Evolving Personal Finance » Archive
Tax Time! What Are Your Rates?
Kyle and I just filed our taxes! Phew, got in right under the deadline. I drafted them a couple months ago using TurboTax and I think I did nearly everything right because Kyle only had to make one edit when he checked through it. We owe $67 in federal taxes and are getting $278 back from NC, so I think we played that pretty much exactly right. I am really happy that the standard deduction … Read entire article »
Filed under: taxes
What’s the Point of Calculating Net Worth?
I enjoy reading other PF bloggers’ monthly reports on their net worth progress, whether they use real numbers or percentage increases. I haven’t so far written a net worth post or series for us and as of now I don’t plan to. I just don’t see how it would be interesting or informative in our situation. So I’ll bore you with one post instead of with a series. Here are the components that contribute to our … Read entire article »
Filed under: net worth, savings, stock market
Oh, Look at That…
… EPF’s Alexa Rank went below 200,000 today! When I wrote about joining the Yakezie Challenge I relayed that the objective of the first six-month period (the challenge) is to get the Alexa Rank below 200,000. (The next challenge is 100,000.) We put up our first post on 11/21/2011, joined Yakezie on 2/7/2012, and achieved a sub-200,000 ranking on 4/10/2012. Pretty sweet! Our rank dropped quickly because many of the visitors to this site are Yakezie … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging
Five Money-Saving Moves from Our Wedding
As wedding season 2012 has been heating up, I’ve seen more and more PF-blogger-brides (yet to see a groom) discuss their wedding budgets or various aspects of planning. It’s caused me to reflect on our wedding from 2010, which was not at all an inexpensive undertaking. To this day I don’t know how much money was spent on our wedding because some costs have not been disclosed to us by our parents and some small … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, choices, featured, luxuries, marriage, spending, values
Weekly Update 10
Happy Easter! Easter is 100% my favorite day of the year and I am so excited every year to invite friends and colleagues to church. I just love this season of focus on the Gospel and the Resurrection in particular. I converted to Christianity from atheism because I came to understand that Jesus really, actually, physically, literally became alive again after his death on the cross two days earlier. The huge implications of that event – namely, that God wanted so much to restore our relationship with him that he died to accomplish it – have simply revolutionized my life. Other than our normal weekly activities, our dentist appointment, and preparing for Easter, one of the extra fun things we did was spend an evening with two other couples associated … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
Financial Tethers to Our Families of Origin
Marital problem confession time: Kyle and I have two areas of our financial picture that have created a fairly high level of conflict on several occasions during our marriage. They both have to do with fully separating ourselves financially from our parents. During premarital counseling, we learned about “leaving and cleaving” (Genesis 2:24), which means separating from your family of origin and creating your primary allegiance with your spouse. While going over all our money management … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage
Dental Care without Insurance
While our workplace provides health insurance and a small yearly voucher for eye care, we are on our own for dental care. As a consequence, we haven’t been to the dentist since we went off our parents’ insurance – five years ago for Kyle, two years ago for me. I am very happy with my smile (naturally straight!) and I was beginning to have visions of cavity-ridden teeth and anesthesia, so I scheduled two appointments … Read entire article »
Does the Source of Gift Money Matter in Spending?
This past weekend I was in Atlanta participating in a global health case competition. The top prize was $6,000 for a team of 6. My team didn’t win or even place (though I was very happy with our performance) but before the weekend I spent a little time thinking about how I would use the $1,000 if we did win. If I received a sum of money as a gift from a family member, for instance, … Read entire article »
Weekly Update 9
The Big Event this week for me was participating in a global health case competition in Atlanta as part of a team my university sent. We got the case on Monday, flew down Thursday evening, worked our butts off Friday, and presented on Saturday. It was a ton of work (we were on campus working until 2:30 AM Friday night and then I put in a little more time in our hotel room) but our team got along very well (we had many fits of hysterical laughing) and I was very happy with our solution and presentation. Of course I was also getting prepared lab-wise to leave town so I front-loaded my work this week. I hope that explains my absence on the PF blogosphere! I plan to return to … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
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