeting
Jan 17
If you’re a reader of any of the more popular Personal Finance blogs out there, you’ve probably read about doing a monthly financial meeting. I don’t want to go over the same things that have been spoken about in the past but just want to emphasize how good this is for a healthy marriage [...]
I think the first thing you realize when you start having more than 1 or 2 bills is that you need some way to keep track of what you’ve paid and how much money you have in your accounts. For my husband and I, we both started using Quicken when we were in College. [...]
In the past 2 years or so I’ve taken over the bulk of the bill paying and finance planning from my husband. He started a company with a friend and working on that and his 9-5 job started taking up too much of his time. Besides that, I love playing with numbers. [...]