We all have spending habits. Some spending habits are more expensive than others, but we have habits nonetheless. The spending habits we have are often the result of guilty pleasure (choose your favorite; I certainly won’t judge). They can also be related to hobbies, like music. If you’re looking to save money, though, those spending … Read more
Part of our personal finance plan for this year and beyond involves tracking where our money is going. I’m tracking expenses with Quicken and so far I’m keeping up. Automating the download of transactions and not trying to track every last transaction to every single account is helping. Tracking manually: Old-school, or just old? Recently … Read more
My wife and I have been married almost eleven years, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Nonetheless, even though we’ve been sharing our finances that long, getting it right is still a work in progress. We’re on board with our personal finance plan and all that, but we are still learning how to … Read more
Improving one’s personal finances takes some changes. The easiest ones to make are the ones that don’t seem like sacrifice, or aren’t too big a sacrifice. In our efforts to build up our savings again, we’ll try changing our milk habits. Switching from lactose-free milk in the carton to powdered milk may be a change … Read more
This year has been a little tighter than usual for us financially for a number of reasons. Things aren’t at the point of desperation by any means, but we have had to answer some financial wake-up calls throughout the year. Not a full-out, kidney-stone-level emergency room visit, but more like acid indigestion. This appears in … Read more
My friend J Money heartily disagrees that budgets are boring. I think that budgeting can be made palatable, but fun? If anyone can hit on the magic formula that makes budgeting fun, they’ll be very rich indeed. A blogging colleague was asking around on Facebook about budgeting presentations that weren’t “boring and irrelevant for 18-22 … Read more
As far as the landmines go, anyway. This article (well, slide deck) on MSN Money discusses seven things stores don’t want you to know. Seven tricks, and seven pieces of advice from experts on how to overcome them: The lure: Tastefully done and attractive displays with high-markup items. The cure: Stick to a budget and … Read more
Last weekend was another gig with the ten-piece band I play with. And another charity auction with bargains to be had. After the full-contact silent auction had come and gone, I was the proud owner of a brand-new Keurig Elite for $80. I was nearly 100% sure that this model went for over $100. It … Read more