Weekly Update 14

cracking up to the point of tears with our friends

As I mentioned last weekend, we returned from our 5-year college reunion on Monday morning.  The rest of this week has been a real struggle between being exhausted from the weekend and re-adjusting to EST.  We got back to Kyle’s parents’ house after midnight Thursday – Saturday (PDT of course, 3 AM for our time) so the exhaustion compounded.  Anyway, we had a WONDERFUL time seeing our friends, former teachers, and the campus.

Nothing too exciting at work for either one of us, except that we had a speaker at one of our lab meeting this week and it looks like I can set up yet another collaboration with him for my project!

Posts I Liked

Kraig at Young Cheap Living explained that there are five ways that living below your means can kinda suck.  They all resonated with me!

Daisy from When Life Gives You Lemons wrote how blogging is similar to running a business – even if it’s a hobby.

Erika from Newlyweds on a Budget shared a sweet story about a thoughtful gift from her husband in the last third of her post.

The College Investor listed four fundamental tips for college graduates setting up their home and lifestyle.

G.E. from 20 Something Finance posted a great explanation of socially responsible investing.  We don’t do SRI at the moment (indexx funds only) but considered it and probably will in the future.

Jason from Work Save Live outlined a strategy for determining the wealth you need to amass by retirement to (probably) not outlive your assets.  My first pass attempt to calculate this (to keep our current standard of living, assuming paid-for home and still giving around 10%) is that we need 3.1 M$.  If we continue our current savings rate with Jason’s assumptions we project to have 4.4 M$.  I think this is the opposite discovery that most people have when running their numbers.  Of course, those spending and saving rates will not stay the same!

Jacob from I Heart Budgets wrote an introductory post at Thousandaire on how he climbed out of a deep debt hole.

Michelle at Making Sense of Cents listed her little splurges and encouraged her readers to do the same.

Congratulations to The Happy Homeowner on her trip to Ireland, The Dollar Disciple at his trip to Europe, and to Jessica at Life in Transition on her wedding!

Guest Posts

Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff has been running a reader profile series and this week she featured EPF!

This week I participated in my first blog swap!  Jacob at My Personal Finance Journey organized the swap and the topic was wedding costs.  (He also said my post was his favorite!)  I really enjoyed reading and commenting on all the posts.  You can find my post on Edward Antrobus’s blog and Edward’s post on our blog.

Mentions

Leigh from Leigh’s Financial Journey listed Targeted Savings Account Calculation: Cars through Aug2013 in her May roundup.

Carnivals

Target Savings Account Calculation: Cars Through Aug2013 was featured in the Financial Carnival for Young Adults 10th Edition.

The Fact and Fiction Behind “Two Can Live as Cheaply as One” was featured in the Carnival of Money Pros.

Top Comment

Renee responded to my idea of doing a short literature series on joint and separate money in marriage, saying “Fun idea, Emily! One of my favorite lessons from Intro to Social Psychology is that everybody thinks *they’re* the exception. [Except, of course, those of us fortunate to have had a liberal arts education!! 🙂 heh…] If the experiments are well done, I think they are very insightful. I hope you can find some good ones!”

Most Frequent Commenters

1. Edward Antrobus
2. Jason @ Work Save Live
3. Jessica @ Life in Transition
4. Richard
5. Renee

Top Blogs Referring to EPF

1. Budgeting in the Fun Stuff
2. Well Heeled Blog
3. My Personal Finance Journey
4. Work Save Live