Evolving Personal Finance » transitions
Our Biggest Life Transition Yet Is Due this Summer!
As I anticipated when I founded this blog, our major life transitions are now coming fast and furious! 2014: We defended our PhDs and finished grad school. Kyle became a postdoc and I became funemployed. 2015: I moved to DC for 3 months for a fellowship. Kyle got a real job. I started a business. We moved from Durham to Seattle. 2016: We are expecting our first child! We have been extremely fortunate that both getting pregnant and (so far) being pregnant were easy, smooth experiences. … Read entire article »
Filed under: parenthood, transitions
I Learn Something New about Taxes Every Year
My dad loves to encourage me to “learn something new every day,” and that’s certainly a great way to grow. Kyle and I submitted our tax returns last Saturday, and I realized that we learned quite a bit about taxes this year for our personal return. (I additionally learned a lot about grad student taxes, but that was more academic for me.) This year was our most complicated tax return to prepare to date, and we did … Read entire article »
Filed under: debt, giving, investing, self-employment, taxes, transitions
Lifestyle Inflation Analysis
One of the big purposes of me creating this blog, right from the beginning, was to keep Kyle and I from succumbing to lifestyle inflation as we transitioned out of grad school and into our careers. I knew that many people, upon experiencing a jump in salary, would mindlessly let their spending increase across various areas of their budget. I draw a strong distinction between lifestyle inflation and lifestyle increase. I see lifestyle increases as … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, transitions
Moving Cross-Country with a Pod
In the last month, Kyle and I moved from a townhouse in Durham, NC to an apartment in Seattle, WA. While I initially had dreams of abandoning all our worldly possessions for this cross-country move, ultimately we decided to sell just our bulky furniture and move most of our stuff. We used UPack, a pod-based moving company, to move our things from Durham to Seattle, and took our car on a cross-country road trip to … Read entire article »
Filed under: housing, transitions
Hello from Seattle!
Sorry for the loooooong absence, friends! Managing EPF now falls under my ‘work’ time, and I had to cut way back on my work during July so that we could move from Durham to Seattle in time for Kyle to start work today. SO MUCH has happened in the past few weeks for us and I have many interesting PF topics to discuss in upcoming posts that relate to our move. For today, I’ll just give … Read entire article »
Filed under: transitions
A New Appreciation for Living Below Our Means
Kyle and I are coming up on our first big financial transitions – something I’ve anticipated since the founding of this blog. I always thought that our post-PhD lives would offer an opportunity for lifestyle inflation, but instead I’m grateful that we live sufficiently below our means to absorb an income cut. This week, I have a new appreciation for our budgeting system and how clearly it delineates between wants and needs. On top of … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, career, savings, targeted savings, transitions
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 Emerging Is Your Adulthood?
There’s been so much news coverage in the last several years (and perhaps this has happened with previous generations as well) about how 20-somethings are no longer adults in the same sense that our grandparents were when they were the same age – we are engaged in “emerging adulthood” or “adultescence” instead. Sometimes finances are implicated as a cause of this extended adolescence/delayed adulthood. “Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: … Read entire article »
Filed under: transitions
Realities of Account Ownership
This post is a follow-up from my visualizations of account structures that couples use – different combinations of joint and separate accounts. I didn’t specify during that post, but there are actually three ways of viewing account/property ownership: the names on the account/deed how you think of the account the legal owner and beneficiary, in the case of divorce/death (will depend on the state) For example, I’ve talked with married couples who have individual names on various accounts but … Read entire article »
Filed under: marriage, transitions
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