The links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. We own and use all these products ourselves and think that they’re great help for parents! Many of them can be found used and in good condition. For that I recommend Facebook marketplace. The twins recently turned 5 months old. It feels like they just got here and have been here forever at the same time. We love their little noises, their smiles and giggles,…
Welcome to a new recurring series called The Monthly Memory. This is my way of cataloguing at least one interesting or notable thing that I did in the past month. It’s a good way for me to put out some extra content. It’s also a way to motivate me to actually do something notable. It’ll be a fun memory keeper for me personally to look back on too. I’ll also pull the curtain back on…
Federal Employees and military members, you’re in luck! You have access to one of the most powerful retirement accounts offered in these United States. The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is analogous to a 401k. Unlike many 401k’s out there, the TSP has rock bottom fees and very flexible options. There are very simple options for hands off investors, low volatility options for the risk averse, and plenty of index funds for folks like me. You…
At my older brothers’ birthday party (they have the same birthday), I hit an inflection point with my personal finances. After one of my brothers received a book by Dave Ramsey, my aunt remarked that his advice can get you the basics but not much further. As a college junior, I was already interested in personal finance. Friends were already calling me Frugal Jon. I had even done research on how to invest. But at…
Can you recall a single important memory spent idly on the internet? A single moment when scrolling on your phone was the best thing you could have been doing? I can’t either. I’ve made many mental justifications for why I needed to be on my phone in the moment. “I just need to mentally check out for a bit” was a particularly easy one. But now, with a full time job, two little ones to…
Get 1% better. It seems small and simple. But getting 1% better consistently results in huge long term benefits. Getting in 1% better shape every few weeks would result in the best shape of your life after little while. In personal finance, there’s a lot of room to get 1% better for most folks, myself included. Today, I’m going to look at a product that is the bane of commuters: gasoline. The price of gas…
There are many ways to not catch striped bass. Some methods are illegal, such as spear fishing. Others lack common sense, such as dressing as a bait fish and attempting to catch them with your bare hands. However, the ones that I’ve been discovering are more nuanced. As a novice striper fisherman who just figured out how to cast properly, my luck has been poor. My fishing experiences this season have forced me to practice…
I have a simple relationship with coffee. I typically only drink it on the weekends. I enjoy the taste of coffee, but I’ve worked hard to not develop a dependency on caffeine. On Sunday mornings, my wife and I had a simple routine after Mass. We would get Dunkin’ iced coffees before going to my parents’ house for brunch. But then one day I saw a new sign pup up a quarter mile down the…
In the early 18th Century, an Englishman started a joint venture with the Crown to help reduce the national debt. He would sell shares in the South Sea Company, which was given the same monopoly in the Caribbean/South America as the East India Company had in Asia. With the support of the powers of England, the general public bought in, in a huge way. The stock price soared and some early investors became rich overnight.…
I love writing about the concept of enough. I have two posts about it if you haven’t had the chance to check them out yet. Enough, balanced with frugality, is how I try to frame my financial pans and my material worldview. For example, right now my 2003 Honda Accord with just about 200,000 miles on it is enough. I didn’t go out and buy a fancy new car when I got my first engineering…