This is a guest post by PF blogger The Weakonomist @ Weakonomics.com. He is a twenty something who works for a major bank and unlike most PF blogger has stayed debt free. For those who aren’t familiar with his blog, click through and say hello. I’ve never written for Happy Rock before so you probably don’t know much about me. Normally I wouldn’t care to tell you and you wouldn’t care to know, but it adds context to my post. I’m a young buck and getting married this fall. Me and The Sheconomist don’t own much stuff, so we are [...]
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I can’t believe the year is half over. Summer is flying by! For any new readers just joining us, I track my family’s monthly expenses. Below is the tally for June 2009: $1038.54 – Mortgage $664.10 – Health Insurance $618.00 – Daycare $311.25 – Groceries $215.00 – Student Loan $173.34 -Hair Care $107.77 – Medical $83.97 – Electric $81.69 – Tennis $81.06 – Dinning Out $69.62 – Phone/Internet $65.79 – Household Misc $56.94 – Cosmetics $54.77 – Dog $53.32 – Utilities $52.02 – Kid’s Care $46.34 – Kid’s Fun $39.29 – Gas $37.54 – Books $30.74 – 4th of [...]
Read MoreHave you noticed how expensive it is to get old? No, I’m talking about supplemental Medicare insurance either. I’m talking about birthdays! I turned 34 not to long ago. And to mark such a momentous occasion my wife decided that we should throw a party. And what started out as a small backyard BBQ, turned into a shindig where we invited everyone we knew. OK, maybe it wasn’t quiet that bad, but it felt like it. I think it got out of hand because we don’t host many get-togethers. We threw one other “big” party before. It was on my 29th [...]
Read MoreIn the comment section of April’s expense report I was asked by Single Guy Money,”What made up the ‘Household Misc’ category?” My answer was: The household misc category is made up of misc items. It’s stuff like: toilet paper, bug spray, diapers, toothpaste, batteries, postage stamps, small appliances, paper towels, wasp & hornet killer…and anything else that I’m too lazy to separate out. But to tell you the truth I had no idea what that months misc items were. So I thought I’d provide the breakdown for May of the misc category so I could really see where our money [...]
Read MoreRemember when I caught grief about spending $140 on a reissue of my favorite band’s debut album? In case you forgot, I also talked about it here. Well it just occurred to me that I never reviewed Pearl Jam’s Super Deluxe Edition of Ten. IT ROCKS!!! It rocks for the 3 LPs(viva la vinyl). It rocks for the remixed CD. It rocks for all the collectible stuff! But my favorite part of it so far has been the DVD of Pearl Jam Unplugged. That performance probably is what made me such a die hard fan. I know the Nirvana appearance on Unplugged [...]
Read MoreI just got back from picking up my two boys, age 16 months and 3 1/2 years, from pre-school. It was their first day. After years of in-home single sitter care both boys were ready for something else. The youngest is a social little guy with a shorter attention span. He thrives on social interaction and is quite bored(aka naughty) in our 1000sqft condo. The oldest, The Pebble, is the smart shy engineer type. He would be happy to stay home by himself dissecting his toys and building trains. He would benefit from the social and relationship growth as well [...]
Read MoreWe’ve hit the road each of the last three weekends. The weather was gorgeous and we had fun destinations to look forward too. But one thing we didn’t have was air conditioning. Luckily it wasn’t too hot yet, so the suffering was kept to a minimum. But I knew I wanted to get it fixed the next time I went in for an oil change. I figured it would just need a freon recharge and that would be that. Ha! We ended up having a relatively large hole in the A/C condensor. Price tag $650. I of course didn’t think twice about [...]
Read MoreThe following is a guest post by DebtKid, who writes about his journey to get out of debt, and achieve financial stability. He runs a small software development company in Seattle and just launched a new coupons section on his blog. For consumers who are barely getting by, the concept of building wealth in the current economy may be low on the list of priorities. After all, if you are struggling to keep the bill collectors at bay or prevent your credit rating from dropping like a stone, it gets a bit tough to see the “big picture”. Unfortunately this [...]
Read MoreLately I’m becoming an expert on the psychology of spending money, and it’s all thanks to my trusty radio. Last month I wrote about a story I heard on NPR which said that we can save money by carrying big bills. Earlier this week I heard another story which goes hand-in-hand with the big bill story. According to this story, not only will we hold onto a $100 longer than five $20′s, but we’ll also keep a $1 longer than we will 4 quarters. I did some head scratching while listening to it. They talked about a couple of studies which [...]
Read MoreI haven’t been hiding our expenses, but the truth isn’t we haven’t really been paying attention. Since we’ve gotten rid our debt except for the mortgage and established a fully funded emergency fund, we have earned the right not to budget. Pants in a Can and DD post their expenses and take flak for it, so I figured I am not above that type of scrutiny. I don’t want to be throwing money away when there are many other good causes and uses for that cash. Let’s get right into it. The Happy Rock’s expenses from 4/1/2008 to 4/1/2009: Notes [...]
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