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July Monthly Update

photo credit: blakeimeson
Sorry for the delay but things have been busy both at work and at home. I’ve decided to modify my goal of saving 25% of my gross income for retirement this year. In my zeal to amass lots of retirement savings, I lost sight of the fact that that money [...]

Five Signs That You’re Living Beyond Your Means

Yahoo Finance published a good article entitled Five Signs That You’re Living Beyond Your Means.  Here are the five signs as well as measures you can take if you find yourself in any of these situations.

Your credit score is below 600 – If this is the case, the first step is to pull a copy [...]

Benchmarks for Borrowing

photo credit: »Philo
Consumer Reports published an article on the eight benchmarks of borrowing.  I must say that I don’t agree with all of their benchmarks.  For example, they state that non-mortgage debt (i.e. auto loans, credit cards, etc.) shouldn’t be more than 20% of your gross income.  If a person has a gross income [...]

Challenge Yourself!

It’s very easy to get complacent in life as well as with your finances.  I’m definitely guilty of this.  Therefore, i’ve decided to give myself a challenge.  I hope you’ll join in and create your own challenge.
I currently save ~20% of my gross income for retirement.  My challenge will be to increase that amount to [...]

Easy Breezy Budgeting

photo credit: PPDIGITAL
People often wonder how they should go about making a budget.  In my opinion, CREATING a budget is easy.  It’s STICKING TO the budget that can be hard.  Here are the simple guidelines I used when I created a budget.  Of course, you can tweak these percentages as need be.
tithes or charity [...]

What’s on My Financial Plate

Well, not much is going on with me financially right now. My finances are pretty much on auto-pilot but I’m always trying to find new ways to maintain the same standard of living while spending less and saving more. For example, I subscribe (free with FF miles of course) to Allure magazine. [...]

Way2Save

Wachovia Bank has instituted a new savings program. Every time you make a transaction (debit card purchase or online bill pay), $1 is transferred from your checking account into your Way2Save savings account. It’s definitely a painless way to save but I imagine it would make balancing your checkbook a little bit more [...]

Ten Easy Ways to Save Money

I’m always looking for ways to make more money and to spend less money…without lowering my quality of life/standard of living.  So I thought I’d give you guys a sample of the ways I like to save money.  There are some things I don’t mind paying full-price for (like Cirque du Soleil tickets) but those [...]