Snowmageddon!

So we’re supposed to get 16-26 inches of snow by tomorrow night.

Awesome.

I’m kind of bummed that it’s happening over the weekend.  Snow days are much more fun when they’re during the week and we get some time away from work.

The grocery stores here have been INSANE.  Of course, it doesn’t help that one county was told to be prepared to shelter in place for three to five days.  The news has featured reports of long lines snaking through the stores, people getting into fistfights over food and parking spaces and lots and lots of empty shelves.

One running joke is “Why do people always buy bread, eggs, and milk when a storm comes?  Are we supposed to be eating a lot of french toast?”  With the storm hitting on the weekend, it makes sense that people needed to make some purchases, as a lot of people do their grocery shopping on the weekends.  So like everyone else, on Thursday, I was thinking about what I needed from the store.  And I couldn’t come up with anything!

I’ve wondered if my emergency supplies are sufficient, but when I sat down and thought about it, I realized I have more than enough food to get me through three to five days (and then some).  I’ve got lots of canned soup.  I just bought eggs and milk last weekend.  I have a loaf of bread in the freezer, as well as a number of other items.  I also have three gallons of drinking water put away, plus a few 2 liter bottles of tap water for washing.  I should have more water for a five day shelter in place, but the full Brita pitcher plus the case of VitaCoco (coconut water) should be more than enough on the off chance I can’t get out.  And of course, there’s always all that snow falling from the sky (which you should never eat for hydration if you are trapped outside).

While I don’t expect to be trapped for days, it was reassuring to not have to worry about going to the store.  I’m just hoping we don’t lose power.  Or internet.  I do have some books to read, but this is a great excuse to catch up on my Netflix queue.

Megan Smith

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.