Honeymooners

Well I'm a married woman now and had a fabulous time on the honeymoon, so much so that I didn't keep track of what we were spending. It was nice to not have to worry about a budget and just have a good time, but we would have had a good time anyway, just being with each other. We didn't have really extravegant meals or anything, but the meals we cook at home can be jsut as nice and costs a lot less. It was nice to be able to splurge, but the satisfaction of paying off debt or having money in the savings account far outweighs the pleasure from of out. I feel myself becoming for frugal and actually liking it.

To buy or to wait

My fiance and I looked at a duplex last night in a really nice neighborhood. We just wanted to get an idea of what a duplex might look like, how much maintenance is required and how much it would cost for that area. My credit is good but his is a little low so we're going to do some creative shuffling of finances to see if we can raise it by 40 points to get a decent loan approval amount through the VA since he served inthe military and they offer smokin good rates. We are really planning on waiting until the March/April timeframe for serious house hunting when my credit cards are totally paid off, his old debt is totally paid off, and we have about $10 grand in our cash emergency fund. I'm about halfway through my MBA and with my financial background I was able to do some creative accounting and if the sellers are willing to work with us we could buy the home in November, but I just don't know if I feel comfortable breaking out apartment lease and jumping into a home without a decent emergency fund. That's the biggest change perhaps when making the jump from renter to homeowner: with the water heater breaks in the appartment we just make a phone call, when it breaks in our home we have to shell out the cash orfix it ourselves. And I'm not particularly fond of ice cold showers....

Welcome

I'm 27, with an R&D career in the automotive industry, I'm taking grad classes part-time for an MBA, and I'm getting married in a couple weeks. I'm at a time in my life where I want to stop drifting and want to take control of my direction, especially now that I will have someone else to be thinking about as well. I've been taking a cold hard look at my finances and where I am in life in general over the last year and figuring out where it is that I want to be. I want to take control over my personal finaces by setting goals and finding out more information. I've made a big step simply by acknowleding, (instead of ignoring or hiding from) my financial state and I've made a rough plan that seems to be working out pretty well so far. Going forward I want to find out more information and I've been following a lot of pf blogs and thought it might be a useful tool to start my own blog to track my progress and post information that I've come across.