I cannot believe that 2010 is almost over. It has been a
really fast year. And also a really great year. I did a lot this
year. I finally got that new job I so desperately wanted. Sure, it
is in the same agency, but I have a new boss and new job
responsibilities and I am so much happier. I also managed to run
three half marathons, something I didn’t know if I could do. At the
beginning of the year. It was an expensive goal, since I didn’t run
any of those races in my home state, but it was so fun and
definitely worth it. This coming year, I am hoping to venture into
home ownership. If nothing else, I will be moving, because I can’t
stay in this apartment complex through the end of the year due to
some new policies. It is definitely a bummer, but also has opened
up an awesome new opportunity. I also need to get back to really
watching my budget. I let things slide in the latter half of the
year, and that needs to stop, especially if I am looking at home
ownership. I am looking forward to doing an end of the year net
worth update to see how the year ended out. I’m hoping for a solid
increase, but i have no idea. And that’s a bit sad. So here’s
hoping!
Megan is a 30-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.
