We tallied up everything from our September budget last night, and the results were not as good as we hoped.  We really thought we were going to come in under budget due to a couple of places we had surpluses, namely a visit from the in-laws that we’d saved for and overbudgeting for fuel and [...]

The benefits of being debt free and having saved money never seem to end. If you are a regular reader of this irregular poster you know that I left my job back in February. Even at the time, we realized how fortunate we are to have the financial foundation that would allow me [...]

I left my steady job last week for what are hopefully the greener grasses of working for myself from home. One big hurdle in leaving is, of course, health insurance. Right now I’m spending a lot of time checking out HSA options for our family. We are lucky enough to be in [...]

We’ve always felt that the benefits of living debt free (except for our house), but the last few weeks have really driven home the importance of owing nothing.  Circumstances at my job changed drastically in the last couple of weeks.  The resulting situation was going to mean a lot more hours for me, and when [...]

The missus and I have both always been pretty responsible financially, but when we found out we were going to have a baby we had to reconsider a few things, mainly how big of an emergency fund we were going to need and how we could allow her to stay home and care for the little [...]

Our first child is only two months old, and we are already discussing how we want to handle money with our child(ren). My biggest concern up until I read this article is how early is too early?
Now, however, I have an even bigger fear. I realize that my parents never taught me ANYTHING about money. [...]

Just picked up Quicken 2007, and so far I like it a lot. The last version I had was 2003, and I switched over to Microsoft Money for a while since it came with the new laptop I bought and kept me from having to upgrade.
Hopefully I will get a chance to play with it [...]

When they found out we were going to have a bably, all of my friends warned me that a big expense would be in diapers. From what I’ve read, it takes about 5,000 diapers for each child. We figured that by planning well we should be able to keep the cost at around $.25 per [...]

Okay, based on yesterday’s post I came up with what I’ll call my three unbreakable rules for getting out of debt. My thought process went beyond just getting out. I think these rules also apply to STAYING out of debt.

1) Don’t borrow any more money
Absolutely the most important rule–didn’t even have to think about it. [...]

I think the most important thing you have to do to get out of debt and stay out of debt is to ave a plan and stick to it. There are several plans out there, and I don’t believe any of them really apply to every person’s situation. Which plan you use isn’t [...]