Evolving Personal Finance » Archive
Long-Distance Marriage: Communication and Personalities
This is the third installment of our series on financially navigating a long-distance marriage. Please read and comment on the first, second, and fourth installments as well! I asked the couples several questions regarding their money personalities and communication about money and the answers ended up being closely related to one another. 1) Did living apart cause any major money conflicts? 2) How much of your communication time was spent on money, and how did that compare to … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage, psychology
Realities of Account Ownership
This post is a follow-up from my visualizations of account structures that couples use – different combinations of joint and separate accounts. I didn’t specify during that post, but there are actually three ways of viewing account/property ownership: the names on the account/deed how you think of the account the legal owner and beneficiary, in the case of divorce/death (will depend on the state) For example, I’ve talked with married couples who have individual names on various accounts but … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage, transitions
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 5May2013
Pretty slow week outside of work for us! We attended a talk by the former director of the NIH on translational research, which really got me jazzed again about doing science policy or something similar. We also prepared and served lunch at the homeless ministry we volunteer with from time to time. We’ve been working on the blog more this week and also trying to get a lot accomplished at work. We need to find some time to play some tennis! Small update on my car: I have a confession. From last spring when we stopped driving my car to a couple months after we moved to our townhouse last August, I was really good about starting my car about once per week and driving it around the parking lot/complex. However, … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
Using Upromise to Pay Down Student Loans
Like zillions of other college graduates, I have student loans – and, like a good chunk of those debtors, my loans are through Sallie Mae. When I graduated from college I was automatically enrolled in Upromise, which is a rewards program that is affiliated with Sallie Mae. I accumulated rewards in Upromise through various means and transfered those rewards to Sallie Mae to directly reduce my student loan balance. Apparently the program can also be … Read entire article »
Filed under: college, debt, found money
Debate over Outsourcing Cleaning
Recently we met up with some people we know from church; one couple had participated in a panel at one of our church’s premarital counseling retreat weekends (which we also did on our one-year wedding anniversary). We started talking about expectations we all had when we were engaged and how smooth or rocky the first couple years of marriage were. The two of us more recently married and currently childless couples basically said that household chores … Read entire article »
Filed under: luxuries
Long-Distance Marriage: Money Management
This is the second installment of our series on financially navigating a long-distance marriage. Check out the first installment and come back on subsequent Wednesdays for the third and fourth! The questions I asked about money management logistics were the ones that I was most interested in. My bias here is that Kyle and I keep totally joint money (both in the names on our accounts and how we think of them), but I wondered whether … Read entire article »
No Summer Plans Yet
Now that the semester is ending (lucky undergrads/professional students!) and spring is in the air, we are getting lots of questions from friends and family about what our plans are for the summer. We are going to Boston over Memorial Day for a wedding (we are taking our own advice and crashing with a friend!) but we haven’t made any other definite plans. We have been invited to a wedding over July 4th weekend in … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, grad school, travel
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 28April2013
Spring has finally sprung around here! It’s warmer and rainy. 🙂 Lots of work for us this week. We had a musical on Tuesday night and a good-bye picnic for one of our graduating friends. I had a lot of energy for the blog this week so I’m trying to get pretty ahead with posts, but I was also a bit waylaid by thoughts of ebooks I want to write and a new website I … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
April 2013 Month in Review: Money
This month was a low one for spending and therefore a great one for getting our budget back on track. Last month we blew our budget and had to transfer money into our checking account for the first time in like a year or more! This month was just low on everything – food, gas, targeted savings expenditures. But we still had lot of good times! We went to California for five days, met with … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
Long-Distance Marriage: Meet the Couples
This is the first installment of our series on financially navigating a long-distance marriage. Please return on subsequent Wednesdays for the second, third, and fourth installments. Kyle and I are anticipating living apart next year for a year or so – he’ll start a postdoc in another city and I’ll finish up my PhD here in Durham. (For more details as to why, see my response to Lucas’s comment from last week.) Because I love thinking … Read entire article »
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