I ran some numbers and here are the savings that we will receive in the next year by migrating our checking accounts to ING Electric Orange checking. It is not a ton of money, but it comes from a change that will also simplify our personal finance system. Two for one deal.
Read MoreMay 2007
With the previously posted guidelines in mind, we set out to come up with positive changes to our financial system that would increase our freedom and support the things we truly want to focus on. Here is the link to the previous system. And without further adieu, here is the map of the updated system : Note: On some screens the map appears off center, you can click and drag it to center it. Sorry. As you can see the main change the move from our Wachovia free checking to the paperless ING Electric Orange Checking as our primary checking [...]
Read MoreTo those who served to protect our freedoms, The Happy Rock remembers you. I realize that without your sacrifice, my personal journey to freedom would not be the same. In remembrance of those fallen in honorable duty to our country, I leave you with a website and a poem. First, the website : http://www.remember.gov. Second, the poem Freedom is Not Free by Kelly Strong.
Read MoreBefore I post on how we are going to change our current system, I wanted to discuss what I am looking for in a good finance system. Note, I am using personal finance system to mean the accounts and tools that your money flow through from paycheck through payment and/or savings. As always, the purpose of analyzing this and the overall theme of The Happy Rock is to continually simplify our lives in order to create more freedom for the goals and people we truly value in life. Here are five areas that should be analyzed when creating, tweaking, or [...]
Read MoreFor just under a year we have been saving to fund our emergency fund. During that period our finances have been on auto pilot. Monthly budget meetings were taking five minutes, and there weren’t many decisions that needed to be made. We finally have our emergency fund to $12,000 or about 5 months expenses and now it is time to attack the retirement and college savings. Seems like a perfect time to shake things up and create more simplicity and freedom in our finances. Before we get there though, I wanted to thank Wachovia for graciously providing the impetus to [...]
Read MoreMy todo list has been overflowing lately. How did I know?….I was subconsciously avoiding adding any tasks to it. I was barely finding time to get the basics done, let alone attack anything on my list. Like a deer in headlights, I wasn’t even getting things done when I had time. My so called productivity system left me wasting valuable time searching Steve Pavlina’s sleep experiments for more time. For days and maybe weeks I was making feeble attempts to drag myself out of the hole I was digging. Nothing was working. I wrote these steps while having too much [...]
Read MoreSo we battled for three years to get rid of our $70,000 dollars in debt….so what! Here are the benefits that being debt free(besides the house) and the process of becoming debt free gave us. Cash Flow – First and foremost, we got control of our money back. Instead of the bank requiring hundreds and thousands of dollars a month, that money was staying in our account. Catharsis – I didn’t see this one coming, but eliminating debt helped me to revisit and deal with some bad decisions I made in college. Instead of just chalking them up to youth, [...]
Read MoreThe title of the site mentions gaining freedom through personal finance, so it is about time that I share some of our journey. The family’s finances are now on auto pilot, but that is only after 4 years of blood, sweat, and tears. The idea is to not only share the overview of the last 4 years, but also highlight the key concepts that we encountered while paying off over $70,000 in debt. One would think that defaulting on a Sears credit card freshman year in college, and then having to get an 8% deferred interest student load to finish [...]
Read MoreHere are thirteen tips that can help you push through those times were you find yourself avoiding the things that you want to get done. 1. Find Meaning- We don’t usually have problems accomplishing the tasks that we really want to do, so try connect deeper meaning to the task at hand. For me this will take the form of gaining perspective. Realizing that wasting time trying not to do some task is keeping my from doing the things that I truly enjoy. Maybe the task means a lot to someone else, maybe it affects other areas of you [...]
Read MoreAny fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are. – Rev. Norman Vincent Peale We start with a quote from the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. I won’t go into the controversy or the following this book has, because we are here to talk about how our thought life changes the physical world we live in. As the quote [...]
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