Earn, Save, and Live Joyfully.
Ask the Expert, Walter Updegrave, from money.cnn.com has a great answer to a question from a 33 year old reader wondering about early retirement. In essence the reader wants to know if he can retire by age 55. The article contains a link to a great projection calculator that determines just how much income an … Read more
Where oh where have I been. I just realized it’s been over a week since I last posted. Well it seems after sitting at home attempting to recover from surgery and illness that I have finally returned to the working world. I am not really feeling well enough to return to work. But I thought … Read more
Money magazine has a great article this month about a family trying to conceive a child through IVF. This article could not have shown up at a better time. A very good friend of mine was diagnosed with a genetic disorder a few years ago. I met her during our freshman year of college, and … Read more
My husband recently told one of his co-workers that we are paying off our home by paying an extra $400 toward our monthly mortgage. His friend, who is about eight or nine years older than the two of us, said that for $400 a month, he could fly to California once a month to hang … Read more
Yesterday I went to a Michaels not too far from my home with a very simple goal in mind. I am throwing a baby shower for a friend of mine and decided it would be nice to create a scrapbook of the momentous occasion. I bought a scrapbook album, ten sheets of scrapbook paper, a … Read more
Just for kicks I went back through my w2s from the last seven years to figure out just how much money I contributed each year to my 401(k). It’s amazing to see how little I was able to contribute in 1999, (the year I graduated college), compared to today. The dates and corresponding contribution levels … Read more
So one of my friends is newly engaged, one is planning for her first child (only three months away), one has a newly graduated husband with more loan payments than paychecks, one is about to undergo expensive IVF treatments, and one has had a year full of unexpected medical expenses (oh wait that’s me). Every … Read more
So I’m always reading about how husbands and wives argue about money. I’ve known my husband for almost ten years and we have only fought about money a handful of times. Those fights all involved the expenses involved in purchasing homes. Either our primary residence or a vacation home we looked at a year or … Read more
In 1999 I took a job fresh out of college with a large company with unbelievable employee benefits. I definitely think people undervalue the benefits a company can provide. There are the common benefits like medical insurance, a certain number of vacation days, flexible work schedules, etc. But then there are the big perks like … Read more
I just read a pretty interesting article in MSN Money about why American taxes aren’t so bad. Apparently an organization called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development took a look at the tax burdens of 30 countries around the world. The results of the Paris-based think tank demonstrate that the US tax rate is … Read more