Living for today - Planning for Tomorrow
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before but I agreed to be the PTA treasurer at my daughter’s school this year. So far it has been relatively uneventful. It mostly entails writing lots of checks, balancing a budget each month and reporting facts and figures during the monthly meetings. Besides writing lots of checks, I’ve also been receiving a lot of money to deposit in
It used to be that people would compare themselves with their family, friends and neighbors. It makes sense, if you think about it. People are most likely to compare themselves to what and who they see on a daily basis. If your neighbor buys a new car, you might be more inclined to feel the need to get yourself a new car. I mean, if
I happened upon an article today about a Law Professor named Todd Henderson. Todd discusses how unfair the expiring tax cuts are to his family. I’m not going to try to summarize it too much. Go read it HERE. Seriously, go read it. It’s interesting but what is FAR more interesting is the comments. There is a second article related to this HERE. This was
Think you know the single best thing you can do to save energy? A recent survey shows that most people don’t. The single best thing you can do to conserve energy and save money on your power bill is to swap out all of your light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. While you can certainly save money by vigilantly turning off lights around your house,
There are only a few things in life that are as easy as calculating a 10% discount. I think I grasped the concept at about age 7. Look at the total and move the decimal point one digit to the left to figure out what a 10% discount would be. For example a $10.00 total would yield a $1 discount. A $100.00 total would
I was browsing through my “Personal Finance†folder on my computer a couple of days ago and stumbled upon an old copy of my master budget/net worth spreadsheet from about 4 years ago. I’ve always enjoyed looking back at old copies of our finances because it reminds me of how far we’ve come. As I looked over the numbers on the spreadsheet, one number really
I was sitting around one day when I started wondering how much my property taxes cost me each day. I had absolutely no idea, although I knew that I pay over $4000 a year in property taxes. After a quick check, I found I’m actually paying $4450 in property taxes each year. Ugh. So, what does that work out to per day? $12.19. Double ugh.
About a week ago I was driving my 2000 Toyota Tacoma truck with my seven year old daughter riding shotgun. We were heading over to my mom’s house for a short visit, which required us to drive across a valley, up a pretty steep, long hill and then along the Puget Sound for a bit. As we started up the long hill my truck started
Seems like kind of a harsh question to ask, but I think it’s a necessary one. A number of years ago my wife and I purchased a $100,000 term life insurance policy on me. My rationale was that we were young and didn’t have much debt and that was enough to get my wife back on her feet after dealing with my death. Fast forward
As I posted earlier, I was recently shopping for a clothes dryer after ours decided to quit working. I have to say, it was not an enjoyable experience. In the end, I managed to avoid the purchase and pick up a used one for nearly nothing from a neighbor, but the process that I went through to get to that point sucked. When I first
