Evolving Personal Finance » Entries tagged with "retirement"

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Swapping Baby Step Order

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Swapping Baby Step Order

This is the fourth installment of this series on reasonable way to adapt Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps program to fit your financial goals.  You may want to reference last week’s post on intra-Baby Step modifications to familiarize yourself with the steps before we dive into this week’s discussion of inter-Baby Step modifications.   The big difference between Dave Ramsey’s approach to managing debt and investments and other financial professionals’ is that Dave Ramsey does not care about … Read entire article »

Filed under: debt, savings

My Sister’s Awesome Financial Decisions

My Sister’s Awesome Financial Decisions

I don’t talk about my family of origin a lot on this blog (for privacy reasons) but I want to suspend that policy for today’s post to brag about my sister.  My sister is 25 and not a nerd.  Like, I’m a nerd, right?  I went to a nerd high school and a nerd college and now I’m doing a PhD in engineering and I picked up an interest in PF along the way, which … Read entire article »

Filed under: college, debt, family, goals, investing, retirement, savings, stock market

Living Your Real Life Now

Something I hear often from grad students (and say often myself) is “When I have a real job…” followed by some fantasy about the future like saving for a house downpayment or going on a big vacation or not being in the lab after midnight.   Since these sentiments come out of my mouth, too, I obviously understand where they’re coming from.  In grad school, like in college, during an engagement, or just before starting a family, there is a sense of now-but-not-yet.  I have this life and it’s not quite what I want it to be because there is a waiting period, a working period until I can achieve something that will usher my life into its next stage.   But the fact is that just because I don’t have a real job … Read entire article »

Filed under: choices, grad school, values

How Can We Plan Our Retirement in Our Twenties?

How Can We Plan Our Retirement in Our Twenties?

Basically any reading on the topic of retirement emphasizes the necessity of visualizing what we want retirement to be so that you can set a goal for a certain amount of savings/passive income to achieve by retirement age.  I totally understand the utility of this exercise for 1) actual planning for people approaching retirement (in their 40s or 50s, say) and 2) motivation for young people to start saving (aggressively).   But, really?  I don’t know about … Read entire article »

Filed under: retirement

Obligations on Your Side Hustle Money

Obligations on Your Side Hustle Money

Kyle has been volunteering with the production team at our church for about a year, mostly running the slides and handling the video-playing.  One of the men who runs the sound board is taking a sabbatical and they are looking for someone to fill his weekends.  Kyle has wanted to learn how to run a sound board for a while so this is a perfect opportunity.  Plus, we found out that it is a paid … Read entire article »

Filed under: giving, retirement, side income, taxes, values

Organic Search Terms

Organic Search Terms

EPF’s organic search traffic has really spiked up in the past couple weeks – well, at least in comparison with what it used to be!  Just last week I started looking at the search terms leading people to EPF (people, not bots).  Today I’d like to take a look at a few of the search phrases.     Post with the Most   By far my most popular post in terms of being found by the wider internet is the … Read entire article »

Filed under: blogging, grad school, retirement

Why You Should Save for Retirement While In Graduate School Part 2

Why You Should Save for Retirement While In Graduate School Part 2

aka Why You Should Save For Retirement Even with a Low Income   This is the second half of a two-part post intended to inspire graduate students and others with low incomes who are currently not saving for retirement to start.  Check out the first post for my assumptions and an argument concerning compound interest.  Please remember that I am not a financial planner or CPA and you should not consider my opinions financial advice targeted for … Read entire article »

Filed under: choices, retirement, savings

Why You Should Save for Retirement While In Graduate School Part 1

Why You Should Save for Retirement While In Graduate School Part 1

aka Why You Should Save For Retirement Even with a Low Income   This two-part post is intended to inspire graduate students who are currently not saving for retirement to start.  The graduate students I refer to in this post are those who are being paid a living wage while in school – that is, they are not taking out loans for tuition or living expenses and can keep their must-have living expenses (rent, utilities, food, etc.) … Read entire article »

Filed under: choices, featured, grad school, retirement