Two carnival links for you this week:
- Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Weakonomi¢s
- Festival of Frugality hosted by Always the Planner
Some Pecuniary Associates articles from the past few weeks:
- Trevor writes about the SEP IRA. I’m not a small business owner (though someday maybe this blog will count?) but it’s good information to have at the back of my mind.
- Lisa discusses her passive income goals for April and those for May. I really should get working on this.
- Karen looks at the national averages and figures out where she fits in. I think I’m going to spend some time seeing where I fit in as well.
- Penelope writes about making homemade noodles. I’ve been thinking about trying to eat foods that are more natural and less preservative filled, but that’s not always so easy to do and still stay frugal. This might not be a bad thing to try!
And don’t forget, comment on this entry for a chance to win a copy of the new book by the writers of Wise Bread!
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.
