Better than a raise - Counting My Pennies

I just hit the three year mark at my job. I never thought I’d make it through three years there, but by some magic, I did. On my 3 year anniversary at the agency, I got the call that I got the transfer (within the department ) that I had applied for, which makes my job a hundred times better.

One of the perks to hitting the 3 year mark is that I now get more vacation time. Seven more days, to be exact. I can’t tell you how exciting that is. I don’t take a lot of big trips, mostly little weekend trips here and there, but my whole family lives halfway across the country. A lot of my vacation time is spent with them. So getting an extra seven days is awesome. I can spend time with my family and take trips for myself and not feel guilty about it.

Definitely better than a raise.

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.

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