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September 2013 Month in Review: Money
Our spending is completely out of whack this month with our move! We started our new lease on 9/17/2013 and ended the old one on 9/22/2013. I tried to pay all the direct moving expenses out of our nest egg and reimburse to that account as they come in. But we left off a few recurring maintenance things like changing light bulbs and air filters to the last minute, so we had higher non-budgeted spending … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
The 3 to 6 Month Emergency Fund
I can see why people find Dave Ramsey’s baby steps attractive, I really do. As someone who is prone to paralysis of analysis (and whose husband is even more prone), executing an instruction is so much easier than making an informed decision and then carrying it out. While watching week 1 of the FPU videos last week on “super saving,” my thoughts were on that 3-6 month emergency fund. We’ve had $1,000 set aside (baby step … Read entire article »
Filed under: emergency fund
Awesome Sign-Up Bonus Ratio with Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard
Y’all know that Kyle and I are not much for credit card sign-up bonuses – we’re more about the long-term rewards or perks. I do keep an eye out for high sign-up bonuses by following some credit card churning blogs, but usually the minimum spend requirements are out of the range of our normal spending. (That is, until we realized that we can now put rent on a credit card, but that has its own set … Read entire article »
Filed under: credit cards
Carnival of Money Pros – September 29th Edition
Welcome to the Carnival of Money Pros! The Carnival of Money Pros is brought to you to by the Money Pros Team, and you can submit articles at Blogger Carnivals. Tushar @ Start Investing Money writes 3 Reasons to Become an Unusual Investor – When we think about investments the usual suspects pop into our minds. We think of the stock market. We think of bank accounts of all kinds, not to mention any tax free options we can get our hands on. We probably don’t think about wine, art and rare coins. Roger the Amateur Financier @ The Amateur Financier writes 10 Truly Unusual Investments – A list of unusual investments, including collectibles, peer-to-peer, and crowdsourcing, as a means of diversifying investments and providing profits in the future. Rich @ Growing Money Smart writes Renting A Room … Read entire article »
Filed under: carnival
Carnival of Financial Independence 30th Edition
Welcome to the 30th edition of the Carnival of Financial Independence, a selection of the best articles related to Financial Independence this week. If you would like to be included next week, please submit your post via Blogger Carnivals. If you would like to host a future edition, you can contact Pauline at Reach Financial Independence. The guidelines are: You can submit a post that was published during the last month The posts have to relate to reaching … Read entire article »
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Losing Half Our Buffer
Keeping a certain amount of money in a checking account to prevent overdrafts/denied transactions is a pretty common practice among moderate PF’ers. Beginners haven’t yet figured out that they can avoid fees, interest, and embarrassment by keeping such a buffer. Ideally, you wouldn’t overspend the amount of money you have available for that month, but we are all capable of making mistakes. I personally like to play chicken with a zero balance, though – I … Read entire article »
Unexpected Expenses Ate Up Our Rent Savings
When we moved in August 2012, we were very excited because it took us less than three months to pay back our moving expenses from the amount of our rent reduction ($287.27 in net expenses, rent reduction of $110/month). This time around we were not so fortunate due to a few unexpected expenses and changes. It looks like we won’t pay back our moving expenses over the course of the next year, which is about … Read entire article »
Filed under: housing
FPU: I Get to See What All the Fuss Is About!
Tomorrow I am starting a 9-week commitment to help my church administer Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class – having never gone through the course myself! My role is as a “table host” so I’m not actually the coordinator (thank goodness!) and as I’ve been a fan of DR’s for some time (as a radio personality, not so much as a financial advisor) and am very familiar with his philosophy so I think I’ll be … Read entire article »
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 15September2013
Our week has been consumed with our moving activities. We started our new lease on Tuesday and are ending our old one today. A bunch of our friends helped us move our furniture and boxed-up items on Tuesday evening and every night since we’ve been bringing over a few more loose items. We left the kitchen for nearly last, so that has totally screwed up our eating for the week! I’m basically back on the SAD, which is interesting. I haven’t eaten this way since late 2010 and it’s not a tasty as I remembered but also isn’t making me sick or anything. Anyway I’ll post a few more (disappointing) details about our move this upcoming week and I’ll do a full money breakdown once all the bills come in. Posts … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
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