goals Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Evolving Personal Finance

Effortless Perfection in Your Finances

September 19th, 2016 | 2 Comments

My (grad school) alma mater is notorious for holding its undergraduate women to an impossible standard: effortless perfection. Effortless perfection in that context means not only being smart and getting top grades; looking beautiful, fit, and put-together; being popular and kind; succeeding at everything you attempt; etc., but doing it all without even appearing to be striving. No one is perfect, and most people have to try very hard to perform well in even one … Read entire article »

Filed under: goals

Looking on the Bright Side of a Tough Financial Situation

May 22nd, 2015 | 4 Comments

After my Eeyore post from Wednesday on the reasons I’m experiencing financial ennui, I thought it would be nice to kind of give myself a kick in the butt to try to re-energize about our finances in a minor way while we’re still here in Durham. In this post, I’m going to list the positive things we have done in our finances since our defenses last summer, however small they may be, and some tiny goals. Good … Read entire article »

Filed under: budgeting, frugality, goals, income, side income

Financial Ennui

May 20th, 2015 | 31 Comments

I’m finding it difficult to care much about our personal finances these days, easily noted by the infrequent posting here. I actually find it very weird that I am not more engaged with our money, as I used to enjoy that so much. (Part of this is that I’m putting a lot of energy into thinking about other people’s finances for my business so there is less left for our own.) I know exactly when … Read entire article »

Filed under: budgeting, goals, income, psychology

Funemployment Report: Goals for August 2014

August 13th, 2014 | 24 Comments

My funemployment officially starts in September because I am still employed full-time as a graduate student through August. However, now that I am post-defense, I have the time to set myself up well to transition into funemployment. I’m going to attempt to document my funemployment through a series of goal posts. Just after the start of each month, I will report how I did on my goals for the month that just ended and set out … Read entire article »

Filed under: blogging, career, funemployment, goals, grad school

What’s So Great About High Cost-of-Living Areas?

March 3rd, 2014 | 72 Comments

When I stepped out into the southern California sunshine on the first morning of our recent trip, I exclaimed to Kyle, “How are we not living here?!” I repeated this phrase multiple times throughout our long weekend in Los Angeles. All I wanted to do was spend time outside, which thankfully we were able to do for much of Friday and Saturday. The weather was beyond gorgeous, particularly warm and sunny for February, and a … Read entire article »

Filed under: choices, family, goals, housing, luxuries

Do You Support More Openness About Finances?

January 29th, 2014 | 36 Comments

I guess I haven’t fully understood why money is the last taboo topic in our society. Obviously, I wanted to talk about money so much in my real life that I created a blog about it and I’ve only gotten worse since then. You can connect almost anything we do or value in life to money somehow, which is why writing in the “niche” of personal finance actually opens you up to writing about almost … Read entire article »

Filed under: blogging, goals, grad school, psychology, values

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Dave Ramsey: Reasonable Baby Step Modifications

December 11th, 2013 | 19 Comments

As we discussed in the two prior posts in this series, Dave Ramsey’s (DR’s) program for getting out of debt and building wealth works very well for some people but may be inappropriate for those who don’t agree with all of the underlying principles. The next two posts are intended for people are curious about following the Baby Steps loosely but who want to know what some reasonable modifications may be. In this post, we … Read entire article »

Filed under: choices, debt, emergency fund, giving, goals, psychology, savings

When Plans Change

November 15th, 2013 | 28 Comments

I have a personal update for you today! It’s about how our protracted time to graduation has affected our plans, careers, and finances. I though we had some timelines and plans down, and then they were shot to heck, and now the picture is re-coming into focus. Grad School I’ve mentioned in my weekly wrap-ups here that for the past several weeks Kyle has been working around the clock on writing his dissertation. We were hoping that … Read entire article »

Filed under: career, cars, goals, marriage, personal, savings, spending, transitions

Stretch Goal: FinCon 2014!

October 25th, 2013 | 29 Comments

I have absolutely devoured all the FinCon13 recap posts in my RSS reader this week! I know some of the writers think they are boring/tedious for their readers, but since I “know” so many of the participants it’s interesting to me to hear about them hanging out together. I am considering buying the Virtual Pass so I can at least learn from the presentations, although I know that the in-person networking is the more important … Read entire article »

Filed under: blogging, goals, income

Setting a Reward for a Big Goal

August 5th, 2013 | 32 Comments

I don’t talk about this much here because this is a PF blog and not a weight-loss blog, but occasionally the two intersect and I think this is a relevant topic. I’ve mentioned a few times that I used to be obese and I lost a bunch of weight in 2011. However, in the last nine months-ish I’ve gained about half that weight back and I’ve decided to get serious about returning to my goal … Read entire article »