About Us
Hello and welcome to Evolving Personal Finance! This is a personal finance blog where we discuss money topics for the forward-thinking 20- or 30-something. Frequently covered topics are budgeting, finances in marriage, careers, living well on less, saving and investing, and transitions common for young adults.
Emily writes most of the posts for EPF and Kyle runs the website back end. We are both 29 years old and were married in 2010. In 2014 we both completed PhDs, Emily’s in biomedical engineering and Kyle’s in computational biology. We currently live in Durham, North Carolina, but will likely move for our next jobs in early 2015.
Our financial journey documented on EPF started in 2007 when we graduated from college and became financially independent from our parents. Kyle had a few thousand dollars in savings and Emily had no savings and $16,000 in student loans and soon after a $3500 car loan. We each started out earning around $25,000 per year in grad school. Over the next seven years until we graduated, we diligently saved and invested and grew our net worth to over $100,000, even though we still only made about $55,000 together by the end of grad school.
Documented on EPF are our financial successes and failures and everything in between. We have moved locally twice, downsized to one car, funded targeted savings accounts, tithed, maxed out Roth IRAs, traveled (mostly to weddings)… and we still feel wealthy. We report our spending each month and keep a detailed budget.
As of the summer of 2014, we are into our first major financial transition since founding EPF. Kyle is working as a postdoc and Emily is funemployed. On the horizon for us are: a move to another city, real jobs, babies, a house… In short, the American dream, but with financial stability.
Please join us on our journey as our finances evolve by subscribing to our RSS feed or following us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us get to know you by commenting or sending an email to evolvingPF at gmail dot com.
While we are committed to having a balanced and financially sustainable life, we are not financial professionals and this site is for entertainment purposes only.
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Hi Emily….
Just stumbled on your site and look forward to exploring further. cool to see you are a physics major.
Have you read Knocking on Heaven’s Door? I was impressed enough to post about it:
http://jlcollinsnh.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/the-mummys-head-particle-physics-and-knocking-on-heavens-door/
The physics major has served me well over the years, though I didn’t want to continue in physics research. 🙂
That book sounds cool. I never took a particle physics course so it remains a deficiency in my education. Thank you for the recommendation.
I’m fairly sure I know a graduate of your PhD program (who is now a professor at UT-Austin)… what a small small world.
That doesn’t surprise me. It’s one of the oldest BME programs in the country so there are a lot of graduates!
Great blog you all! I hope we can share content with each other!
I’m always happy to find another grad student PF blogger!
I like your blog! I hope you keep it up and I think the grad student perspective is awesome!
Julia recently posted..Ditch the car to save money!
Thanks! I hope I will get more grad student readers. Not a whole lot of my current readers can related to the grad-school-specific stuff.
I’ve been reading EPF for weeks but just got around to ambling over to the About Page. Howdy, fellow physics grad! Got mine in 2009; I’ve been considering grad school for hydrology.
Edward Antrobus recently posted..Best Tips for Your Taxes: Yakezie Blog Swap
Sweet! I’ve found that it’s a really great degree to have – people are impressed by it alone. I don’t know anything about hydrology but it sounds useful. Are you considering a Master’s or PhD and would you be able to get it paid for?
Power PhD couple, nice!
I’m going to publish a pretty indepth article on my thoughts as this is what I’m considering on my sabbatical. I hope to get your input once published. It’ll go up this weekend or next week!
Sam
Financial Samurai recently posted..The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Person
I’ll look for it.
This is off topic, but could I email you and ask you how you like North Carolina? I live in CA but am thinking of checking out the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. Thanks!
Little House recently posted..Small Cabin Inspiration
Definitely! You can use our [email protected] address.
Hi Emily!
Just found your site through a comment on another PF blog I follow. What a great ABOUT US story you have. You both sound like very brilliant people and I look forward to getting to know you both and your blog. Cheers Mr.CBB
Canadianbudgetbinder recently posted..The Grocery Game Challenge October 1-7, 2012-Giving Thanks!
Aw, that’s very sweet of you! I’ll check out your blog, too.
Emily and Kyle, nice to meet you both! I look forward to reading your blog, especially sustainability posts. Kyle, you’re not the only one who likes League of Legends – most people don’t know this but I’m sort of a gamer nerd myself 🙂
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Thanks for doing the interview on our blog! Congrats on winning the unbiased blog award! =)
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Thank you and the interview was really fun! I’m going to add the link to my weekly update on Sunday.
Hi Emily and Kyle,
I was just finishing up reading a few of your more recent posts on Evolving Personal Finance. I really like the content that you come up with. I wanted to further reach out to you because I have a team of writers and we would love to contribute to your site by creating premium editorial posts – which all feature fresh, trending content developed by our in-house team, tailored to your audience.
You reap the benefits with unique, compelling posts aimed at your target audience to improve your website visibility, drive traffic and promote social interest & shares. All posts we create are original and developed for your site only.
If you already have an editorial calendar in place, we’d like to contribute! Or, if you’re new to these opportunities, we encourage you to give it a try.
Please do let me know if this caters to your interest, or if there are any particular topics you would like for us to write about.
Looking forward to your positive response!
Isabel Rocca
Hi Emily and Kyle. I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, Grayson from Debt Roundup informed me about you guys. I’m a local too (Fuquay). It looks as if we have a number of PF bloggers in the area! I’m looking forward to reading your posts!
Jose recently posted..The Bull Market – Are You Running with the Bulls or with the Lemmings?
Hi Jose! Thanks for coming by! Glad to meet another neighbor!
Hello Emily and Kyle, stumbled onto this blog through yakezie challenge. Hope to meet learn from you and create synergy we can both leverage.
Hi Peter!
[…] Post by Emily as part of our Side Hustle […]
Hi Emily,
Just let you know that I found your blog! Tons of content here. I will certainly find time to read these articles.
See you around!
Yi-Fan
Thanks for leaving a comment!
[…] About Us […]
Hello guys,
Curious if you’re debt free at this point? If so, I’m working on a blog series and possibly an e-book I’d like to feature you in. Email me at 19drwhite [at] gmail and I’d be happy to tell you more.
We aren’t debt-free… but that’s not really a goal for us… but we will be debt-free this summer most likely… So make of that what you will! We are currently using debt as leverage but we will stop leveraging it in a couple months.
I have an engineer friend who is on contract to work in Africa for 3 more months. He said a vendor owes him for equipment and needs to pay to an American account. My friend has asked me to accept the money in my account, then forward the funds to his account in Africa. I don’t want this money to look like it is my earned income, would it look that way?
1) That sounds like a scam. 2) If it’s not a scam – like you actually know this friend IRL and you receive the money way before you pay it out – I think you should consult a professional tax person because you don’t want to screw up. Don’t trust random non-professionals on the internet like me because this question is way above our pay grade. Also you can just tell your friend no for any or no reason.
totally agree. Common african scam. the money will appear in the account but not be available for proceeds and then disappear when the wire transfer doesn’t go through. RUN. And tell your friend they are being suckered.