One year. A lot has happened over the past year, and I’m looking forward to the next. Here are some highlights from my first six months of blogging. The next six months will be posted tomorrow.
November
December
- I created some goals for 2008
- Earned a bit of money selling off old textbooks
- I am a sucker for advertising
January
- I explained my stance on credit cards
- You know, I still hate hidden fees
- My financial future totally changed when I discovered YNAB
February
- I tried to save money by cooking more
- Credit reports – check yours
- I had a bad houseguest and discussed money and emotions
- I stuck to my grocery budget (for possibly the only time all year)
- My dismay at my investment drop is now kind of laughable
- I got to sit at the boardroom table at the Federal Reserve
March
- I offered up suggestions on choosing a charity
- Some things are more important than money
- Roth IRAs and Emergency Funds
- I decided to look for a new job (and still don’t have one)
- Sold some stuff on eBay
April
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.
