Blu-ray, Blu-ray, Blu-ray. It seems everyone is excited about Blu-ray. Personally, I’m not sure what the fuss is about. From my perspective, from what I’ve seen, it seems to be an overpriced new media format that doesn’t really seem to improve the quality “that†much. I have watched the sample Blu-ray movies in various stores when I’m out shopping and I really can’t see a
Confession: Coming Clean About Our Expenses
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately peering in to my personal finance spreadsheet. This is the spreadsheet that shows all of our major assets, our income, our expenses and our liabilities. The assets and liabilities really haven’t changed much. Here’s a quick rundown of the major stuff: House: $340K Lake House: $155K Toyota Truck: $9K Honda CRV: $24K Boat: $8K Yamaha Quad: $4.5K
We Killed Cable
I’ve been considering killing off cable TV at our house for the last year or so. Today I finally took the plunge and called Comcast. I think what finally caused me to do it was receiving our last cable bill. Our discounts had dropped off and the bill was back up to $110 for cable and Internet. The same day I happened to read an
It’s Time for a Short Vacation
My wife and I were evaluating what we could do for a short vacation while our daughter is off for spring break and we’ve decided to head to Lake Havasu Az. The flight is booked and the rental car is reserved. All we need to do now is sit back and wait to leave. While we are down there, I’m planning on doing a bit
I Refuse to Give in and Subscribe to HD Cable
I think I may have some sort of split personality disorder. While I’ve been working hard to lock down our spending, I’ve also found myself “giving in†to a few desires. One of those desires is a new 47†LCD TV from Costco. For the last 7 years we’ve been using the old picture tube TV that was in our house when we bought it.
February was a Strong Savings Month
February was a quick month, as it always is. Normally I’d expect it would be an average or below average month for income. This February turned out to be one of our higher income months and it wasn’t even a “3 paycheck†month for us. A combination of factors helped boost our income this month and helped us add a solid $5500 to our savings
Is This the End of the American Way of Life?
It’s been a tough week. There’s really no other way to put it. Layoffs at work have hit closer to home than they ever have before and the overall mood in the office is absolutely horrible. Since last Friday I’ve been slowly hearing about many friends and really good employees that have been given their layoff slips. Why? Because the company has decided to try
Moving to the UK as a Retirement Option
Previously I mentioned that we were working to get our daughter registered as a UK citizen. She is eligible for British citizenship because my wife was born in England, although she lives in the US now and is also a US citizen. As we thought about it a bit, we realized that we’d be foolish not to register our daughter as a UK citizen. While
Getting UK Citizenship for Our Daughter May Have Financial Implications
My wife, Kate, was born in England and moved here when she was five with her parents. She became a US citizen many years later and now has dual citizenship in the US and in the UK. It never occurred to me that there could be any benefit to having citizenship in two countries until Kate flew to England a few years ago to visit
Are We Prepared For a Layoff?
This week is a really tough week at work. People at all levels of the company are getting laid off so there is a lot of “staring at the ground†going on as people deal with the prospect of losing their income. While this has happened many times before at my large company, it’s hitting closer to home than it ever has before. I’m seeing