This weekend, my parents came to see my house for the first time. This was a big deal to me. I did the home purchasing process by myself (with tons of Realtor help, of course). Thankfully, they liked what they saw. I was really worried because their opinion matters. But they agreed that I made the right decision.
One thing that is on my list of things to do around the house is to work on the landscaping. Some of it will need to be done professionally – the yard needs to be regraded, and while I could rent the equipment and do it myself, it’s a bit out of my area of expertise. But what I can do is clean up the flowerbeds, weed, and put in some new plants. Conveniently, my mom loves to do these sorts of things, so Saturday found her out weeding my flowerbeds. Of course, I couldn’t let this happen, so I went out to help. We ended up adding a bunch of flowers and remulching the section along the walkway. It is amazing what a difference it made in the entryway! Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done, but seeing how great this looks makes me want to go out and work on the rest of the yard because I know just how great it’s going to be.
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.
