January is officially in the books, so it’s time to see how we’re doing on our 2015 savings goals. So far, so good! As always, we diverted most of our paychecks to our retirement accounts. 457 Accounts * Since our 457 accounts are more flexible than our 403b accounts, we always fund them first. In January we […]
Hardcore Savings: 2014 Results & 2015 Goals
Greetings all! It’s tax time, so I’ve been looking over last years numbers. All in all, it was a good year financially. While we only worked five months in 2014 (we were busy doing other things), we did manage to stash away a little over $46,000. Most of our savings went to the 457 accounts at […]
Welcome New Visitors
Greetings to all new readers from the Radical Personal Finance podcast! I thoroughly enjoyed being on Joshua’s show because it helped me distill some of my thoughts into bite-sized chunks of information. Thanks for suffering through my spotty Skype connection and stream-of-consciousness yammering. If only I could deliver my message as smoothly as Joshua! I will shoot for […]
2015 Free Money!
Greetings all! With 2015 right around the corner, it’s time to start our tax planning. It looks like the standard deduction and personal exemption amounts are going to increase in 2015*. It also appears that the child tax credit will remain at $1,000 per child. These increases in the standard deduction and personal exemptions mean that the […]
What’s the Deal with Your Mortgage? 5.875%!
The Old Homestead Warm Cancun greetings to all! Over the last few months I have received comments and questions regarding my ridiculously high 5.875% mortgage rate. Currently, I owe $59,568 on the mortgage; I also owe around $21,500 on our HELOC (home equity line of credit). Many people recommended that I refinance the balance to […]
Our Family Adventure in Cancun, Mexico
Mexico or Bust! Greetings from Cancun, Mexico to all my loyal Millionaire Educator readers (Mom and Honest Abe)! Two weeks ago I bought one-way airline tickets from AirTran for the Atlanta to Cancun flight. Two days later my wife, son and I landed in Cancun and began our family adventure. We decided to come […]
We’re Done with Credit Card Debt
Credit Card Debt…Be Gone! This post will be brief…I just wanted to share some good news. This week we paid off the last $500 balance on our Visa credit card. We had carried a balance on a number of 0% rollover cards since 2009. At its peak, the balance was $10,000. By rolling our credit card debt […]
2013 Accomplishments and 2014 Goals
Happy New Year to all; may 2014 be your year! Okay, it’s time to see how we did with our 2013 goals. Let me start by saying my wife and I only worked five months each this year, so we came up short on most of our financial goals. Nonetheless, 2013 was still a great […]
10 Happy Years with a Couple of Old Nags
Swayback #1 December 26th, 2013 marked the 10-year anniversary of a very special relationship. The old girl in question has been so good to me and my family. She’s reliable, hard-working, and still a little pretty in spite of her advanced age. Sure, she often has a “rode-hard-and-put-up-wet” look to her, but I don’t mind. […]
How I Escaped My 403(b) by Quitting My Job
Welcome to any new readers visiting this site after my recent post at 403bwise.com. Thanks again to Dan Otter for letting me share our 403(b) story with his readers. In case you missed it, here is the link to the article.