Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers. I hope everyone has a great day filled with friends and family and great food. I’m going to an “orphans” Thanksgiving of sorts – a gathering of a group of us who opted to not leave town to be with our families for one reason or another. For me, it was a combination of money and a desire to not deal with the crowds that kept me in the area, and I can’t complain. I’ve got great plans with some great friends, and some people that I’ve never met as well. It should be a great time, and I’m definitely thankful that even though I’m not going home, I have a place to go to spend the day.
It’s been an interesting year so far, both on a personal level, as well as a national and a global level. I know that I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a job with a steady paycheck, and I have enough money to pay my bills. I have wonderful friends and family. I have a number of opportunities coming my way, professionally speaking. All in all, even with all the stress, I have a pretty good life, and for that, I’m thankful.
And I’m thankful for you. Have a wonderful day, everyone.
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.
Happy Thanksgiving! I agree with everything in your post. We have a lot to be thankful for. 🙂