Dollar Jane

Hi Guys,
Well, my 2-week vacation to Italy coincided with my 3-month vacation from this blog.  This may have something to do with the guilt that I felt about spending so much money on a vacation. Let’s review the damage:
Airfare: $1,200
Train Fare: $170
Lodging & Food: $1,319
Clothes for me: $716
Gifts and Souvenirs: $540
Grand Total: $3,945
Yes, that’s right. […]

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I’m really invested in the best place. My Roth is in a T. Rowe Price Mutual Fund called Personal Strategy Growth. It’s okay, about 80% stocks, 20% bonds, with an expense ratio of .86%.
The way I picked it was pretty uneducated. At the time I opened […]

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Ok, drumroll please.
I made the standard $500 contribution to the Roth IRA. The market recovered enough at the end of the month to boost the worth of my retirement fund by $55. Not too impressive, considering my account right now is still worth $3,724; $276 less than the total contributions I’ve put in.
No change in […]

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I finally put in the request with my boss for a vacation. I decided to take off for a week and a half in the beginning of June, during my birthday. I immediately felt that I should go for the full 2 weeks, but my last vacation was 2 weeks, and it was a nightmare […]

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…Was Spam! It’s this weird site that scrapes personal finance blog posts. The blog’s title is the big tipoff: “Debt on the Finance World for News and Information Around the World on Finance.”
With all of the sophisticated spam techniques out there, why is it that grammar continues to elude spammers? I guess it’s a testament […]

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I’m not going to update the save-o-meters until the end of the month, but my credit card payment has already been processed. My balance is now down to $1,058. I’m so tantalizingly close to paying it all off! About a year and a half ago I wiped out my credit card debt and I’m so […]

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In my line of work, I review a lot of grant applications. This gets me thinking a lot about charities, and the many different options I have for charitable giving. This is probably the first year of my life that I’ve really had enough income to think seriously about planning my giving.
I’ve tried to give […]

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I’ve read plenty of posts on how a healthy diet can lead to a healthy wallet. I liked Millionster’s three-part post “How I Lost Weight and Gained Control” for an interesting take on how to get into the habit of bringing your lunch to work and how to cut grocery costs. It’s very obvious […]

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Although it’s already March, I did set financial goals at the beginning of 2008. My goals are:
1) Fully fund my Roth IRA. In 2007, I contributed about $3,500. My January, February, and March contributions all counted towards 2007, so beginning in April, I’ll be making my 2008 Roth contributions. I recently bumped my automatic contributions […]

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I’ve been reading personal finance blogs very regularly for several months now. Lately the little voice in my head saying, “I can do this!” has grown loud enough that I’ve ventured over to Wordpress to give it a try.
I am obsessed with personal finance. Yet, I’ve read very few pf books. The few exceptions include […]

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