Evolving Personal Finance » Archive
No Summer Plans Yet
Now that the semester is ending (lucky undergrads/professional students!) and spring is in the air, we are getting lots of questions from friends and family about what our plans are for the summer. We are going to Boston over Memorial Day for a wedding (we are taking our own advice and crashing with a friend!) but we haven’t made any other definite plans. We have been invited to a wedding over July 4th weekend in … Read entire article »
Filed under: career, grad school, travel
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 28April2013
Spring has finally sprung around here! It’s warmer and rainy. 🙂 Lots of work for us this week. We had a musical on Tuesday night and a good-bye picnic for one of our graduating friends. I had a lot of energy for the blog this week so I’m trying to get pretty ahead with posts, but I was also a bit waylaid by thoughts of ebooks I want to write and a new website I … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
April 2013 Month in Review: Money
This month was a low one for spending and therefore a great one for getting our budget back on track. Last month we blew our budget and had to transfer money into our checking account for the first time in like a year or more! This month was just low on everything – food, gas, targeted savings expenditures. But we still had lot of good times! We went to California for five days, met with … Read entire article »
Filed under: month in review
Long-Distance Marriage: Meet the Couples
This is the first installment of our series on financially navigating a long-distance marriage. Please return on subsequent Wednesdays for the second, third, and fourth installments. Kyle and I are anticipating living apart next year for a year or so – he’ll start a postdoc in another city and I’ll finish up my PhD here in Durham. (For more details as to why, see my response to Lucas’s comment from last week.) Because I love thinking … Read entire article »
Money Management Systems Visualized
There are three basic money management systems that couples use: pooling, partial pooling, and independent. Those are the academic terms – I prefer to refer to them as joint, partly joint and partly separate, and separate. In this post I have visualizations of each of these money management styles, plus a variation of joint that I call joint with allowances. The main distinctions among the styles are into what type of account (joint or individual) … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 21April2013
Not much to report about our week here – it was pretty quiet! Just lots of work. We went to Kyle’s program’s end-of-year party and saw basically all our close friends from school. I got my baby-holdin’ on, which was awesome. We also had a small game night with some friends from our small group since we realized we hadn’t had them over since we moved to our townhouse. Now that the weather has turned definitely-spring we want to be outside as much as possible! Thankfully neither of us has allergies because the pollen is fierce right now and it will be getting hot soon enough. Posts I Liked Mrs. Pop from Planting Our Pennies thinks our ease of shopping has gone too far when even their cat can make purchases! Phoebe from … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
So Excited about Referrals!
Two people have used my referral link for Republic Wireless, which means if all goes well I’ll get a $38 credit to my account! You can tell what an advertising noob I am because I am way too excited about this. Like so excited that I had to write a post to deconstruct my feelings because they are totally weird. I don’t even know if the people who signed up with my link did so through … Read entire article »
Married with Roommates?
Here are the parameters we’re working with: 1) Kyle will graduate as early as June or as late as September, but we’re not sure where he’ll be doing his postdoc or when he’ll start. 2) I’ll need a roommate for after Kyle moves out. 3) If Kyle has a significant period of non-employment in between graduating and starting his postdoc, my pay isn’t quite enough to cover our expenses and basic percentage-based budgeting. Since roommates are easiest to find … Read entire article »
How to Price a Room for Rent
Next year when Kyle is living Elsewhere (TBD), we plan to both have roommates to keep our cost of living low, just like before we were married. That means that we will rent out one of the bedrooms in our current townhouse to another woman. We haven’t quite decided which room to keep since they are quite different in size – the larger one would be better if Kyle is spending a good amount of … Read entire article »
Filed under: housing
Favorite Posts, Mentions, and Top Comments Week of 14April2013
In honor of Financial Literacy month, the personal finance committee I’m on at my university is putting on a bunch of seminars and events throughout the month. This week I attended a seminar on saving and investing but I was a bit disappointed. The seminar itself was okay but I just kept thinking of what it could have been, like if I had done the presentation. I’m getting a bit full of myself! Posts I Liked Joanna from Our Freaking Budget asks if home ownership is still part of the American dream. Michelle from Making Sense of Cents reveals what she plans to do with her fabulous extra income. Robert from The College Investor lays out the retirement options for self-employed individuals. Eric from Narrow Bridge Finance suggests several alternative lodging schemes that are cheaper … Read entire article »
Filed under: weekly update
Recent Comments
- Adam on Home Equity Is Funny Money
"Hi Emily - I just stumbled upon your blog. Great post! Up in Canada this is a…" - Emily on Home Equity Is Funny Money
"I agree that an appraisal is the best number to work with. I can't think of why …" - JL on Home Equity Is Funny Money
"I only note it as round numbers, in $50k or $100k estimates. I also usually upda…" - We Maxed Out All Our Retirement Accounts for the First Time! - Evolving Personal Finance | Evolving Personal Finance on Avoiding an Expensive 401(k) Plan through Self-Employment
"[…] was the first year that we contributed to Kyle’s expensive 401(k…" - Business Goal Tracking for Week 8 of 2022 - Evolving Personal Finance | Evolving Personal Finance on Business Goal Tracking for Week 6 of 2022
"[…] Done as of two weeks ago! […]…"