Evolving Personal Finance » Archive
Don’t Call Them the Top 20%
After Christmas this year, Kyle and I visited my parents’ house for a couple days. The looming fiscal cliff was still all over the news, and I opened the newspaper to an infographic on how the various tax brackets would be impacted by different proposals and so forth. The taxpayers were divided into fifths: the bottom 20%, 2nd 20%, middle 20%, 4th 20%, and top “rich” 20%. Kyle and I fall into the middle 20% … Read entire article »
Filed under: psychology
Weekly Update 47
We spent our entire month’s eating out budget in one fell swoop this week! We went out for restaurant week to a place that’s been on our minds but out of our price range since we moved here (The Melting Pot). Our meal took 2.5 hours and we had wonderful service. I even ate a bit of dessert! It was fun to have such an interactive meal. We had another interesting end of the week here … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
Personal Finance Bloggers I Admire
Today I’m sharing with you a list of bloggers that I admire. They are all successful in a variety of ways – namely, that they have defined for themselves some major goal and are well on their way to achieving it. While all the goals are different, I imagine that their success gives them the flexibility to pursue what’s important to them – the motivation behind the money management. I hope you will check out … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging
Upcoming Transition and a Potential Financial Overhaul
I believe I’ve mentioned this a few times on the blog but haven’t explained the full scenario: Kyle is striving to finish his PhD this spring (or, less optimistically, over the summer). He is currently looking for his first post-PhD job, a postdoctoral position, which is essentially additional training in the lab of another faculty member and will last 2-5 years. Good news: this job transition will come with approximately a 40% raise over his … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, transitions
Festival of Frugality #372
Welcome to the 372th Edition of the Festival of Frugality! Food-Related Harry Campbell presents Is Restaurant Week Even a Good Deal? posted at Your Personal Finance Pro. “Have you heard of restaurant week? Most large metropolitan cities have some form of it, but the general idea is that you pay a discounted rate for a three course price fixed dinner at a top restaurant in your city. In San Diego, the options are for $20/$30/$40 dinners at over 150 restaurants. There are obviously quite a few options and three courses for $20-$40 may sound like a good deal but I’m here to tell you, it’s not.” Colin Williams presents What Is The Real Cost Of Coffee, Snacks and Lunch To You? posted at humble savers. “This post comes with a FREE calculator to … Read entire article »
Filed under: carnival
Frugal Practices I’ve Grown to Love
It’s wonderful when a positive, self-beneficial act becomes automatic and even better when you enjoy or look forward to doing it! Being frugal doesn’t come naturally to me; I had to learn many of my current practices over time and fight against my upbringing. My husband will attest that I’m certainly not frugal in all aspects of my spending! But I’m so glad I started doing the activities that I list below because they have … Read entire article »
Filed under: cars, checking, found money, frugality, insurance
Weekly Update 46
Kyle and I were both (extra) hard at work this week – actually succeeding in our effort to get to work on the early side! We were also able to score tickets to a basketball game this week, which was very fun. Durham was all in a tizzy because of 3-6″ in snow were predicted for Thursday night, and many schools an businesses announced closings and delays on Thursday evening. I told myself “I’ll believe it when I see it” and keeping myself from getting excited turned out to be the best move – the roads were simply wet on Friday morning, nothing more! Posts I Liked Kim from Eyes on the Dollar details all the ways you can save money with grocery store loyalty cards. Matt Alden S. from Dividend Monk at Budgets … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
Blog Statistics Update December 2012 – January 2013
This month Kyle really got engaged with working on the back end of the blog! We added some new advertisements and I bought How I Make Money Blogging so we can try to implement some of those strategies. This month EPF was added to the Wisebread Top 1000. I applied to get on it quite a while ago and am looking forward to improving our rank. EPF was also featured as the site of the month … Read entire article »
Filed under: blogging, month in review
How Sharing a Car Has Helped Our Joint Finances
Kyle and I have completely joint finances – no allowances or “blow money” or anything similar – because 1) we agree on most everything anyway, 2) I don’t think we have a high enough income to spend on things we can’t both agree to, and 3) we don’t know how to halt the creep of separate finances that starts with designating any money as “mine” and “yours” instead of “ours.” Not only do we have joint … Read entire article »
Egg on My Face: Grad Students and Payroll Taxes
I feel very silly! Here I am trying to set myself up as a reliable (but not professional!) source for information on the special PF situations graduate students find themselves in, particularly with respect to taxes, and I was overlooking something very obvious for years in my own finances! This all started when I had a post idea about for what I wish I’d used my 2% payroll tax break (and asking you what you wish … Read entire article »
Filed under: grad school, taxes
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