I’d love a holiday home! Have you ever dreamed about stealing away in the dreary weather to a destination with constant warmth and sunshine? What about lodging in a place of your very own during your family’s winter weekend ski retreats? Buying a holiday home is an alluring luxury that promises to give you the [...]

Scrooge McDuck has long been my beloved financial hero and last night I gleefully watched these vintage Scrooge cartoons from 1967. Uncle Scrooge is giving his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie a life-lesson on finance and the nature of money, after they approach him regarding advice on what to do with their hard-earned savings of [...]

Me again, on the couch, nibbling on a hunk of zucchini bread, with locally grown zucchini and blueberries, and trying to capture my breath. My little butterbean is blessedly asleep and it is during these quieter moments that I try to pen some musings. And it is quite common for my thoughts to drift to [...]

Overspending Alert! Just to be forewarned—we quashed the budget this weekend. Something akin to over a hundred dollars, obliterated. A peek at our spoils unveiled a few monstrosities. Our budget was blown on: * A penchant for pricey and delicious Oktoberfest brews. * Accumulation of necessary ingredients for a ‘finer dining’ type of meal experience. [...]

Saving is the cornerstone to building a strong and abundant financial future. It’s past midnight. The apartment is blessedly silent and I’m curled up on the couch with my tablet, pondering this thought: I am truly amazed at how little people save. Many of my friends subsist paycheck-to-paycheck, and they believe stashing away a few [...]

God, I hate bills. Every so often I retreat to my work area, clutching tattered scraps of invoices and receipts, and indulge in a heinously liberating tantrum of writhing in a corner and having a moan while banging my head against the hardwood. While chanting: go away, bills, gooo awaaayyyy. (thrashing and banging) Then someone [...]

I am suffering through a severe lack of sleep. The wee one has been wrangling a fever-induced wakefulness the past two nights due to her one-year shots last week; not only am I pale and sluggish, but a persistent throbbing has emanated from behind my left eyeball, making it nearly impossible to stare at a [...]

Welcome to the Labor Day Edition of the Carnival of Financial Camaraderie! Enjoy perusing all the great entries this Labor Day and please take a moment to share a salient post or two on your social media platforms and through your blogs. Also remember, this carnival is hosted every second week by My University Money [...]

Time to break out the balance sheet in the hope that my finances aren’t roasting in a huge inferno of suck. Credit Card / Car Loan / Student Loan Debt: $0 Expenses: $200 on control arm for a faulty ball joint on the vehicle last week, and an additional $68 for a new axle (which [...]

Frugality. Prudent money management. Savings. Investing. No debt. My financial foundation. But given the caricatured scenario above, I can’t help but wonder how well college students and graduates are handling their finances. This cartoon certainly depicts M., a computer engineer, who received his Bachelors diploma—and nearly $60,000 worth of debt—from a state university five years ago. [...]

Ugh. Expenses. This weekend was brutal, financially. Another wedding. (Our second within a month.) A stag party last night. And another wedding reception next weekend. M. and I calculated our wedding gift expenses, and it’s reaching such an exorbitant amount, I feel foolish (as a professed frugal-y chick) confessing the amount. I wonder how others [...]

Thursday evening, M. and I spontaneously decided we wanted to celebrate our daughter’s first birthday while camping by the ocean. We compiled a rough budget, and by four-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning, our rusty-orange Caliber was stuffed with gear and we were cruising five hundred miles to Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Our Anticipated Budget For Our [...]

Bitcoin, the ‘Comeback Kid’ — how a transient financial decision may be turning into a viable (and lucrative) emerging crypto-currency. Source: Prospecting Journal Community-orientated currencies have always fascinated me. There is something so darn compelling about a thriving, robust community transforming their hard-earned life energy into something honest and tangible and having that vision unfold [...]

Is it time to kiss our credit union goodbye? Recently M. and I stopped by our local credit union to proudly stash some of our family savings, roughly $5,000, away into a joint savings account. Everything was going swimmingly — until the first statement arrived in the mail. I was perplexed by a continuous charge [...]

Once every few months I peek at my finances to crunch some numbers and receive an overview of my financial well-being, and I’m tickled pink to share with you. (When I talk about financial stuff with my significant other, his eyes glaze over. This is what he hears: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.) [...]