If you're reading personal finance blogs, you're probably someone who pays a lot of attention to your money. Maybe you've been budgeting for a long time, maybe you're just trying to get your finances in order. But when you've spent that much time paying attention to where every dollar goes and making sure you're putting the maximum into savings, it can be hard to justify a splurge purchase. Fun Money I have long been an advocate of "fun … [Read more...]
What would you do with a raise?
A friend of mine just found out that he is getting a surprise promotion. His company is restructuring after being sold, and they're downsizing a bit, so he was worried that he was going to lose his job. Instead, he's getting a huge promotion with a big increase in responsibilities and about a 25% pay increase. 25%! I was joking with him that now he can afford to go out to lunch twice a week instead of once a week. But it got me to … [Read more...]
Mental spending
A few days ago, I was talking to a friend who was excitedly discussing her holiday bonus. Amazingly, she works in an industry that's doing quite well, and her (privately owned) company is paying out bonuses this year. They don't know how much they're getting, but she got an estimated figure from someone allegedly in the know, and it sounds like they will get around $4000 before taxes. This friend has been scrimping and saving in order to … [Read more...]
Britain returning to wartime frugality?
Over the weekend, I stumbled across this article: Britain urging return to wartime food frugality. There is growing concern that affordable quality food will become scarce, not due to war, but due to the rising costs of both food and energy. Of course, this is a problem around the world, but until this article, I hadn't thought about the fact that this will have a bigger effect on places like Britain, where so much of the food has to brought … [Read more...]
A downside for the ladies
Yesterday, an AP article discussed that "Women should factor longer life into retirement." According to the article, women live an average of 22 years after retirement, while men only live 19 years after retirement, and given the increase in medical costs, women therefore need to save 2% more than men every year for 30 years to maintain their standard of living. Doesn't sound too terrible, does it? But there's more. On average, women … [Read more...]