Revisiting My 2008 Goals

Photo by: RBradburn

Just over six months ago, I laid out some goals and plans for 2008.  In that time, my life has changed in huge ways more than once, including getting a promotion and finding out we’re going to have another child.  All of these changes in such a short time have left us in [...]

Money Spent On Diet Programs Is a Only a Waste If You Let It Be

For 5 years, until a few months ago, I was a member of Gold’s Gym. I started out eager, hired a personal trainer, and proceeded to burn away nearly 30lbs of total weight while adding some much-needed muscle mass. I believe I spent a little over $1,000 on the personal training sessions on top [...]

Big Changes Coming to the Caveman Household

Saturday morning, awoken this morning by a screech. I had intended to sleep in a bit since I had a long week, but this wasn’t my alarm going off and it wasn’t a car outside. No, this screech came from the master bathroom.
Waking up to that kind of noise is distressing, at the very least. [...]

The Power of the Snowball

Update: I have posted a template for setting up your own snowball forecast.
Seeing the snow outside my window got me thinking about Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball concept. After all the reading I’ve done about snowballing one’s debt, I knew I was going to implement the same method in knocking out all of our non-mortgage [...]

Personal Balance Sheet, January 2008: Assets +0.13%, Liabilities -0.26%

Now that I have my spreadsheet method down, it’s time to start putting these numbers to work. Part of a sound personal finance strategy is to know not only where your money is going (the expense tracking) but also where it’s coming from.
Here’s January’s data:
Assets

Liabilities

Overview
Assets
Overall, we had a good month. I expected our [...]