Every weekend I spend several hours working with our finances. When I do it every single weekend, it's a lot easier. When I miss a weekend, there's twice as much data entry. Although it's difficult to make myself sit down every single weekend, it definitely is less time consuming to do it every weekend. Here's how a typical session goes: Open Quicken. Open my Excel billing spreadsheet. Log on to all accounts and print out the transactions that have occurred… Read the rest

I'm sure everyone knows by now that we are entitled to our free credit reports (not the score) through AnnualCreditReport.com. But what if you don't have a computer and can't go online? My mom doesn't have a computer and asked if I could check her report today. We went through the steps, but come to find out they don't have her on record. I looked through the site for the information she needs to call or apply by USPS mail.… Read the rest

Mr. A and I used to carpool to work when he had a “regular” job but now that he has his own business I've been driving myself. Occasionally it still works out for us to carpool so we did that today. When we were close to my job, he mentioned he'd watched Dave Ramsey the other night and the show was about a lady who was fully in charge of the finances and she felt she'd made a mistake with… Read the rest

I've said before, you can analyze things and plan and figure it all out, but sometimes when it's time, it's time. For example, I have a couple of women friends who are biding their time in their marriages, because they aren't sure they would be able to make it on their own. One is taking college classes in preparation for a career where she'll hopefully make more money than if she doesn't have a degree. She has three children to… Read the rest