expenditure

My Very Cheap Day

05.17.2013
My very cheap day

On Wednesday, I was sitting at the library trying to come up with an idea to blog about. Actually, I had a “to blog” list, but none of them struck a chord with me, so I started reading some magazines instead. Luckily, I found an article in Money Magazine that I can comment on – “My very cheap day” by Kristen Bellstrom. (Thanks to Brian for finding the link for us.) It’s not easy for frugal folks to cut expense Her mission was to spend one day trying to cut every expense she encountered. Aha! I already found something to [...]

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April 2013 Goals and Financial Update

05.03.2013
Personal Capital Asset Allocation check warning

April Highlights and Lowlights 2013 Financial Goals - Not much progress in April. I’m waiting for some pullback before adding money to baby RB40′s 529 account. Rebalance – I rebalanced our portfolio to be more conservative because I think we are due for a market correction soon. See more detaisl below. Rental Income is negative this month because we finally paid for the big drainage repair. Things are still not going well on this front. We need to complete an exterior paint job at the rental home this summer and it’s not going to be cheap. P2P income from Prosper is still below target [...]

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Not Buying Clothing Is Very Liberating

04.29.2013
Not Buying Clothing Is Very Liberating

One of my New Year Resolutions is the No New Clothes Challenge for 2013. I figured it shouldn’t be that hard because I have plenty of clothes and shoes. Since I don’t work outside the home anymore, I don’t really need to be that presentable and it will be fine if I just wear some clothes down. Apparel spending is one of the smaller expenses in consumer expenditures so even if you cut your budget here, it won’t affect your expenses that much. According to the US Census Bureau’s data, apparel is only about 3.5% of an average family’s annual expenditure. Free from [...]

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Should you help your aging parents financially?

04.24.2013
should you help your aging parent financially?

This is a tough question that will affect more and more of us every day. Pensions are becoming rarer and most people retiring today have very little retirement savings. Luckily, social security is still paying out, but that might change in the future. People are also living longer these days and it’s easy to see that more and older retirees will need help financially. Some background Of course, you should help your parents out if they need it. For me, the question really is how much I should help my parents. I come from an Asian background and our culture [...]

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