Normally I save this for after I right this post, but its 6AM on a Saturday morning, I can’t sleep, and to be honest I have been a reck the last few days trying to figure out what to do with my career so I apologize up front for the babbling non-sense that follows.
Well it seems like this is the thing to do this time of year, so here goes. Here are the “best” posts I made this year.
Reasons why you should not save for Retirement – Probably my favorite article from 2006
Realistic Rate of Return series – I should really finish this up, should be about a 6-part series
Wal-Mart wallet photos for a whole lot less – Great way to get some really inexpensive wallet photos
$100,000 by Age 30 – Probably not the most educating or most well written article, but this has been a great help for me to get my retirement savings on track and I am constantly going back to it to figure out what I need to do next as far as adjusting my retirement savings.
Tracking my Net Worth – A good explanation of what that number in the upper hand corner of my blog really means and why I decided not to keep track of things like debt and Home equity
Frugal Lawncare – Part 1 – Was a fun experiment for me and I actually had pretty good results. Hopefully Harry Jones in the comments had similar results.
The Carnival of Personal Finance #81 is up at Mighty Bargain Hunter this week. A number of great articles as usual and a great way to start out the new year. Go check it out – you might even find an article from me in there.
I know I just wrote about how I have never kept a budget for my expenditures, well another potentially taboo thing that I just realized that I fail to do is balance my checkbook, at least in the traditional sense of the word. I guess things are a lot different these days with the invention of that internet thing and internet banking, but the only time I have ever had to balance a checkbook was in my high school record keeping class. Which I believe was right after my personal typing class (we actually used typewriters and correction tape and there was no such thing as a Backspace button)
I have been out on my own with full-time job now for about 6 years and during this time I have never made a budget. I got married in 2003, bought a house in 2004, and yet I have never ever found the need to create a budget. I even find tracking my expenses in Quicken to be too much of a hassle and I have never made it more than 2 or 3 months in a row before I give up entirely on the process.