by Ace on July 27, 2010
This is the third part of my mini-series about managing finances in a relationship. In my first post I wrote about the decision process that would help you decide if joint finances made sense for you and your partner. In my second post I described how to manage joint and separate bank accounts with your partner.
Credit Cards and relationships. Could be a lot of trouble, right? According to a survey conducted by creditcards.com, 19% of couples have argued about credit card accounts. If you’re thinking about sharing a credit card with your partner, then you have a lot of things to consider before proceeding forward. There is no magic bullet. Consider all the options carefully and talk them through with your significant other, before making a decision.
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How do you handle large purchases? Large purchases has always been my weakness. In the past I’d do a great job tightening up my spending only to have a large purchase fly through and blow my budget to smithereens. These large purchases would often cause my previous attempts at budgeting my money to fail. I realize now that managing these large purchases are extremely important.
Having a system to work through the decision process guarantees that your purchase will be well thought out and provide you with the maximum possible value. Here are some tips to use before making a large purchase.
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by Ace on July 21, 2010
A while back I wrote a post about deciding how much money to put towards your emergency fund. Here’s the first line I wrote:
Everybody with basic financial knowledge knows the importance of an emergency fund. Just look, here, here, and here
Here’s the funny thing, I truly thought it was a no-brainer. However, a couple days ago I stumbled on this article written by Liz Weston on having a $0 emergency fund. Needless to say I was quite interested in what she had to say on the topic. Let’s see how realistic it is to have a $0 emergency fund.
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by Ace on July 19, 2010
This is the second post of my mini-series of combining finances in a relationship. The first post intended to help determine the right system for you and your significant other. In this post I will focus on managing your financial accounts with a hybrid of the completely separate and the completely joint.
The first step is to discuss with your significant other. The question is, once you decide, where do you go from there? Setting up accounts with financial institutions can be a tedious. Today I’m going to talk about how my girlfriend and I have our accounts set up, and hopefully it’ll give you some ideas of how you can do this with your significant other as well.
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I love board games. My friends and I will often have game nights where we spend the evening play different types of board games. We’ve played a number of different board games like The Settlers of Catan(*), Agricola(*)
, and Power Grid(*)
. They’re all a little complicated, but it’s a great way to spend the evening without spending too much money. Board games can be a little expensive, but when you consider the re-playability they’re great investments. What about you? Are there other board games that you like to play? I’m always looking for new great games, so please let me know!
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by Ace on July 16, 2010
You ever have something that you “know needs to get done,” but the task never makes it way off your to-do list? What about something that specifically had something to do with personal finance? Are there things that you mean to do (start saving for retirement, start an emergency fund, pay down debt) but somehow days, weeks, months slip by and no progress is made? Welcome to the world of procrastination. Unfortunately, when it comes to personal finances, procrastination can have devastating effects on your ability to grow wealth. So rather than letting those little demons control your life, fight back. Let’s look at some of the causes of procrastination and how you can overcome them.
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by Ace on July 13, 2010
These days many banks offer multiple savings accounts. And I’m glad that they do. Multiple savings accounts is a great way to organize your financial goals and easily track your progress. The trick to a strong personal finance system is to always balance complexity with value. While having multiple accounts will add some complexity to your management, they provide much better control over your money.
Personally, I use ING Direct for various savings goals. The best part: I can have different automatic transfers to each of the different goals I have. For example, currently I’m saving for a down payment, my emergency fund, and my vacation fund. With automatic transfers, I can see each account slowly creep towards my goal, and it encourages me to bump the automatic transfers to even higher numbers to accelerate my progress.
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Last month I made a promise to make myself accountable for my progress towards debt freedom. So here is my first monthly update for the month of June. I decided to make a large lump sum payment this month to quickly kill off one of my six loans. I figured that this would be a great way to get the momentum started. Not only will this help me stay motivated, but by paying off that loan I freed up $25 a month to add towards my snowball.
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by Ace on July 12, 2010
Money and relationships, sometimes it works out well, and other times it’s like mixing oil and water. If your relationship is at the point where you’re wondering whether or not joint finances make sense, proceed with caution. Finances means different things to different people, and for some, talking opening about their finances can be overwhelming. Approach the topic the wrong way, and you may find your significant other getting defensive really quickly. Let’s take a look at a few different ways that you could manage your finances as a couple and see the pros and cons for each system.
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I hope all of you are having a wonderful weekend. My girlfriend are enjoying a couple festivals happening around us this weekend. The weather is finally starting to feel like summer, and it was really nice to be able to walk outside this afternoon. Here are some of the great articles I found around the personal finance blogosphere this week. Take some time to check them out, because they’re all fantastic.
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