Maggie asked how I learned to work on my budget and savings goals. I'm about to give her much more of an answer than I think she bargained for. I talked about this a bit in

So far so good. My goal last week was to drink at least 64oz of water per day. I have, so far, achieved this every day. This week's goal is to eat breakfast every day. I've been having a cup of yogurt with bran grape-nuts type cereal in it. Hopefully this will help me manage my …

I'm going to try to set some goals for this year. Rather than resolutions, which tend to be the fairly ambiguous, I'm going to try to use the SMART formula for setting the goals. The goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. To this end, I think I'm going to start by setting …

October was an interesting month. We've made a lot of progress, but we're also relaxing a bit on some things. As usual, taxes and rent ate up about 40% of our income (which really isn't terrible). Gas was up, again. Groceries and Dinging Out were up slightly. However with winter coming, we'll probably see that go …

September was great. Although we didn't increase our savings, we were able to buy a new laptop and take a vacation, all without incurring more debt. And, we were able to up the savings for October. In general, our expenses were down a little with the exception of the vacation and computer expenses that were planned. …

June was a fairly relaxed month in the finance realm, with one exception. I didn't pay enough attention during the middle of the month, when everything that is going out, goes out. Ended up having to make a transfer from savings. That was heartbreaking, as we haven't had to do that in months. However I was …

The road ahead is bumpy, but no longer mountainous, and somewhere, off in the distance I think I can see pavement. This month, we weren't especially careful, and yet for most of the "discretionary" items, our spending was lower. And this includes several "social" events and a trip out of town. Our social life, such as …