Money Saving Tips

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Summer Time Fun

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Summer Time Fun

Can you believe that we are halfway thru summer? I honestly can't. It has flown by and I can't believe that it is already July. I have been working summer school, so I haven't had a lot of free time, but I still have time to go out and do all the crazy spending that we tend to do in the summer. Like in June, I spent more on gifts than I would normally, because our anniversary occurs in June. That is just something that comes with the month and as you recall from my article on gifts, we only by gifts for each other on our anniversary. Based on our current data, June was the month with the lowest savings rate this year. Let's look at a few things that cause our finances to go thru the roof in the summer.

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To Be Unionized or Not?

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To Be Unionized or Not?

As most of you know by now, I am a teacher and I have been teaching for a total of seven years.  For the first four years of my teaching career, I paid to be a part of a union.  I really didn't make the choice on my own, but I was just told that I needed to be a part of a union.  So, I signed up.  The last 3 years, I had realized that I really didn't need to be a part of a union and I dropped out.  So, I am a non-union teacher.

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It's Tax Refund Season

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It's Tax Refund Season

It's tax season.  It's the time of year where tax commercials are played constantly.  From the H&R Block's "It's Refund Season" to the Jackson Hewitt "This is how we do it" commercials, we are lulled into sleep by the fact that it is a good thing to get a tax refund.  In all reality, a tax refund is just the government paying you back the money that you loaned them over the course of the year.

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The Importance of Keeping Track of Your Finances

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The Importance of Keeping Track of Your Finances

Over the weekend, I was checking my Personal Capital dashboard to see how bad the down market has hurt our net worth.  As you would imagine, our net worth took a hit, just like everyone else. This does not mean that I am running to the hills and selling everything.  We have to remember that retirement investing is an investment for the long haul and we can't get scared by a dip in the market.  It is always important to remember this fact whenever the nightly news scares you into thinking that this is the crash to end all mankind.  Don't worry, the market will recover and we will be better off than we were before.