Evolving Personal Finance » values
All I Want for Christmas Is a Giving Revolution
I’m a Scrooge. Well, I’m not necessarily cheap (I prefer frugal), but gift-giving and gift-receiving totally stresses me out. The whole process used to be manageable when I was only responsible for giving to my immediate family members, but the list of gift recipients has completely blown up with my marriage to Kyle, as he has a wonderfully close (and large) extended family. Giving presents stresses me out because I’m kind of a perfectionist and I … Read entire article »
What It Means to Be Wealthy
So I know I’m a personal finance blogger and everything, but I’ve noticed that I’m not quite as focused on earning lots of money as many of my fellow bloggers. Maybe I’m suppressing those desires in myself because of our current necessarily limited income or perhaps I’m wired a bit differently. I asked myself whether I really want to become wealthy. I don’t think I want to be independently wealthy particularly early – I don’t see … Read entire article »
Filed under: values
Living Your Real Life Now
Something I hear often from grad students (and say often myself) is “When I have a real job…” followed by some fantasy about the future like saving for a house downpayment or going on a big vacation or not being in the lab after midnight. Since these sentiments come out of my mouth, too, I obviously understand where they’re coming from. In grad school, like in college, during an engagement, or just before starting a family, there is a sense of now-but-not-yet. I have this life and it’s not quite what I want it to be because there is a waiting period, a working period until I can achieve something that will usher my life into its next stage. But the fact is that just because I don’t have a real job … Read entire article »
Filed under: choices, grad school, values
What Do You Want Your Life to Be Like in Five Years?
Today I want to hear from you about your dreams and ambitions! Tell me how you envision yourself living five years from now. What do you want to accomplish in that time? What transitions will you go through? In five years Kyle and I will be thirty-two! I see us on a beach near San Diego playing with our 1-2 small children. We both have PhDs; Kyle has finished one postdoc and has a research position … Read entire article »
Filed under: transitions, values
Obligations on Your Side Hustle Money
Kyle has been volunteering with the production team at our church for about a year, mostly running the slides and handling the video-playing. One of the men who runs the sound board is taking a sabbatical and they are looking for someone to fill his weekends. Kyle has wanted to learn how to run a sound board for a while so this is a perfect opportunity. Plus, we found out that it is a paid … Read entire article »
Filed under: giving, retirement, side income, taxes, values
Laying a Path from Here to There
I’m afraid of drifting through life – of letting time pass without accomplishing anything. Sometimes I feel like we’re drifting financially while we’re in graduate school because we don’t have several major monetary objectives toward which we are working. While I think goal-setting has been a bit overblown and doesn’t necessarily work well for everyone, I believe we all need to have a vision for our lives and to take steps to realize those visions. If … Read entire article »
My Dream in 23 Years – What’s Yours?
One of the important components of the All Your Worth Balanced Money Formula is the Dream Fund. Of the 20% of take-home pay that is supposed to go toward savings, 25% of it is for your dreams – aside from retirement and all of that. When I was a kid I thought I would want to own a beach house. Maybe some other people want a plane, an around-the-world cruise, or to pay for their … Read entire article »
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
Why Do We Make Rules If We’re Just Going to Break Them?
Kyle and I have a rule: We don’t watch important basketball games (i.e. any game involving our team, or the final rounds of the NCAA tournament) with people who don’t care about basketball (apathy is bad enough – rival fans would be inconceivable!). You can imagine the situation that inspired this rule! So I was surprised when Kyle told me yesterday that he is planning to watch our team’s big rivalry game this weekend with people … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, choices, credit cards, debt, giving, retirement, values
Living a Step Behind
This week I’m thinking about a great illustration that our pastor used a few years ago in a sermon on putting others before ourselves. He was helping our church accept that if we chose to live by the Biblical principles of money management, we should expect to see obvious differences in our lifestyles in comparison with our peers at work. By tithing 10% of our income and giving generously above that, we would be one step … Read entire article »
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