Debt to Dreams

We continued to tread water again last month.
We are balanced on an edge, living within our means each month, but not investing in our future. We are able to keep our monthly bills within our normal monthly cash flow. Unexpected expenses force us to dip into our savings to […]

We managed to blow through the first quarter of 2008 in good shape considering all the changes we have undertaken.
The slight bounce in the financial markets helped overshadow a lack of new contributions to our savings and investments. Our net worth is now above the -$50,000 level for the first time since […]

We have reached the end of a rough 1st quarter to 2008. We are still well below our net worth peak of -$45,237.37 in November of 2007 due to multiple factors.
This was to be expected after our family navigated the expensive holiday season and added a new family member to boot!
Voluntarily cutting your […]

A bit late with the results…… mostly because I was afraid to look but we eeked out a slight gain for the month and that is all I could ask.
The realities; read “challenges” of our family becoming a single income household are becoming more evident at this time.
Here is the Damage […]

By the numbers we are off to a rocky start in 2008. The $6000+ drop in our net worth is the largest in the past 13 months.
About half of this loss was due to the falling market but the other half was due to the interest from my consolidated student loans for 2007 […]

After watching the angst on Wall Street for the first two weeks of this year, I can take some solace in the fact that our family enters 2008 on a much better financial foundation than when we started 2007.
We have eliminated all of our high interest debt on both our credit […]

We managed to finish our first year on a positive note posting a $1,817.91 gain in our net worth which brought our total gain for the year to just over $41,000 dollars.
Over the course of the past year we managed to maintain positive growth in 10 out of the 12 months.
The […]

Even before running the numbers for our household I can predict that 2008 will not be as financially successful for us as 2007.
In 2007 we were able to take advantage of having two incomes, one household and no children to pay down some debts and accumulate a comfortable cushion of cash for […]

After a steady start to the year, the market turbulence continues to make its presence felt.
Our balance sheet shows more outflows than inflows due to the renewal of family insurance policies and one time expenses related to the holiday season. This increase in spending made it difficult to offset out loses with […]

Yesterday marked the first full year of our journey from my six-figured educational debt to financial independence.
We have made quite a bit of progress over the past 12 months, increasing our net worth by almost $40,000.
We have been able to do this with the simple strategy of spending less […]

More than once in my life I have been told that if nothing else, at least I am consistent. Our family’s consistency showed again last month with yet another steady gain of $4000 for the month.
More importantly I flnally paid off the last of my consumption credit card debt marking the […]

September is now gone and the results were better than I had expected. Without any large changes in our household fundamentals we benefited from the gains in the equity markets and had our best month over month gain this year!
Here are the results;

Some thoughts on the past month:
We have accumulated a few new […]

Late again this month. It has become apparent to me that my 4th year of residency is going to require a much greater time commitment than my prior 3 years.
That being said, our finances continue to tick along. We have managed to make saving a significant portion of our income […]

Sorry for the Delay, I have been working in the ICU this month so my time and attention have been directed elsewhere…….. as it should be.
Only a couple of weeks ago I wrote “Minimal Risk, Maximal Satisfaction”, That was before the stock market regained some volatility. Couple that with an average savings […]

June is behind us now and we are half way through July so it is about time for an update. For those not in the medical field, July is a special month in an academic hospital because on July 1st all the Residents advance a year. For that reason you sometimes will […]