We had a very busy week!  We were staying with my parents in northern VA until Thursday.  On Sunday we went downtown with my parents to see the Air and Space Museum and the American Art Museum.  For New Year’s Eve, Kyle and I went out with my sister and her boyfriend.  On Wednesday we attended a wedding in PA.  Thursday was all packing, driving, and grocery shopping.  On Friday I returned to work and discovered that I am tight on meeting my deadline next week, so I’ll be working 12-hour days at least Friday through Tuesday.  And I discovered yesterday that I’m quickly coming down with a cold, so that’s going to make everything a lot more difficult.

I was so refreshed going back to work on Friday after our break that I don’t even mind working through the weekend.  We haven’t taken more than a couple days away since last Christmas (about 1 week then) and lately I’ve been working 6-7 days per week so I really needed the time off.  Even though I didn’t do everything I wanted, I did get to see some of my good friends and I read 1.5 books.

I forgot to put it in our monthly update for December, but with our Christmas travel we reached the $1,000 minimum spend on Kyle’s Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard® – Earn 2x on All Purchases (affiliate link) and got the 40,000+ point bonus!  We also were invited to a wedding coming up soon in CA, so we’ll use the points from one card to offset a bit more than one of our two tickets (I have $430.34 worth of rewards available in my account right now) and still have the second bonus to use later in the year!  Oh, and one sucky bit was the my Barclaycard was stolen, but they actually notified me of the fraudulent before I saw it (unusual!) and took care of sending me a new card right away, so the customer service was good.  I should add that info to my review…

Oh, and we got some rather good financial news this week that’s been preoccupying me.  If you want to hear about it, listen to this week’s episode of the Ric Edelman show for my call (around minute 48).  I’ll discuss it on here when things are more firmed up.

Posts I Liked

Ninja from Punch Debt in the Face announces the impending arrival of his first child!

Daniel Packer from Sweating the Big Stuff discovers a comedy of errors around his misdelivered package.

Alicia from Financial Diffraction argues that you don’t need to be proficient in math to be competent in your personal finances.

Kraig from Create My Independence reviews this year, in which he quit his job to start his own business.

Mentions

Grayson from Debt Roundup listed my comments along with a link to Is “Live Like a College Student” Good Advice? in his best personal finance tips of 2013.

Carnivals

Tempting Cash Back Credit Card Offers was featured in the Carnival of Money.

Budgeting Is a Waste of Time was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance #435.

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Realistic Wealth Building was featured in the Carnival of Financial Planning and the Carnival of Financial Independence #44.

Top Comment

Bryce from Save and Conquer concurred with my assessment in : “The person you were advising could be in one of the rare circumstances where paying off the debt is more important than contributing to a 401(k) with 100% match. I would hope that the possibility of making 100% on his investment would be a good carrot for him to quickly erase the debt or at least pay it down to be more manageable.”

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