Easy Like Sunday Morning Recap and Roundup – # 10 – October 28th, 2012

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Each time, the purpose of the Easy Like Sunday Morning Recap and Roundup series is the same – for me to be able to connect with you, the readers, on a more personal (non personal finance informational transmission only) level, encourage community, and also to give back to the other bloggers around the blogosphere who have mentioned My Personal Finance Journey throughout the past few weeks or so. It’s been about a month since the last roundup, so we definitely have some catching up to do! 

As far as the theme goes, the title of the roundup gives it away. The roundup theme is named after the Lionel Richie song, Easy Like Sunday Morning (which I play once each time I put this together), to remind us of the importance of slowing down at least every once in a while to take appreciation for that which transpired over the past few days.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with this edition’s roundup!

UPDATES FROM JACOB’S PERSONAL FINANCE JOURNEY AND LIFE 

• As far as my life in general, the months of September and October have been very enjoyable and productive at the same time. Below are some of the highlights:
• In my graduate school research, we were finally able to finish up the follow-up experiments required to respond to the manuscript reviewer’s comments. Currently, my advisor and I are putting the finishing touches on the revised manuscript to submit to the ACS Journal of Biomacromolecules. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that it gets accepted this time! 🙂
• I’m now 2 months in serving as a Teaching Assistant for a Transport Processes / Fluid Dynamics 3rd year undergraduate chemical engineering class. I’ve really enjoyed the role so far, as it’s given me a chance to teach problem sets for the homework each week. 
• Another thing that I’m very proud to report is that my sister has just recently gone under contract to purchase her first ever condo! Due to the severely-depressed real estate market these days, she was able to get a killer deal/value! Congrats to her for making this big leap! 
• Normally, this time of the fall is a big time for me to do running races. However, two weeks ago, I went for a short trail run near my house and very badly twisted my ankle. Because of this, I haven’t been able to exercise very much on the weekends. Instead, I’ve been filling up the void by visiting some of the many gorgeous local wineries near our area of the country here in central Virginia. A picture of me at one of these wineries (The Trump Winery) is shown below. If you look really hard, you can see the grape vines growing in the background!

• As far as my personal finances, I would characterize the months of September and October as “busy.” 
• First, the good news:
• At the beginning of August, I was able to max out my Roth IRA contributions for the 2012 tax year. 
• Since then, I have started contributing any leftover money (after blog investments) I have had to my Individual Self-Employed 401(k) with Vanguard. So far, I have made some good progress, with about $3,400 contributed thus far for 2012, on top of the $5,000 invested in my Roth IRA. 
• In addition, I have now met my short term net worth goal for this year! Great news! 
• On the other hand, the past month or so, one of our greyhounds, Charlie, has had a significant amount of health problems. As a result, we incurred $1,300 in vet bills and health expenses for him during the past month alone. The total we’ve spent on doggie-related things since June 2012 has been $2,300 (not counting an $800 tooth cleaning for Charlie in late May 2012). However, because of some well-timed financial planning, these expenses did not throw me off of my financial goals too much. 
• As far as my blog goes, October has been the first month for My Personal Finance Journey to feature posts by our staff writing team!
• As I mentioned in the September roundup, I added several new staff writers to contribute articles for the site on a regular basis to prevent having one to two week breaks between my regular posts while I am busy in graduate school and leaving you all out to dry. Listed below are the awesome staff writers for My Personal Finance Journey! They are all doing a great job so far.
• Miss T from Prairie Eco-Thrifter.
• ADP from American Debt Project.
• Travis Pizel, a writer for Care One and Enemy of Debt.
• Kelly from Cordelia Calls it Quits.
• Melissa from Mom’s Plans.
• Kevin from Out of Your Rut.
• Jeff from Sustainable Life Blog.
• Tahyna from DinksFinances.
• Toi Williams from Fine Tuned Finances.
• Greg from Club Thrifty
• Shondell from Call me What You Want Even Cheap.

GUEST POSTS FROM PERSONAL FINANCE BLOGGERS ON MY PERSONAL FINANCE JOURNEY

Since the last roundup, there was one guest post here at My Personal Finance Journey.