Last night, my wife and I attended our first Village Association meeting. What the hell is that? Well, think, town hall meeting, but a lot less formal. We live in a section of town that was once its own entity, but has since been absorbed into the neighboring city. The Village Association is its attempt [...] ... (more)

In another month or so, if all goes as planned, I’ll be out of credit card debt 100% for the first time in over a decade. The deepest I found myself was $29k in November of 2006. At the time, I was carrying around $l7k in credit card debt (down from $26k two years earlier) and I [...] ... (more)

It’s been a bit of a reality check for me adding my house to the assets calculation for my net worth updates. For the longest time, I was thinking, “What housing slump?”, but now I see it first hand. Already this month, I’ve seen the value of my home drop 5-figures. Ouch. It’s tough to get [...] ... (more)

Recently my wife has been expressing interest in paying some of the bills. But I’m reluctant to change my ways as I’ve been paying all of the bills from my checking account, while keeping detailed track of everything, for over a decade now. It’s not so much that it’s a habit, it’s just that I’ve grown accustomed [...] ... (more)

Last night while watching, um, American Gladiators on NBC, I saw a promo for a fluff-piece on the Today show about a blue man that would have aired this morning. I’m at work when the Today show is on, but I looked the story up and it stems from a December 19th story out of Oregon: It’s [...] ... (more)

My biggest bill each month, like a lot of people, is my mortgage bill. What’s funny to me, and probably me only, is that, of all of my bills, it goes back in the smallest envelope. Biggest bill in the smallest envelope. Those who hold their mortgage with CountryWide know what I’m talking about. Think they do [...] ... (more)

Okay, now what? Totally a fictitious question — I haven’t hit the contribution limits and don’t really expect to in 2008, but over the last few weeks, while crunching numbers to maximize my 401k contributions, my eyes were opened to the yearly limits placed on this type of retirement account. Around ten years ago when Roth IRAs [...] ... (more)