November Update

First, I updated my sidebar with my current cc debt totals- this month I paid down $284.84 – and the debt is now 11% paid off!
I am getting married in one month and two days to the man I have been living with for over two years. As a result, you will see a lot [...]

Approaches

This guest post about lifestyle inflation on Get Rich Slowly inspired me to address some of my own attitudes here.
I think the poster is very insightful in addressing a possible mechanism for lifestyle inflation. However, I think the overall approach is flawed. The poster above is approaching his finances from the point of view of [...]

I got a raise!

I found out today that I got a 4% raise! This raise is retroactive from March 2008. In this economy, I was expecting a whole lot of nothing, so this came as a pleasant surprise.
The raise will add about $60 after taxes to each of my paychecks. I get paid bi-weekly. I got a major [...]

Made a payment!

This is my first credit card payment since starting this blog. I paid $300 towards my two cards, $240 to the one with the heigher interest rate and $60 to the one with the lower rate, just over its minimum payment. I paid off more than 5% of my debt! It makes me feel great [...]

Where did my money go in October?

I just asked Quicken the very same question.
Good Decisions:
We paid a $100 deposit for next year’s CSA share. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. We prepay about $300 for a weekly share of a season’s worth of vegetables from a particular farm. We pick up the share every week in the summer and fall. It [...]

What did I spend all that money on?

I was having dinner with a friend tonight and we were discussing the fact that I have no idea where this credit card debt came from. She made the brilliant suggestion that I look in my quicken – I have been itemizing all of my spending there since the beginning of 2007. To the right [...]

I will learn to live within my means.

I am in debt. It makes me feel like I owe people, which, I guess, is a realistic way of looking at it.
Lets tabulate the damage.
Private Student Loan: $27,509.52 at 10.25%
Federal Student Loan: $19,877.88 at 4.875%
Credit Card #1: $3,598.30 at about 6%
Credit Card #2: $1,351.04 at about 11%
I do not know the exact rates on [...]