Category: saving
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Emergencies and the Funds Who Love Them
Last year, freaked out by the US Presidential election, I set a goal to have 12 months expenses as cash savings in my emergency fund. Both Mr. G and myself work in sectors that have had substantial uncertainties in the past year – he in the energy sector, and me in public higher education. Sales…
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Uber Frugal Month: Wrap Up and Reflection
Well, we survived January! This last month was very challenging for me, both professionally and personally. My big work project occupied the first half of the month, and left me feeling stressed out after working insane hours. The second half of the month brought an entirely different set of stressors from things mostly out of my…
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An Uber-Frugal January: Getting Ready
I had the Uber-Frugal Month talk with Mr. G over the Christmas weekend. We’d already contemplated doing another month of not eating out, but I set the parameters for this month as “no buying stupid stuff and no eating out.” To mentally prepare myself for a month of renewed austerity (and to jumpstart a more…
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Hitting My Savings Goals Without Feeling Deprived
As I mentioned on my food post, I’ve been tracking my finances for going on seven years now. This time period encompasses the last vestiges of graduate school, my post-doc and the first five years of my career. So I have tons of historical data on how I’ve chosen to spend my money in wise…
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The Walk
Shortly after falling down the FIRE rabbit hole last spring, I started looking into ways I could save more aggressively for retirement. As I mentioned in my first post, I thought I was doing ok by participating in my employer’s mandatory retirement program and maxing out my Roth IRA through Vanguard, but I didn’t realize…
Little Green Revelation 