A guest post by Julie Barclay. Take a moment. Think about the past nine months and how the economic downturn has changed your life. What have you had to give up? What were the changes, the goodbyes and the endings? A year ago Holly and Craig Hunter were loving life. They both had jobs, a [...]

A guest post by Julie Barclay. Take a moment. Think about the past nine months and how the economic downturn has changed your life. What have you had to give up? What were the changes, the goodbyes and the endings? A year ago Holly and Craig Hunter were loving life. They both had jobs, a [...]

I don’t know if you’ve seen the art exhibit about e-waste recently, but it’s shocking how many electronic gadgets we “consume” worldwide in the form of mobile phones, batteries, cameras, etc. Some of these have lived beyond their usefulness. I have on my desk, and old mobile phone/PDA and a digital camera that no longer [...]

Thanks for sticking it out with me. I promise not to make this a huge long list of book and movie reviews, but I’ve found a few treasures recently that I just had to share. “One Hen” is a story that I picked up at the library to read to my girls about microlending. It [...]

First off, my profound apologies for falling behind on my 31 days of financial literacy. I have some posts in the works to finish out the month, but I’ve been battling an illness this week, so once I’m fully back on my feet, I’ll finish those and post them. Also, I’m contemplating a redesign for [...]

I haven’t tried this one yet, but I’m going to. I’m actually going to copy-and-paste the whole message here, because it’s from my grammy. Yes, I don’t care how old I am, she’s still always going to be my Grammy! (She’s also test-driving the home-made laundry detergent with me–so far I’m happy with it at [...]

I do at least four loads of wash per week. This week laundry detergent was on the list and I was dreading buying it. I don’t budget separately for this but lump it in with our “food” budget in Mint since it comes from the grocery store. I found a recipe in Jim Bob and [...]

Readers: I have a conundrum. God has been good to us, and my small business is growing at a rate where I’m beginning to think the operations are outside of my skillset–and I need to bring in a financial professional (thus ensuring I don’t end up with a WHOPPING tax bill at the end of [...]

I love it when people read my blog, and even more if it helps them in some way. Today I got a great tip from my friend Julie. Here’s how Julie’s family saved on their electric bill. What cost-savings tips have you implemented in your house? I had read that for every degree you turn [...]

We got our tax refund last week. Now, we’re pretty savvy and don’t “donate” more to the IRS than we need to. We do take advantage of the adoption tax credit, and deductions for higher-than-average charitable giving. Our tax return was over $10,000, and there’s rollover credit left that we’ll claim next year. Talk about [...]