Well, this week just gets more and more expensive. Yesterday, the Metro was still down in my area due to the horrific accident, but the commuter rail line was back up, so I decided to take that route. I picked up a one way pass… for $4. It’s a whopping 13 minute ride. Then I still had to hop on the Metro to get the rest of the way to work. That money was already paid though.
When I got to Union Station, I picked up three more one way passes – one to get me home and two for today, because I wasn’t sure if the Metro would be back on some semblance of a normal schedule.
Again, this wasn’t money I had to spend. But my options were limited. I could have taken the shuttle busses to one of the other Metro stations and ridden from there. But the local news and friends both seem to indicate that perhaps these aren’ t the best alternatives, as they’re slow and confusing. I could have taken the bus. Again, slow, crowded and confusing, due to all of the people looking for alternate routes. I could have driven to work. There is apparently a parking lot about half a mile away from my office that charges $6 a day to park. That would save me $2… but then there’s the cost of gas. And the hassle of driving in D.C. I could have parked in the lot by my office… for $20. Not really an option.
So I dropped another $16 this week. However, due to said transportation issues, I didn’t make PF Blogger Happy Hour, so I guess it all evens out in the end.
I’m lucky that this is the biggest “crisis” in my week. Very lucky.
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.
