Evolving Personal Finance » personal
When Plans Change
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
Money Updates from the EPF Household
Today’s post is a collection of odds and ends – thoughts and observations about our life as it intersects with our finances. None of these topics are enough for a full blog post at this point so this is a clearinghouse for our thoughts at this moment. Townhouse Water Damage We had a bit of a scare a couple weeks ago with the townhouse we rent. A leak developed in the ceiling of the lower floor, directly … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, cars, housing, marriage, personal, savings, targeted savings, transitions, travel
How to Spend Less When Attending Out-of-Town Weddings
In a 48-hour period last week, we received two unexpected wedding invitations, heard about two more engagements, and attended a pre-wedding event – all for weddings occurring this summer! We had thought it was going to be another slow wedding season for us, but we are now planning to attend at least two out-of-town weddings – one in Boston and the other in Madison, WI. Since 2010, we have attended TEN out-of-town weddings. We want to … Read entire article »
Filed under: family, food, frugality, marriage, personal, travel
When Did We Acquire All This Cash?
When Kyle and I arrived home from our honeymoon in June 2010, our non-property net worth consisted of: our Roth IRAs around $16,500 in savings accounts/CDs a bit in checking the money we received as wedding gifts $16,000 in student loans We had just spent between $10,000 and $20,000 on our rings, our honeymoon, and our portion of the wedding expenses. We felt like we were starting from zero, in cash anyway. That summer we put in CDs the amount of … Read entire article »
Filed under: personal, targeted savings
At Long Last, Our Budget(s)
A few weeks ago, Kyle and I finally sat down together to create a new iteration of our budget. We probably should have done it after we moved in August, reducing our rent by about $100/month, or after we got our annual cost-of-living raises in September. We put off incorporating that extra money into our budget because we weren’t sure how the fiscal cliff would be resolved and we didn’t want to get accustomed to … Read entire article »
What’s In My Wallet
Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone! I hope that you are enjoying your loved ones and not struggling with strangers at big box retailers. I hope to be doing the former but might be forced into a bit of the latter. Just a quick post from me today – I want to show you what’s in my wallet! I love my wallet. It’s tiny so it keeps me honest about what I’m using and what I’m not. It’s a … Read entire article »
Filed under: personal
Fall Wedding in Canada Financials
Last weekend Kyle and I went to the wedding of one of our graduate school friends in her hometown of Hamilton, ON, Canada. This trip was not nearly as frugal as our trip to Chicago earlier in the summer because we flew, which in itself is more expensive than road-tripping plus we weren’t able to bring our food with us. In fact, we made some poor food choices because of hunger and convenience and such. Here’s … Read entire article »
How to Cut Your Food Spending – What’s Your Personality?
This is the start of a short series on spending less money on food (here are part 2 and part 3). In considering various strategies I realized that people will likely fall into two camps in terms of how they like to incorporate change: some people prefer abrupt, drastic change and others prefer gradual change. While I tend to shy away from comparisons between financial management and diet/weight management, this is one area where I can’t … Read entire article »
Filed under: choices, food, frugality, personal, psychology
Does Your Class Match Your Income?
My thoughts today might turn out to be offensive to some of my readers. I don’t intend them that way and I don’t have any specific people in mind. I’m just reflecting on my own experiences, observations, stereotypes, and biases. And I haven’t done much research for this either, so it’s certainly possible that you’ll disagree with my assertions. In the process of looking for apartments, Kyle and I toured one complex that isn’t as nice … Read entire article »
Filed under: housing, personal, psychology
Sometimes I Don’t Eat. Is that Rude?
On Sunday, Kyle and I were invited to go out to dinner with about a dozen other people to celebrate a friend’s birthday on Monday. Kyle had a volleyball game scheduled near the start of the dinner so we RSVP’d that we would be coming late. Kyle stayed at school to be there for the game and I went home to have dinner. Because of a torrential rainstorm, his game was canceled, so we were … Read entire article »
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