I was out of town this weekend and came back completely swamped with stuff to do. My apartment is magically a disaster again, my inboxes at work and at home are completely full, and I have to do laundry or else. But it was nice to get away and relax a little bit, even if it means coming back to a lot of stress.
One thing I did while back in my hometown was close my old bank account. I’m not sure why it was still open, to be honest. When I moved, I left my local bank for a larger, national bank. I loved the services of the local bank, but I wanted to have ATM access in the city where I lived. That account sat open and unused for three years. Sadly, I had cleared out all but the minimum required to keep the accounts free, so there wasn’t a ton of interest earned – plus I’ve been checking in on the account every month when doing my Net Worth update, so there were no fun surprises. That’s the downside to keeping a close eye on your money – you aren’t pleasantly surprised when things have grown more than you thought. On the other hand, there are no negative surprises either, so I guess it’s worth it.
I just noticed that Mint.com now has an Android application, so one of the things I want to do today (once I get everything else checked off my list) is check that out. Anyone using that?
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.
I recently downloaded the Mint app, and while I haven’t used it a lot, it seems well designed. It gives a nice overview when you open it up. I suspect that for people who are hardcore Mint users, it’ll be even awesomer–I’m not a huge Mint user anyhow, but have found the app handy.
I do worry, some, that if I were to lose my phone, someone could easily access my Mint account, but the convenience outweighs the worry, for me. (I suspect you could tell it not to save your password, too, I’m just lazy and haven’t bothered to look for that setting.)
My apartment is magically a disaster too. I don’t even know how it happens! All of a sudden it just looks awful!