I was honored to be nominated for a Liebster Award from my friend GenYFinanceGuy. I’ll admit I did not know what this was when I first saw it. A bit of googling, showed it’s a pretty cool way to spread the love around the net for new blogs that the nominator finds value in. What are the rules? Share 11 facts …
My New 401k and Strategy
I haven’t talked about it much on the blog, but I recently made a career move and jumped ship to a new E&P. If you want the details you can easily look me up on linkedin. Hopefully it turns out to be a good move for my career. In the meantime, I thought I could talk a bit about what …
Beginning to look like Spring
I know Boston is still covered in snow and it’s freezing in most of the country, but it’s beginning to look a lot like spring here in Houston! I thought I would share a few snap shots of our suburban orchard and all our trees. I always love seeing the trees we planted start their annual process of growth. It’s really …
Yakezie Challenge
I’ve been writing pretty consistently since November, with a sum total of 58 posts (and another 38 sitting in draft) and am now trying to get my name out there a bit more. So I’ve decided to join the Yakezie Challenge started by Sam over at Financial Samurai. Below are the rules. Let’s see how far we can get on those …
My Travel Tools
Caitlin and I recently took a week off a week to head to the mountains. We flew in to Denver, spent some time with friends there, and then headed to Breckenridge to ski for a few days. It certainly wasn’t a cheap trip, but I did manage to save a decent amount of money using a few of my favorite …
Customer Service and Credit Cards
I just spend over an hour on the phone with Chase. Let me start by saying that every single customer rep I spoke with was incredibly polite and helpful to the best of their ability. What I’m writing here has nothing to do with their efforts to assist me and everything to do with the incredible flaws in the technology …
It’s about living well, not being cheap
I’ve been thinking about Mr. Money Mustache’s recent conversation with Andrew Horowitz and the misconceptions he had about what it means to live frugally. Being frugal doesn’t mean cheap. It doesn’t mean deprivation. It’s not about eliminating everything fun in your life that you enjoy. As MMM says, This is not about being cheap, minimalist, or extreme. It’s about using …
How I graduated from college debt free
People often ask me how I managed to get through college without any debt or parental assistance, so I thought I’d outline my process here. It’s not an option for everybody but it worked for me. I don’t come from a well off family. I grew up in a household that depending on the year (my dad’s income was pretty …
Annual Urban Harvest Fruit Tree Sale
It’s my favorite sale of the year. Urban Harvest had it’s enormous annual fruit tree sale! As usual you have to get up bright and early to have a chance at the more popular stuff. We arrived a few minutes before 8am (opening at 9), handed over our ID’s for a red wagon, and took our place in line behind …
Home Improvement – Kitchen Makeover
I had New Years off and Caitlin had that and Friday to relax at home, so of course I decided we needed to spend all our waking hours on a DIY home improvement project. When we first bought this house, the bulk of the downstairs was an unpleasant terracotta color (one hallway was a light green that matched nothing) and the …