Evolving Personal Finance » marriage
Five Money-Saving Moves from Our Wedding
As wedding season 2012 has been heating up, I’ve seen more and more PF-blogger-brides (yet to see a groom) discuss their wedding budgets or various aspects of planning. It’s caused me to reflect on our wedding from 2010, which was not at all an inexpensive undertaking. To this day I don’t know how much money was spent on our wedding because some costs have not been disclosed to us by our parents and some small … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, choices, featured, luxuries, marriage, spending, values
Financial Tethers to Our Families of Origin
Marital problem confession time: Kyle and I have two areas of our financial picture that have created a fairly high level of conflict on several occasions during our marriage. They both have to do with fully separating ourselves financially from our parents. During premarital counseling, we learned about “leaving and cleaving” (Genesis 2:24), which means separating from your family of origin and creating your primary allegiance with your spouse. While going over all our money management … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage
What Does “Frugal” Mean to You?
My definition of frugality: Not buying things. Kyle’s definition of frugality: Getting good deals. Kyle is excellent at researching products he wants to find the best quality for the best price. On the other hand, he remarked to me last week (and I’m not sure if this was a compliment) “You never want anything! How do you never want anything?” (He meant stuff-wise – I want to spend plenty of money on experiences.) We don’t have a whole … Read entire article »
Hobbies vs. Values in Targeted Savings
Kyle and I had an argument recently about one of those nooks and crannies of our financial life that you could never predict would come up. When we were in premarital counseling, we agreed almost totally on how to (theoretically) manage our finances, but of course when it comes to implementation thing never go as smoothly as planned. You can agree on 95% of topics but still argue over the remaining 5%! A few months ago … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage, personal, targeted savings, values
Delay Marriage Until You’re Debt-Free?
A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast (I LOVE podcasts. If you know of some good ones, please add them to the comments.) featuring an interview with Andy Stanley. For those of you unfamiliar with Stanley, he is a well-known pastor/preacher and author. The interview discussed Stanley’s recent sermon series titled “The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating” and at the very end the host asked Stanley for non-negotiables concerning readiness … Read entire article »
Vestigial Bank Accounts
I’m sure if you’ve been managing your own money for long enough you’ve come to this point: your banking structure makes no sense. You can’t justify with any current logical reasoning why you still have certain accounts. You know why you opened those accounts, but you probably wouldn’t again given what you know now or how the situation has changed. Inertia has played a big role in their continued ties to your name. Kyle and I … Read entire article »
Filed under: checking, marriage, savings, transitions
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