Making Cents Of It All

There is an empty lot a block from my house that has raspberries growing on it. I go every year and pick some. A few other people also go and pick so I have to be paying attention to when they get ripe. Well, this week they are turning ripe. I have gone twice so far and gotten a half a pound each time. They are really small this year but they taste wonderful. I never get enough to do anything with them besides eat them fresh. That is OK. They  are free.  I bartered some veggies from my garden for 2 jars of honey. My friend and I do it every year. I am hoping to be able to barter for more as the summer goes on. It is local honey and it is divine! Hubby and I went to a farmer's market while the kids were away. We were talking to one of the farmers and he gave us a free ear of corn. It is a different variety then what we usually eat. He said to try it and let him know what we think. It was great. It was sweater and white. I would buy it in the future.  ...

Retirement! What all working people dream about. The day that we can stop working and start doing whatever the heck we want. I want to travel. I want to spend time with my kids and (hopefully) grandkids. Hubby wants to work on cars. He likes to work on them now, so I could see him restoring a car. He also says he wants to relax. Maybe get someone to do our yard work. Dreams. They are good to have.  But a plan is even better. Hubby and I both work. He works full time and I work part time. It works for us now. It may change over the years. I may work full time once the kids are all gone. Hubby's job offers a Roth 401K with a match. My job offers a 401K with a match. We are currently putting about 15% into both of those plus the matches. We talk with our financial adviser as well. We want our money to work hard for us.   Could we be putting more into our retirement? Probably. We have a long term plan and we are sticking with it. We follow Dave Ramsey's  Baby ...

When I was growing up, my parents NEVER talked to my sister's and me about money. I never knew anything about our bills, our budget, what my parents salary was. NOTHING. I remember when I got my first job, my mom told me I had to save some of my paycheck.  That's it. No reason. When I was applying to college's I had to fill out everything of mine and then my parents would fill out the finances. I was told to just sign it. I knew nothing about finances. Hubby's dad was the same. He new nothing either. So we started our married life out with no financial knowledge. It was not all roses. We ended up with credit card debt, car loans and student loans. We took on a mortgage that was too big for us but we didn't know that. No one told us. The banks told us we made enough so we listened to them. Big mistake. It took us years to get out of the money mess we had made. We want to make sure that our kids never make the mistakes that we made. We talk to them regularly about...

           Do you know who Dave Ramsey is? I found out about him about five years ago. My oldest daughter was in college and we were starting to pile up student loan debt. My husband and I were not liking it one bit.  We had worked hard to pay off our car loans early. We had learned our lesson with credit cards but we didn't think that we could put 3 kids through college without going deep into debt.We were wrong.             I started reading different financial books and came across The Total Money Makeover . I borrowed if from the library and after the first night of reading it I was hooked. There were stories of other families, couples and singles that had a lot more debt than us and still managed to get out of debt.The book explains how to make a zero based budget and Dave's 7 baby steps. We started making a zero based budget right away. We had budgeted before but never like this. It really opene...