While at work, I see first-hand the impact of thoughtful personal finance. It’s given me a lot to think about, and I’m working hard to find ways to save at the grocery store, through buying in bulk, and in repairing rather than replacing. I’ve used the extra money to get ahead on a new series of car payments. After six months, we’ve taken almost $15 a month off the minimum amount due!
A lot of what I’ve read lately, however, is focused on the impact of energy use and the environment. Those stories are everywhere in light of the oil spill in the Gulf, but I’d been focused on my energy use for a while.
Maybe that’s why this article about the money you can save by saving energy caught my eye.
My oft-promised (or oft-threatened, if you prefer) statement that I’ll pick up in blogging may soon become reality. It’s cliche, but the past few months have been packed. I haven’t posted while I look for a direction to go. I hope that’s about to change.
I’ve been interested in genealogy since I was young. I watched my father review the records he had, and I asked and learned what I knew from him. The Internet has made it much easier to post and share information online. I’ve been lucky to grasp this in a way that can be applied to genealogy, and I’ve continued to learn and grow as a result. I’ve taken what I’ve found back home to share with family – and now I do the same with my wife and other friends and colleagues.
I expect this blog will continue to carry a share – a growing share – of genealogy posts. But I’m about to get some other topics to delve into.
The past few months have been filled with research, analysis, and observation. It’s also set me down several new courses in life. I’ll have plenty to share as I publish what I’ve learned – and, hopefully, learn from what I publish.
Do you know where your money is?
I spent the past week starting training at a financial services company. Most of the 30-plus people going through training will be performing some version of customer service, and comprise a cross section of the area. The training began with an overview of the industry, and one of the interesting parts of the training was watching the questions that were asked of the trainers.
I remember being taught how to figure interest while in high school math. Reflecting on my memories, I remember the senior seminar teacher was much more concerned with teaching us how to write checks and balance and checkbook. Beyond teaching us where to sign our names, write the date, and how to make out a check, the focus on personal finance lessons in my school was an emphatic dictum to read everything in a mortgage agreement carefully. That may not have been much of a waste – high school students may not be ready to really learn personal finance.
It’s scary to realize how many people struggled to figure out how to compute interest. I was surprised that there were both younger people and older people who didn’t seem to understand the concept. It made me wonder what people actually know about personal finance. I turned to the Internet and spent a few minutes searching Google and Bing to see what turned up. I was looking for a study that showed how much people know about personal finance. Maybe I was using the wrong keywords, but the closest that I came were the studies that show that people aren’t saving enough money for retirement. (I wanted personal finance studies – you won’t have enough money to spend at an age that you may never reach stories. I believe it’s important to save for retirement, I just think it’s difficult to understand what standard of living I’ll expect, what my living situation will be, and what will happen with tax rates, inflation rates, etc.
More interesting was the people who offered their personal finances to the world on their blogs. It’s an interesting idea, but one I don’t expect to do. Perhaps I’ll keep reading their blogs for an idea of what people in the world know about the money they spend and save.
Image is Creative Commons licensed content from Flick’s borman818.
I’ve finished my graduate degree, and I’ve started a new challenge. I’m sure I’ll continue to learn more about my new position in the coming weeks and months – 6 weeks of training start next week. I’ve been able to help out so far by watching some editing and asking a few questions about style, grammar, and jargon. It’s a great way to learn.
In the meantime, Franchise and I have welcomed a new member to the family – an HP laptop. My files have been migrated and I’m doggedly pursuing one of my New Year’s resolutions – being more organized – by getting rid of duplicates and unnecessary files. Once that’s wrapped up, you’ll see me on here a lot more.
