Evolving Personal Finance » stock market

My Sister’s Awesome Financial Decisions

June 17th, 2013 | 31 Comments

My Sister’s Awesome Financial Decisions

I don’t talk about my family of origin a lot on this blog (for privacy reasons) but I want to suspend that policy for today’s post to brag about my sister.  My sister is 25 and not a nerd.  Like, I’m a nerd, right?  I went to a nerd high school and a nerd college and now I’m doing a PhD in engineering and I picked up an interest in PF along the way, which … Read entire article »

Filed under: college, debt, family, goals, investing, retirement, savings, stock market

Trying Hard to Not Time the Market

June 12th, 2013 | 32 Comments

Trying Hard to Not Time the Market

Kyle and I have a decision to make!  We have some subsidized and deferred student loan debt (i.e. sitting at 0%) and we also have the full amount of money we need to pay off these loans set aside.  Most of that money is invested in mutual funds, but about $6,000 is in a CD that is maturing this month.   When we first allocated our savings, we knew we should be conservative because we had a … Read entire article »

Filed under: debt, investing, savings, stock market

What’s the Point of Calculating Net Worth?

April 11th, 2012 | 40 Comments

What’s the Point of Calculating Net Worth?

I enjoy reading other PF bloggers’ monthly reports on their net worth progress, whether they use real numbers or percentage increases.  I haven’t so far written a net worth post or series for us and as of now I don’t plan to.  I just don’t see how it would be interesting or informative in our situation.  So I’ll bore you with one post instead of with a series.   Here are the components that contribute to our … Read entire article »

Filed under: net worth, savings, stock market

My Biggest Financial Mistake and Why I’m Glad I Made It

March 14th, 2012 | 35 Comments

My Biggest Financial Mistake and Why I’m Glad I Made It

You’re going to think I’m really dumb when you read this.  You might even want to take away my PF blogger card.  My mistake was a doozy.  I’ll just say that I made it several years ago when I was just figuring out my finances and I was a lot less involved than I am now.  And Kyle wasn’t around to catch the mistake.   Summer 2007.  I had just graduated from college and started my first … Read entire article »

Filed under: featured, investing, mistakes, retirement, stock market

My Strategy for Market Volatility

January 6th, 2012 | 2 Comments

My Strategy for Market Volatility

2011 was an incredibly volatile year in the stock market.  It seems like every day the indices move at least a percent.  What’s a long-term, buy-and-hold investor to do?  I have heard financial advisors suggest that you only check your portfolio balance once per year to prevent freaking out.   I used to check my IRA balance about once per month to record my progress.  Now that I listen to APM’s Marketplace daily I always know what’s going on … Read entire article »

Filed under: psychology, stock market

Psyching Out My IRA

December 26th, 2011 | 8 Comments

For the last six months or so I’ve wanted to max out my IRA.  Like, I’m dying to.  I’ve looked at our budget numerous times, attempting theoretical cuts here and there that could get me to the limit.  I took my contribution from just under 10% of my gross income to about 16% but going the rest of the way is just not happening.   Why do I want to max out my IRA?  Two psychological precepts … Read entire article »

Filed under: budgeting, goals, retirement, savings, stock market