Category Archives for Blogging

Happy 2 Year Birthday to My Personal Finance Journey!

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

Happy Monday folks! Just a quick post here this afternoon to announce that today marks the official 2 year birthday of My Personal Finance Journey! Wooohooo!

It all started 730 days ago with a simple little post about a $30 sign up bonus offer for the Chase Amazon Credit Card. Coincidentally, I still have that credit card and use it for all of my Amazon purchases. It provides a pretty nice cash back feature too!

Since that first post on January 16th, 2010, here at My Personal Finance Journey, we’ve had about 115,000 visitors and 521 total posts. It’s been a great ride, and I look forward to another success year of learning and interacting from all of you.

To celebrate reaching the 2 year mark on this site, I’m giving away $196 as part of the ongoing monthly 10% blog income give back project. Be sure to hop on over to that post to enter to win and help a charity all at the same time!

Thanks again for all your support!

Jacob

***Photo courtesy of http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/skambalu-04540b8d817365b83e0878d99b53b735-hd.jpg

Blogging and Personal Goal Setting for the 2012 New Year

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.


With this being a new year and all, I’ve decided to lay out some personal goals for my life in general and blogging goals for My Personal Finance Journey during 2012. I have also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month (or as often as I have time for anyway!).

As I experienced in 2011, (click the following link to view my 2011 blogging goals and year-end progress updates) by tracking these goals each month, it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog and in my life.


As is the case with many things in life (including my 2012 financial goals which I laid out recently), a good portion of my blogging goals are long-term commitments requiring attention in each passing year. As such, you might see many similar goals that I was trying to or did achieve in 2011 listed for 2012. I am perfectly fine with having some of the same goals year-to-year, provided that I believe in the causes they represent (which I ponder each year, and all of the ones listed below definitely do meet that criteria!). Nevertheless, I’ve tried to call attention to completely new blogging goals for 2012 by highlighting them in bold red text for easier reading. 

In addition, my personal goals for 2012 are as follows:

1. Get to bed at midnight and wake up earlier, instead of staying up until 2 am working on various projects.
2. Take 1 day off per week (Saturday or Sunday) completely from doing work on my blog or from my graduate research job to keep my mind feeling more “fresh.”
3. Become better at following the Getting Things Done email/workflow management system to focus my time and energy on high value projects first and avoid distractions. 

• Towards the end of 2011, I started getting between 100-200 emails total per day relating to blogging and communications from my graduate research job. 
• When I used to have a full time engineering job, I had a totally separate computer and email account that would not even allow me to access my home email (which I saw as a very good thing). However, with the way my current job is set up, I use the same computer for blogging and my full time job. 
• So, unless I am careful, it is easy to be disturbed during the day by blogging emails since there are more requests coming my way than I have time to respond to. 
• To help with this, the Getting Things Done system dictates that you only download/look at your email 1-2 times per day so that your focus remains in tact. 
• It’s actually a really fascinating “occurrence” because up to now in my life, my responsibilities/involvement have been limited enough that I could generally accomplish everything that was coming at me to get done in a day. However, now, for the first time in my life, I have to pro-actively prioritize what I get involved in and be aware of what I am/am not able to do (even though I would like to do it if I had more time). I’m not sure if this makes sense, but since it’s one of my goals for 2012, I figured it merited a little explanation.

How about you all? What blogging/personal/professional goals have you set for yourself in 2012? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3922312417-hd/Argentina/Sport/Football/Lionel_Messi/Joan_Gamper_Trophy.jpg

Back to the Basics: Control Your Spending

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

The following is a guest post written by Wayne at Young Family Finance, where he helps young families understand the importance of everyday finances like the cost of owning a dog.

What makes a person successful with their finances? Is it making a lot of money? Investing it wisely? Or, properly managing it? While there may be a variety of legitimate responses, this question seems to highlight another important question that I have when it comes to managing my finances: What is the most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?

In other words, if you had to narrow it down to one thing, what would it be and why? I want to suggest that the most important aspect is found in finances 101. In fact, one of the most basic lessons is the most vital thing to being responsible with your finances. Here’s why.

Why Going Back to the Basics is Important

If you have been responsible for your finances for years, you may think that you have your bases covered. You are probably more concerned about getting a large bonus from your employer or maximizing your investments for retirement as opposed to budgeting or reducing your expenses. Anyone who has experience with managing their finances is likely to think this way.

The more experienced individuals have been around the block more than a couple times and know everything about getting good deals on this item or this or that. Yet, the problem with thinking this way is that it assumes that once you learn something about finances, you don’t need to cover it again. This view sees finances as knowing a list of items, that immediately leads them on to the next more exciting thing. What tends to happen, however, is that these individuals start to forget some of the basics. For example, some start spending more than they should. They forget the importance of budgeting and then hit a downward spiral.

More experienced individuals tend to forget that managing your finances takes discipline and consistency. Finances is all about staying in control of your finances. It requires continuous work and attention. It isn’t something that you can ignore without consequences. Being reminded of financial basics prevents even the most experienced financial expert from failing.

Going Back to the Basics

As I hinted above, the most frequent mistake of the people that have a lot of experience managing their finances is getting a complacent and starting to spend too much money. This often results from earning too much money and feeling entitled. Another term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you earn more money, you naturally tend to increase your spending because you feel that you deserve to treat yourself. I have seen this happen in both of my older brothers as they get raises or better-paying jobs. Instead of putting more money towards retirement or their investments, it often leads toward more expensive cars or more expensive gadgets. Getting back to the basics of financial management will help both the experienced and beginner control this urge.

Perhaps more important than controlling your expenses, specifically, spending less than you earn is a fundamental element of any financial advice. Here are several reasons why it is one of the most important aspect of managing your finances.

• If you are spending more money than you are earning, not only will you fail to save money for retirement, but you will also be going in to debt.
• It doesn’t matter how much money you make – if you can’t control your spending, you will always fall short.
• No matter how great you are at investing, if you are spending more than you make, you won’t have any money to invest.

Another way of communicating the importance of controlling your spending is to compare your finances to a stream of water. You can think of your job as the source or the spring of water. From here, the water runs to the areas that it is directed: mortgage, car payments, utilities, insurance, retirement investments, etc. You need money coming in in order to allocate it towards certain expenses or funds.  If you are spending more money than you earn, you are essentially re-directing water away from the necessary paths that need water (like retirement). People often go into debt and spend more money than they actually have because they fail to understand the limited amount of money that they have or the later repercussions that they will face.

How to Spend Less than You Earn

Spending less than you make is easier said than done, right? If you find that you are spending too much money and want to get a handle on your finances, here are a couple ways that my wife and I use to keep our spending in check.

• First, we live by the ‘is it necessary’ rule of thumb. In other words, for every purchase, we force ourselves to ask whether it is absolutely necessary. Just by asking this question, I have found that we can avoid many major purchases. 
• Second, we limit the number of times we dine out to once per month. While it is hard at times, this little step goes a long ways to keeping us from going overboard on food. I find that food is one of the easiest ways for busy individuals or families to overspend. While these strategies work for my family, you will need to find what works for you.

When it comes to successfully managing your finances, it starts with controlling your spending. There are more things that are involved in being completely responsible with your finances (like saving first), but without this first step, you will have a difficult time getting anywhere in life. If you are looking to get a grasp on your finances, start by getting control of your spending. Stay diligent with this as you progress to more complicated issues because it is something that you have to keep in check.

How about you all? Do you have trouble managing your spending? What are some ways that you have limited your spending?


Share your experiences by commenting below!


Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Great post here Wayne! Thanks so much for sharing it with us today! 
• @ What makes a person successful with their finances?
• Let’s see…This is a tough question. But, if I had to say what the one thing was that defines a person’s success in their finances, it would be that they are able to use their finances in order to live out their life dreams and life values. In other words, they are able to use their money to accomplish what they want to achieve in life at a core values level.  
• @ What is the first and most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?
• I would also have to agree with Wayne on this in that I believe controlling your spending is probably the most important aspect of managing your finances. 
• I believe in this because until a person starts to control their spending, more sophisticated goals cannot be realized. 
• For example, until you stop overspending, you cannot pay off debt, save for retirement, save for putting your children through college, or save for the awesome vacation you want to take. You are essentially stuck in the mud, and won’t be able to go anywhere fast. 
• So, even if you don’t make a lot of money, the first step to getting on track financially is to stop overspending.
• @ The importance of reviewing the basics from time to time – 
• This is a very important reminder here Wayne, as it was something I was reminded about the other day. 
• As a personal finance blogger, I sometimes have the tendency to thoroughly research a topic once, write a post about it, and then simply take for granted that I don’t need to learn anything else about it because I have “already learned it before.” This can get me in to trouble since I would potentially miss out on hearing about specifics I missed before or new developments that pop up. 
• A good example of this occurring happened the other day when I was responding to a comment about Roth IRAs. I had thought that I knew pretty much all their was to know about Roth’s – the contribution limits, withdrawal rules, tax treatment, and penalties.
• However, what I found out was that when I initially learned about Roth IRAs in 2009 or so, I was thinking that withdrawals of contributions and investment earnings were treated the same. As it turns out, there is a huge difference! 
• Anyhow, the point of all this is that once you learn something once, keep an open mind to learning about new details any chance you get.
• @ The best way I know of to make controlling your spending sustainable – 
• As Wayne mentions above, a person can learn a TON about managing their personal finances well. But, if they don’t keep up these effective habits, any progress that was made can be reversed quickly. 
• As such, the best way I’ve found to keep up the habit of controlling your spending is to make frugal living a lifestyle, not just something you practice from time to time. 
• If you can get yourself to the point where controlling your spending is second nature (ie you derive no added satisfaction in life from spending excessively), the practice will truly become sustainable.
• Unfortunately, adopting frugality at a lifestyle values level is not something that comes quickly or easily. The best ways I’ve found to encourage people to begin adopting this type of lifestyle is to 1) do it gradually by scaling back your spending in stages and 2) to adopt savings/investing as a hobby. 
• This would actually be a good topic for a future post since it is a pretty involved topic. 
• @ The best way I’ve found to control spending – 
• For me personally, the best way I’ve found to control my spending is to limit the amount that I buy food from restaurants to about 1 time per week. This includes breakfast, lunch during the work day, and dinner. 
• Furthermore, when I cook at home, I try to buy generic brand items to save some money as well. 

***Photo courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4258961182_376cf29b36.jpg

Blogging Goals Update – 2011 Year End Review and Wrap Up

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

In January of 2011, I wrote a post detailing some of my blogging goals, targets, and dreams for the year of 2011. When I did this, I also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month.

I have been sort of bad in that while I have been tracking these goals offline, I have not published an update on my blog in several months (only so many hours in the day, right?!).

My goal for today’s post is to rectify this!

By tracking blogging goals, I am hoping that it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog.


This post marks the last wrap up of the 2011 year that I’ll do. From here, it’s on to sharing my financial, personal, and blogging goals for the 2012 year! Should be a fun time!

So, here goes! The blog goals for 2011 were as follows, with progress updates given in bold type, current as of the end of December, 2011.

How about you all? What blogging/personal/professional goals did you set for 2011? Overall, how did you progress in achieving them?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.dvq.com/main/4010icon.jpg

$196 Giveaway – Community and Charity 10% Monthly Blog Income Give Back # 4 – January 2012 Edition + 2 Year Blog Birthday Celebration

• 1) The readers – Obviously, without you here to read my articles and interact with my ideas, there would be no blog in the first place (let alone blog income). As such, it is only fitting that you receive a portion of any blog income.
• 2) Charitable organizations – If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’m a big believer in donating a portion of my money to charity. Each year, I donate between 5-10% of my income to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of the Bike for MS fundraiser that I do. Beyond the good that is done by donating your money, getting used to contributing to charity is also a good practice to emulate the actions of affluent individuals (T. Harv Eker discusses this in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, which I would definitely recommend reading if you have a few hours).

Like last month, I’ve decided to use the new RaffleCopter giveaway management tool to handle sign-up facilitation for the January giveaway, so simply go through the steps listed in the widget below to enter the running for the prize and accumulate entry points.

There is no limit to the amount of points you can earn. If you refer 10 subscribers – your name will have accumulated 170 entry points! Or, if you link to the giveaway more than once, you can accumulate those 7 entry points multiple times. You can also retweet the giveaway once per day. In the event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” or “Enter” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on January 31st, 2012 (a little over 3 weeks from today – the start of the give back). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winner (one with the most points accumulated) will be contacted via email to receive their prize and select this month’s charity organization for the donation.

***Photo courtesy of http://stefanmarkov.com/family/images/yana_3yrs_1.jpg

Yakezie Carnival – 10 Tools I’m Thankful For in My Personal Finances – December 18th, 2011 Edition

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $74.52 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is December 31st, 2011.

Welcome everyone to the December 18th, 2011 edition of the Yakezie Carnival!

About This Carnival

For those of you unfamiliar with the Yakezie Personal Finance Blog Network, it is the web’s largest, most involved, and most organized group of personal finance and lifestyle bloggers. Participants in the network collaborate multiple times throughout each day on the Yakezie forums and through other mediums. You can view all of the details at the “About Yakezie” page by clicking here.

Each week, the members and challengers of the Yakezie Network submit their best articles to be featured in the Yakezie Carnival. And, today, it is My Personal Finance Journey’s honor to be the host! We last hosted the carnival nearly three months ago on September 25th, when the theme of the carnival was highlighting several examples throughout history of selflessly helping others.


Today’s Carnival Theme

Being as that Christmas is only 1 week away and the holiday season is when I often reflect on things for which I am thankful, I figured it’d be cool to share 10 tools that I use in my personal finances and am thankful for as part of today’s carnival theme. You’ll find these interspersed in random order throughout the post listings below. Enjoy!

To get us started, listed below are this week’s Top 3 Editor’s Picks. Typically, when I host a carnival, it is quite clear what the three winning articles are. However, I find that when I’ve hosted Yakezie Carnivals, the quality of the articles is so high that I often find myself torn between about 8 articles competing for the top spots. 


1. Money Q&A: Three Christmas Gifts To Give Your Children That Keep On Giving – There are a few examples of Christmas gifts to your children such as Roth IRA contributions that will keep on giving long after the holiday season has ended.


2. Krantcents: Holiday Networking – Holiday parties can be a great for networking. Expand your network for the future.

3. Your Finances Simplified: Work Hard and Shut Up! – I promise you, that if you worked this hard at anything, your life would be different!  Mrs. YFS and I were at our local IHOP to take advantage of some of their seasonal pancakes and stumbled upon this very ambitious and dedicated employee who is the basis of my story.

And, listed below are the best of the rest! The selected entries are formatted as follows – 1) Blog title in bold, 2) Post title and link, and 3) a description written by the site owner about the post.

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10. Online Banking – No more balancing of the checkbook is needed, and all of my purchases are tracked automatically! Additionally, I can transfer funds via ACH over the Internet without deposit slips.
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Financial Success for Young Adults: Debt: The Elephant in the Room – Debt is a reality for most college students. Don’t be afraid to manage your debt so that you can have money to invest.

Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance: How to Live Well When Your Passion Doesn’t Pay Well (Part 3) – This article highlights 4 people who learned how to turn their passion into cash.

Debt Black Hole: How Much Do You Spend On Your Geek Collections? – Most Geeks take their collections (action figures, props, autographed pics, original art, authentic replicas, etc.) VERY seriously! But there’s always someone out there with a bigger collection- and more money to spend on it. What do you collect? Where does the money come from?

My Journey to Millions: Affording the Costs of Living – Presently, I’ve learned to compartmentalize things by remembering what I sometimes call the “random fund”. The random fund is small cache of money I mentally set aside that is used to pay for all the little random things life can throw at you.

Invest It Wisely: The Three Stages of Financial Freedom – Last week, I talked about the three stages of financial despair. This week I am going to look at the flip side, the three stages of financial freedom. We all want to get out of the rat race, but before we get there, we need to get out of the hole and onto level ground.

Money Cone: Selling Stuff on Amazon: A Step-by-Step Guide – How would you like to get rid of your old stuff and get paid for it? Toys, DVDs, gadgets, books, CDs… everyone’s got a few! But instead of junking them or even worse, letting them collect dust, why not sell them from the comfort of your home? With Amazon Marketplace, you can!

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9. Automatic scheduled payments and savings – In my finances, I try to automate as many things as possible so that they happen without me having to remember to do them (which helps prevent me from failing to do it). I have automatic payments set up on everything from paying my homeowner’s association fees and internet bill to saving for a trip to the Grand Canyon in 2012-2013!
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Live Real, Now: Fighting Fair – Arguments in your marriage aren’t–or shouldn’t be–intended to draw blood. Fights happen. If your goal is to win at any cost, you will both lose, possibly everything.

Investorz Blog: Why Being an Investor is an Ideal Career Path – There are two big decisions in life: who you’re going to marry, and what career path you’ll take. This post concerns the later. Here is why I believe that being an investor is the ultimate “job” one can have.

HowToSaveMoney.ca: Using Freezer Cooking as a Way to Reduce Your Grocery Budget – Don’t be intimidated by freezer cooking. It can be as easy or as hard as you make it. If you just simply double your recipes when you are cooking your dinner, you will have a stocked freezer and more money in the bank, before you know it.

Money Talks Coaching: One Big Savings Account or Lots of Little Ones? – The reason I’m a fan of having separate savings accounts is because it keeps the individual balances lower. It’s a psychological thing.

The College Investor: The Best Investment Advice I’ve Received – A personal story about the best investment advice received and how it paid off.

My Multiple Incomes: How Long Referral Traffic Spends On Your Site – A look at how long referral traffic stays on your site from major social media sites.

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8. Google Docs Spreadsheet – My my – where would I be without Google Docs spreadsheets? I use these little gems to track my net-worth movements from month to month, my spending in order to group the totals in to different categories, and my running monthly budget to make sure I’ve met all of my monthly requirements.
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The Frugal Toad: Estate Planning Basics – What You Need to Know – Have you ever thought about what would happen if you became incapacitated or died? What would happen to your home and other assets? Do you have a will and does your spouse know what your final wishes are? An estate plan is a set of legal documents that will make sure that your final wishes are taken care of.

Personal Finance Whiz: How To Live On One Income – A Budget For A One Income Family – Can you live on one income? It may not seem like it if you have always had a two income household. But, it’s totally doable. A year ago, I might have felt differently, but this year, we’ve moved to one income in our household.

Narrow Bridge Finance: What Is the Best Time of the Year to Sell Stocks? – As we approach the end of the year, some investors are going to try to minimize their taxes by selling stocks. Someone recently asked me when you should sell, and the answer can be complicated depending on your situation.

Beating Broke: DIY Disaster; or, Our New Deck – Be sure you do as much analysis as you can on the project, and budget for unforeseen issues, before you tackle any major DIY project. Also, it’s better to have it done right, than have it done cheaply, so if you get in over your head, find a professional to help you. Many will gladly charge a consulting fee to come and tell you what you need to do next. Find one that will, or hire one to finish the job so that it’s done right.

Bucksome Boomer: A Blogger Without Internet Is Like. . . – I like getting unconnected during vacations but those times are planned. Instead of running out to a fast food restaurant with free WiFi, I took and breath and decided to make the best of it. It wasn’t bad but thankfully the outage was only 16 hours.

Money Is the Root: How Well Do You Know Your Health Benefits – Until recently, the extent of my knowledge of my healthcare benefits was that I was insured. After all, we place such a high emphasis on simply being insured that we don’t know what’s covered until the worst happens.

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7. Cash Back Credit Cards – The credit cards really don’t benefit too much from having me as a customer (except for making money off of the point of transaction fees they charge vendors) since I never carry a balance month to month. Nevertheless, I really love that they give me the benefit of receiving 1-5% cash back on all of my purchases! Very nice!
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My Broken Coin: Is Hoarding The New Frugal? – My friend is a very frugal person: she counts every penny, she evaluates every purchase, and she does her research before she decides to buy anything whether it is a car or a pair of shoes. Read her story here!

Money Reasons: Controlling Christmas Costs – This is how I control Christmas Costs in the past, present and future. These are strategies that worked for me and perhaps will work for you!

Sweating the Big Stuff: Give This Gift If You Want To Piss Off Your Husband – I love getting surprises, but there’s one I wouldn’t be too thrilled with. If Lauren ever does this to me, we’d have a problem. What do you think?

101 Centavos: Walk-away Negotiating – Learn about walk away negotiating, be prepared to use this technique if you have to.

Thousandaire: Thousandaire Countdown #2 – HTPC Rap – The HTPC Rap is my best (and only) rap song. It’s also the second best song I’ve ever done.

The Family CEO: The Top Three Things I’ve Sold Online – These are the top three things that I have sold online that were big wins for me!

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6. High Yield Online Savings Accounts – Have you ever gotten on a traditional brick-and-mortar’s banking website and looked up what interest they’re paying on regular savings accounts? These days, it’s around 0.05%. Yes, you read that right – there’s a zero before the 5! haha However, with these online money market savings accounts (that are also FDIC insured), you can get many times greater interest payments!
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Funancials: I Only Listen to Techno – crats – Technocrats are becoming very popular in within our debt-stricken governments. Greece and Italy have already placed two technocrats in charge of their countries, now which countries will follow?

Smart Family Finance: Will a College Degree Increase Your Odds of Becoming Wealthy? Gallup Poll Finds Half of the Wealthiest 1% of Americans Have a Graduate Degree – Do you want to better your odds at become part of the wealthiest 1% of Americans? Gallup polling results show that you should consider getting a graduate degree. Half of those in the top 1% of wage earners have one.

Finance Fox: Thinking of Going Back to Former Employer – Would You? – Returning to a former employer is a real trend, and it’s happening in all industries. The trend is appropriately dubbed as “boomeranging.” No one said all relationships are perfect the first time. Maybe the second time around is the charm.

Newlyweds on a Budget: The Biggest Myths about Marriage – Long time married couples have often touted these three soundbites as the best kept secret to a long-lasting marriage. But, I’m here to tell you why these are the biggest marriage myths of all time.

Squirrelers: The Albert Pujols $254 Million Contract and the Pursuit of Money by the Top 1% – Would you turn down a job that offered you several million dollars more per year than the next best alternative? Of course not! Then why do people complain when athletes switch teams and do this? This post covers the topic of hypocrisy when judging the top 1% – from the perspective of someone squarely in the 99%!

The Happy Homeowner: Maintaining Your Financial Plan During the Holidays – The holidays can be one of the most challenging times of year to maintain your financial plan. This article provides some easy ways to help you keep an eye on your bottom line as you shop for gifts, host & attend parties, and celebrate the season.

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5. Roth IRA’s – My Roth IRA is quite indispensable in my overall finances. Each year, it is one of the highest priorities to be funded in order to save for retirement and shelter money from taxes while it grows.
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Money Beagle: Saying Bah Humbug To Secret Santa – I said no way this year after last year’s debacle.

Novel Investor: Know The Wash Sale Rule When Selling Those Losers – The year end is a popular time to sell those loser investments for tax purposes. But, this strategy can backfire if you don’t knowing the wash sale rules.

Investor Junkie: Best 2011 IRA Promotions – The holiday season is here, and that means the end of the year is almost near. Now is the time for investors add money to your IRA account. If you currently don’t have one, now is the time to open an account. I’ve gathered up the best IRA investment promotions.

My University Money: Tracking Your Expenses – The First Step to Budgeting – Why track? Why not just do a budget? We’ll explain why.

20s Finances: Getting a Bank Loan – Learn about what factors you need to consider when you are going to take out a bank loan and why you should use it as a last resort.

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4. Online Charity Donations – Each year, I donate to a Multiple Sclerosis fundraising event called the Tour de Vine. I also rally fundraising support for the event from others as well. Being able to process donations online in a secure environment plays a big role in making the fundraising process go smoothly.
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Passive Income To Retire: Keep My Day Job? – In my plan to retire from passive income, I have often questioned at what point will I quit my day job. It is hard to pass up on some of the benefits that my day job offers. Find out what my plan is.

Living in Financial Excellence: Top 5 Reasons Debt Is Like the Matrix – Reasons why being in Debt is like the Matrix, the movie!

Prairie Eco Thrifter: The 30K Challenge: Online Money Bloggers – I was honoured when I received an invite from two of my blogging pals Derek @ Life and My Finances and Corey @ 20′s Finance to participate in a new year challenge. At first, when I read that I would be challenged to make 30K next year online, I almost fell out of my chair followed by writing an email saying “Are you nuts?”

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: A Great Workout Music Playlist – Here is the workout playlist my husband put together for me to get me motivated. I really love the songs below, so don’t be too harsh, lol.

Cents To Save: Becoming A Full Time Caregiver – I have come to the realization that I will be my parents full time caregiver. As an only child, this is something that I knew might happen. Did I think it would happen now? No, not at all. I was pretty content enjoying my new home out in the country as a empty nester. But, with my mom’s recent diagnosis of Stage 4 brain cancer, things have definitely changed.

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3. Index Mutual Funds and ETFs – As a passive investor, I don’t trust myself in making investments in buying/selling individuals stocks. Instead, I invest the majority of my money in index mutual fund and ETFs.
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Cash Flow Mantra: Preparing SMART Goals for 2012 – Being an active blogger brings about many benefits, one of which is the fact that I end up reading a lot of material online and offline and so get to learn a lot of new things. One of the things that I learned this year is about goal setting and making my goals SMART.

Free Money Wisdom: The Bible and Finance: The Story of the Rich Young Man – The Biblical story of the rich young man is one of the more misunderstood and misinterpreted stories of the Gospels.

TotallyMoney: Easy Mince Pies – A simple mince pie recipe for the run up to Christmas

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2. Microloans – I’m a fan of placing a relatively small amount of funds each year in microloans for developing countries. For me, I see this as sort of a mix between investing and a donation. By doing these types of loans, you can really have an impact to get someone’s life going. To invest in microloans, I have found that Microplace.com is reliable.
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Don’t Quit Your Day Job…: What is the Net Worth of Members of Congress? – Ever wonder how your wealth compares to members of Congress? I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you that they’re likely winning the horse race… a full 6+% of Congress is in the upper 1% of net worth in America. On the other hand, 30 members have a negative net worth. Make you think… remember, these folks set the country’s budget!

Saving Money Today: How to Improve Your Finances in 2012 – Twelve tips for improving your finances in 2012. Follow one each month and you’ll be in great shape in no time!

Former Banker: You Got Fired, Now What? – I got fired! What do I do now? How do I maintain my lifestyle? How do I start looking for a new job? Do I qualify for unemployment?

The Milionaire Nurse: Shoplifting: Top Ten Holiday Favorites – Businesses will have over a hundred billion in lost profits from shoplifting in 2011. This figure does not even take into account the revenue spent in loss prevention. Crowded stores during the holiday season make it even easier for shoplifting to occur. On top of that, the most popular items stolen change during this season of good cheer.

Family Money Values: Growing Your Blog with Staff Writers – Ever thought about getting help with your blog? What are the benefits of using staff writers; management tasks related to use of them; payment and legal aspects of their use; and the blog results seen from using them?

Free From Broke : Tips for Holiday Tipping – The holidays creep up fast and all of a sudden you realize you need to tip people! But, who to tip and how much? Check out some basic guidelines and tips for holiday tipping.

Money Cactus: Wealth Creation Online: Untemplater Interview – Sydney took over the reins of Untemplater early this year and has been doing a fantastic job of delivering quality content and encouraging people to shatter the template lifestyle.

RamblingFever Money: A Socially Secure Christmas Story – A short story that compares one couples Christmas savings to the way that Social Security is funded.

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1. C.O.T.A.P. Folders and Microsoft Outlook Electronic Financial Information Storage System – Keeping track of detailed personal finance records can be a big pain, especially since the majority of records are being stored electronically these days. To manage all of this, I use a system of folders both on my computer/back-up hard-drive and Outlook email interface known as the C.O.T.A.P. system. In this system, a different folder is made for Clients, Output, Teams, Administrative, and Personal items. What I’ve found is that amazingly enough, most all documents fit in to one of these folders. Hence, the system works well!
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Sustainable Personal Finance: Sustainable Index Invest – Is oil sands producer Suncor really the best choice to go into a fund like this? Newmont Mining? Really? Where are the solar and wind power companies? What’s up with all the banks on there? What do they do to help the environment, besides recycling their bottles?

Faith and Finance: 8 Year-End Tax Moves to Consider at the End of 2011 – Before you know it, 2011 will be in the past and tax season will be upon us. Because it will be here sooner than you know it, now is a good time to look at what you’ll need to accomplish for your 2011 taxes before the end of the year

Watson Inc: 3 Powerful Ways To Decrease Your Financial Stress – These days people are fraught with economic stress.

How about you all? Which article in the listings above was your favorite? What personal finance tools do you use that you’re thankful for? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!


***Photo courtesy of http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3105/2602363529_aa2be7a127.jpg 

$74.52 Giveaway – Community and Charity 10% Monthly Blog Income Give Back # 3 – 100,000 Total Site Visitors Celebration December 2011 Edition

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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In case you missed the first (October) and second (November) 10% Blog Income Give Back, after doing some thinking at the beginning of October about what direction I want this blog to grow and evolve towards in the future, I decided that any income made from this blog would have more significance to me at a personal life values level if I knew that a portion were being given back to the following places:

• 1) The readers – Obviously, without you here to read my articles and interact with my ideas, there would be no blog in the first place (let alone blog income). As such, it is only fitting that you receive a portion of any blog income.
• 2) Charitable organizations – If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’m a big believer in donating a portion of my money to charity. Each year, I donate between 5-10% of my income to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of the Bike for MS fundraiser that I do. Beyond the good that is done by donating your money, getting used to contributing to charity is also a good practice to emulate the actions of affluent individuals (T. Harv Eker discusses this in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, which I would definitely recommend reading if you have a few hours).

Like last month, I’ve decided to use the new RaffleCopter giveaway management tool to handle sign-up facilitation for the December giveaway, so simply go through the steps listed in the widget below to enter the running for the prize.

There is no limit to the amount of points you can earn. If you refer 10 subscribers – your name will have accumulated 170 entry points! Or, if you link to the giveaway more than once, you can accumulate those 7 entry points multiple times. You can also retweet the giveaway once per day. In the event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

<a href=”http://rafl.es/enable-js”>You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway</a>.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on December 31st, 2011 (~3 weeks from today – the start of the give back). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winner will be contacted via email to receive their prize and select this month’s charity organization for the donation.

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/msvg/4260624212/sizes/l/in/photostream/

November 10% Blog Income Give Back Charity Drop

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Several days ago, the points were tallied from the My Personal Finance Journey November 10% Blog Income Give Back. Our Grand Prize winner was Donna B., and our 2nd place prize winner was YourFinancesSimplified.com. As such, last Friday (December 2nd), $26.40 and $75 in cash was transferred via PayPal to YFS and Donna B., respectively.

Having processed the the blog reader portion of the November give back, it was time to turn my attention to the question of which of the 10 local charities listed below would receive the $100 charity portion of the give back.

• Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Virginia
• Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Blue Ridge
• The Nature Conservancy
• Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville
• Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville-Albemarle
• United Way Thomas Jefferson Area  
• Sexual Assault Resource Agency
• Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA 
• Alzheimer’s Association of Central and Western Virginia  

After asking our Grand Prize winner, Donna B., which charity she wanted to see receive the $100 donation, she informed me that her choice was the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network. She choose this charity since many food banks are stretched very thin in supplies and funds during the holidays trying to feed everyone. To me, it sure sounded like a great cause I could get behind and would be happy to support.  

So, on Tuesday this week, I soldiered off in the pouring Virginia rain on my bike to deliver the $100 check to the local Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network branch. It took me about 20 min to bike to the Food Bank, and when I got there, rest assured I was completely drenched (see picture below).

After taking a couple pictures, I stopped by the administrative office, filled out the check for $100, asked if they were busy this time of year (the office manager said that they definitely were!), handed over the check, and then donned my rain gear to head to work at the lab!

Overall, it was a truly great experience see that what we do here at My Personal Finance Journey can have a real life impact. Through this charity give back that you all have helped to make possible, we are able to add another pallet or so of food to the stores of this Food Bank, and hopefully, enable someone to have a happier holiday season.

So, thank you all for helping with this journey, and remember to always live for a higher purpose and ask yourself what more you can do to help others.

500 Posts Celebration and FREE Headline Shirts T-Shirt Giveaway

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Well, break out the champagne (or non-alcoholic grape juice substitute if desired) folks, because yesterday, My Personal Finance Journey posted its 500th total post!


Looking Back….


Altogether, generating 500 posts took 1 year and 11 months. Looking at the numbers, this equates to an average of one post every 1.4 days. This sounds like a pretty good consistent average, but what really happened was that I would post as regularly as possible, even if that meant pumping out 3 posts per day for the first 6 months and then getting interrupted by 2 week breaks between posts during my first year of graduate school in 2010. However, all together, it’s been quite a fun ride!

I’d like to also express my deepest appreciation to all of you out there who have been involved in this blog throughout almost 2 years now. A special thanks goes out to all blog readers, blogging colleagues, Yakezie friends, guest posters, blog carnival hosts, and advertisers for your continued support in making the My Personal Finance Journey community alive and successful.

FREE Headline Shirts T-Shirt Giveaway ($20-$30 Value) – Deadline to Enter is Midnight, December 15th, 2011

To celebrate embarking on the journey towards a second set of 500 posts, let’s do a giveaway!!!

Up for grabs in this giveaway is 1 premium T-shirt from Headline Shirts (includes free shipping) for one winner – valued at $20-$30, but yours free with this giveaway!


Since this post is all about celebration, I’m going to make entering SUPER quick and easy (only two options of actions to take to enter). To enter in to the running, simply follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below. In the (likely) event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.


To receive your prize (if you win), you’ll be given a free t-shirt/free shipping coupon code to use at the Headlineshirts.net site. At their site, you can browse their selection, select the shirt you want, and then have them ship it directly to your house (no need to go through me). 


My Experience Receiving a Free T-Shirt from Headline Shirts


Prior to running this giveaway, Headline Shirts offered me a free T-Shirt in order to try out their service/product before offering it to readers (a wise precaution!). 


Overall, my experience with Headline Shirts was top notch. I was given a coupon code to use to process my free T-shirt/free shipping deal through Headline Shirts’ website, picked out my T-shirt, ordered it, and it arrived approximately 3 days later. Not a bad turnaround for shipping the T-shirt from San Francisco to Virgina, eh?!


Headline Shirts offers some very funny, cool/unique T-shirt designs. They are far from the typical, plain color T-shirts you might find at a regular department store or Wal-Mart. They are the type of shirt that if you saw someone wearing one, it would definitely catch your eye as being “clever.” Personally, in order to pick out my T-shirt, I mainly browsed through their Most Popular Shirts category. There were several shirts that caught my eye, including the Sasquatch Cyclist, Wisdom Tooth, and Flying Squirrel shirts. However, I ultimately decided on the Flying Squirrel shirt since the squirrel looked pretty awesome and was a nice yellow color.


The materials used by Headline Shirts were also impressive. For the T-shirt, they tend to use very soft-feeling (maybe Pima???) cotton fabric that feels very nice on the skin. Furthermore, the plastic bag that the shirt is shipped to you in is 100% biodegradable! Pretty cool stuff! 


Anyhow, all of this is to say that I think the winner of this giveaway will be very satisfied with their shirt – both because of the free price tag and also the quality of the product. Happy giveaway entering!! 🙂

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

<a href=”http://rafl.es/enable-js”>You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway</a>.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on December 15th, 2011 (~2 weeks from today). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winner will be contacted via email to receive their prize. To receive your prize, you’ll be given a free t-shirt/free shipping coupon code to use at the Headlineshirts.net site. At their site, you can browse their selection, select the shirt you want, and then have them ship it directly to your house (no need to go through me). 


Fine Print + Full Disclosure: I received a free t-shirt from Headline Shirts for hosting this giveaway on my site and in order to try out the company’s ordering process prior to a reader receiving this giveaway. However, I did not receive any monetary compensation, and the views expressed above represent my honest opinion and experience ordering from Headline Shirts.  

***Photo courtesy of http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2426/3715371020_6aa00e2aef.jpg

What is Your Opinion of the Occupy Wall Street Protester Eviction in New York City?

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $201.40 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is November 30th, 2011.


On Tuesday of this week, New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, along with the help of several hundred police officers cleared Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan of the ~200 Occupy Wall Street protesters who had been staying overnight at the park for nearly 2 months now. To view complete details on this story, click here to visit the New York Times article that provided coverage.

 Random fact: I learned about 2 weeks ago that the New York City Police Department has about 30,000 police officers. That’s almost the size of a large, multi-national corporation itself! Crazy! Much bigger than I would have expected!

These ~200 Occupy Wall Street protesters had essentially made Zuccotti Park their primary home for nearly 60 days, and along with removing these overnight protesters from the park, their sleeping bags, food, tents, and possessions were also ousted as well.

Reasons for the Eviction

One reason behind the removal of the overnight protesters was that the park had essentially been taken over by the protesters and was not accessible or usable for anyone else. There were also health, hygiene, and safety concerns that contributed to the decision for the “eviction.” Even though the overnight protesters were removed, I was glad to find out that people with Occupy Wall Street signs can still come and exercise their right to free speech and express their opinions – they just cannot stay there in an overnight fashion.

Effects on the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Without a doubt, this removal of the overnight protesters at the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street concept both has and will continue to deal a severe blow to 1) the psychology of the individual protesters across the nation and 2) how the overnight protesters are viewed from a legal perspective. I can imagine that if the Occupy camps in other cities have become too densely inhabited, the local governments can use the New York City expulsion as precedent. Indeed, several of the Occupy Wall Street movement camps in Oakland, CA were emptied earlier this week as well.

Could the Eviction Have Been Avoided?

As I was thinking about the eviction and the corresponding legal basis for it, I began to wonder if the protesters could have actually avoided it by being a little more disciplined in setting up their camps as far as what is allowable by law and is within health codes.

For example, if they had put a limit on how densely occupied the areas could be and made sure that the place did not appear “trashy,” the eviction might not have occurred! However, that sort of thing would be VERY hard to control, and I guess we will really never know…

My First-Hand Account of Occupy Wall Street

Several weeks ago, I traveled to New York City with my girlfriend to watch her compete in the ING New York City marathon. It was a pretty awesome and memorable trip, and one of the things we got to do was visit the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park that was mentioned above. When we visited, I believe they were on their 45th day of occupying the park.

Below are some pictures of my experience visiting Occupy Wall Street: I hope you enjoy! After looking through the pictures, I’d love to hear your opinion on the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Be sure to share your take on the matter by commenting below!

The first thing we saw on the way to Zuccotti Park (literally only a block away) was the construction of the new Freedom Tower around the site of the World Trade Center buildings. Below is a picture of the beautiful building. It’s pretty amazing to think that humans can build things so tall!

Below is a picture of some of the protesters along with their camping equipment.

Walking along the perimeter of the Park, there were a lot of people with signs yelling at the passer’s-by. The one guy with the hat in the picture below (directly below the “one-way” sign) was yelling to every man that passed, “HEY, DON’T BE THAT GUY!”

The picture below REALLY (to me) shows just how densely packed the tents were of the protesters. Looking at an image like this, I can understand why the city could have seen this as “taking over the park and violating health/safety codes.”

Shown below is a picture of all of the police monitoring matters. There’s quite a few of them!

I learned that recently before we arrived to NYC, the company that owns Zuccotti Park had banned the protesters from using generators. Therefore, bikes were being ridden to capture mechanical energy to power their devices. Shown below is a picture of one of these bikes being ridden to generate electricity.

The picture below shows what appeared to be the central food bank of the protester camp. I’d be curious to know if the supplies are funded by a particular organization or if they are 100% donations. The two guys in the picture below were being interviewed by a news camera when I walked by. I think they are pretty well-known, as I heard one of them mention this is something like his 20th protest.

We mustered up enough courage to walk through the center (and only) passage-way through the protesters. I was surprised at how crowded this passage-way was and also by the number of protesters begging for money in the form of “donations” along the way vs. actually voicing their opinions about the wealth distribution in the country. Because of this, I became slightly concerned that many people had started using the Occupy Wall Street camp more as a place to stay for homeless people instead of a place to practice freedom of speech.

How about you all? Do you feel Michael Bloomberg/the government acted appropriately in displacing the overnight Occupy Wall Street protesters? Was it a violation of the protesters’ rights, or was it a warranted action?


Share your experiences by commenting below!