Today, my local Farmer’s Market reopened for the season. It was kind of a disappointing showing of vendors, as a number of them don’t come until later, when they have more to bring. It is early in the growing season, I suppose.
I picked up some fresh bread, some apples, and some apple butter (I have been waiting for this particular vendor’s apple butter for a few months now). I ran to the store afterwards to pick up some odds and ends, and I did some price checking. I really wasn’t paying any less than I would pay at the store (save for taxes), but I still felt like I was not only getting better products, but I was doing something good for the community and for the environment. I like supporting local businesses, and I like the fact that my apples weren’t trucked all the way across the country and handled by countless people before they made their way onto my plate.
I’m excited to have the market back, and I’m eager to see what other vendors have signed up for the year.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
