With 1 year old twins, carving out time to accomplish finance related goals is difficult. After they go to bed, all my wife and I want to do is relax and enjoy each other’s company. Her idea of a relaxing evening does not involve logging into Vanguard and contributing to our Roth IRAs. Because of this, at the beginning of 2022 her Roth IRA was not maxed out for 2021. Luckily everyone still has until…
Over the last six months or so, sports cards have been my side hustle. Back in September, I bought someone’s sports cards collection (primarily baseball). I diligently listed and sold the collection piecemeal so that I wasn’t overwhelmed with shipping things out. Sometime in November, I had recouped the money that I used to buy the cards. After that I started making some money off the investment. Getting real profit from the enterprise was pretty…
Private sector vs public sector is a decision for many professionals. For the beginning of my career, I found employment with the federal government. As a fresh graduate, the salary is pretty competitive with what I could receive in the private sector. The private sector has its own perks, but here I’m going to focus on what’s good about the public sector. I’m focusing on the best part of federal employment: the sweet benefits and…
I’ve been blogging on this site since August of 2020, not including the few months off I took after the twins were born. But my blogging journey really started sometime in 2018, when I set up a site and started posting. I was in grad school, and most of the posts were focused on college and grad school. Very few people read that blog and I didn’t share it anywhere. I thought my writing was…
The fall has not been great for blog productivity. I can feel that mid-December is when it’s all going to turn around. So, dear reader, please leave an annoyed comment if there are not three shiny new Frugal Jon posts on this site before the new year. Now, here’s everything that’s been going on for the last couple months. October is one of my favorite months of the year. This year, the leaves stayed until…
I’ve been eyeing side hustles for some time. I like the idea of having some income coming in on the side that I can put towards investing to turbo charge my path to FI. My ideal side hustle would be something that I enjoy doing and could do whenever I have free time. Given, free time has been a premium lately (which readers can probably tell by the reduced blog output these past couple months).…
I am a big fan of compound interest. You can find references to our friend compound interest in many other posts of mine. Those other posts also featured the compound interest calculators that are so fun to play around with. HOWEVA ————————————————–> There is something about compound interest that is a huge Bummer. A bummer with a capital B. It seemingly takes FOREVER to get going. He’s legitimately the most entertaining sports personality on TV…
This is a sort of sequel post to the one about my unfortunate first night in Dublin. But while that ordeal lasted less than 12 hours, this one lasted 9 months. In this entry of the tales of frugality, I’ll take you through the harrowing story of my first apartment in New Hampshire. There’s inexperience, bad roommates, a sleazy landlady, and Mushroom Guy. So strap in, it’s going to be a long one. Striking Out…
September is one of the great transition months. Schools reopen, the weather starts to cool, and New England’s greatest season begins. The fall is my favorite season and September is great for doing fun fall traditions. The leaves are just starting to turn here in southern New England, and that with the cool air makes it the best season for afternoon walks. Cozy weather has finally arrived. September was a great and packed month for…
In my continuous quest to grow this blog, I’ve been surfing around Quora. For those not familiar, Quora is a website that allows users to answer questions that have been asked by others. In a lot of ways it’s a spiritual successor to the wild world that was Yahoo answers (RIP). On Quora, I try to answer questions related to personal finance and investing, then link my relevant blog posts. In the investing section, I…