This week, Flexo is hosting the third anniversary edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but here are some of the standout posts for me. But be sure to check it out for yourself!
- My Top 5 Personal Finance Blunders – We all make mistakes, and we can all learn something from the mistakes of others.
- My Personal Finance Tipping Point – I always enjoy Chief Family Officer’s posts.
- Direct Sales – Good Way to Make Extra Money or Fast Way to Lose Friends? – While I can’t speak to the earning money part, as I’ve never participated in direct sales, I can say that some of my friends selling things like Avon or Pampered Chef have driven me CRAZY. Others were perfectly lovely about it.
- Our Financial Progress Over the Last 10 Years – I wonder where I’ll be in 10 years. Hopefully well on my way to retirement!
- $150K Got Me Nowhere – We can all learn something from this post. Best of luck to Dog Ate My Finances!
- Saving for Retirement vs. Living Your Life – I truly believe that you can’t just live for tomorrow. You have to live for today AND plan for tomorrow.
- The Emergency Fund – Where Should I Keep It and Why? – Some good points when considering an emergency fund.
- A Refreshing New Idea – I like the idea of a sunny day fund. I have a “wishlist fund.”
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.
