Debt to Dreams

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 [...]

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 a habit and at [...]

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 month and [...]

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 hear someone say: [...]

Well the month of May is finally over and it was a busy one for us. Since May was a five week month I was expecting a better end result but five weeks of expenses cut into our savings budget. Here is how things break down. Our Guidance for this month: my wife began contributing [...]

After watching our small portfolio make noticeable gains over the past two months I am beginning to develop an appreciation for the power the stock market has for building wealth. As the stock market continues to set new highs, the gains in our portfolio are adding a noticeable pep to our monthly monthly savings. After [...]

Yes this is blasphemy, but I have not calculated how much money I would need to retire, live independently, etc… yet. This does not mean that I plan to spend every penny I make and expect to live off of Uncle Sam in the golden years. It just means I rather focus on other things [...]

Wow, is it April already? The first quarter is over and I am excited to see that we have managed three solid months of consecutive growth of our net worth. While not as impressive as some of the more established bloggers, this has been a solid quarter for our family. Most of this gain has [...]

As we enter the end of the first quarter, the market looks like it has regained some volatility. I decided to wait a day or two to check all my accounts after that short ride the market took on 2.27.07. I know many others had more at stake but one of the benefits of not [...]

We are off to a good start for 2007. We didn’t win the Lottery yet but we did a good job of controlling our expenses in January. 2007 will be a year of financial basics with an emphasis on developing good finanical habits. Like a lot of Americans, our income is relatively fixed and any [...]

Wow, we are already halfway through January and I just finished updating our joint financial data. The process of consolidating our data and finding a good starting point for the year has been challenging. Hopefully once we have a good system it will not take as much effort to maintain an accurate account of our [...]

January is an extra special month for me this year because it marks the first month of my life as a married man. I had quite a few changes in my life in 2006. The most important occurred only weeks ago when my wife and I were married. Because I originally started this blog with [...]

Happy New Year to All! This will be our financial plan for the new year. After getting married at the end of December this will be our first year of joint income and expenses. The burden of my debt will be eased somewhat by our combined incomes and we will reap some increased efficiencies from [...]

This is just a small update for the begining of this blog.  This blog has been something I have wanted to start for quite some time but like most people never seemed to get around to starting.  Now that I have started, I have about a years worth of ideas and posts I would like to [...]

Here is the starting balance from which I will measure the rest of my improvements. I wanted to wait until January but I will have made a lot of changes by then and I wanted to have a true record of where I am starting from. As you can guess from the title of this [...]