goals

Keeping Track Of Our Spending

September 14, 2009

Recently I got an email from a long-time reader, asking me if we still keep track of our monthly expenses.  I guess the answer is both yes and no.  We do pay close attention to what we are spending, and I check our bank balances and credit card transactions on a daily basis.  But we [...]

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Financing A Car

February 26, 2009

Don’t worry… I’m not going to do it.  Not now, anyway.  But I am thinking about it. Ever since I found out that my credit score wasn’t as perfect as I thought, I’ve been pondering changes I could make to improve it.   I know my score is still really good, but it’s not excellent.  My [...]

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Financial Goals For 2009

December 5, 2008

This year – for the first time ever – we met all of our financial goals for the year.  This makes us all the more motivated to stretch further in 2009 and see what we can do.   Here’s our list: $5000 into my IRA $5000 into my husband’s IRA $5950 into our HSA $200/month into [...]

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Since I Didn’t Take Any Vacation Time…

July 3, 2008

I got my final paycheck from the library yesterday.  It was a good one, because I had more than 200 hours of vacation time saved up, and they cashed that out on my last check.  After taxes I ended up with over $2000, which is a good windfall.  Over the last year, I didn’t take [...]

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Babies and Money

May 9, 2008

We got our $1200 economic stimulus payment today.  We put the whole thing into our HELOC, since we have decided to make the HELOC a priority for the time being.  We’ve already maxxed out the HSA and my husband’s IRA for the year, and instead of moving straight to my IRA, we’ve been focusing on [...]

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Cross The HSA Off The List!!

April 10, 2008

We maxxed out our HSA today.  $5800, done and done.  That feels so good.  A whole lot better than shopping sprees and dinners out.  We maxxed out our HSA last year too, but we did it in the last week of the year, and it was a struggle.  I much prefer having it done in [...]

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A Little Extra Money To Put Towards Our Goals

March 11, 2008

Our insurance business is doing really well lately.  After four years of working on our website, my husband’s efforts have paid off, and the website is ranked number one on google for the keywords he targets.  Business has been good, although we’ve both been busier than ever… A happy result of all the extra business [...]

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Plugging Away At Our Goals

February 27, 2008

We had a prenatal visit today – everything’s still going really well with the pregnancy, and the days seem to be flying by.  We paid another $1000 to our midwife – we only owe her another $650, which we’re scheduled to pay in mid-April.  I remember when we were thinking about having a baby and [...]

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A Good Month for the HSA

January 24, 2008

I just put another $800 into our HSA.  That’s $2000 so far this year – only $3800 to go until we max out the account for 2008.  We’re trying to really swing for the fences with our financial goals this year.  We made the HSA priority one, and I’m hoping that we can have it [...]

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Personal Finance In A Less-Than-Stellar Economy

January 18, 2008

All is takes is a quick glance around the internet to see that the financial outlook these days is not as rosy as it has been for most of this decade.  The doom and gloom crowd is predicting a full blown recession, while the more optimistic folks say that there will just be a bit [...]

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