From the category archives:

goals

Why I REALLY Hate Zero-Based Budgeting

by Jessica W on October 5, 2009

Dear readers. You have permission to call me a coward.
In the past ten months, my husband and I have really made great bounds in taming the financial situation of this household. We re-tooled spending, we began budgeting (first time ever) and we’ve so far paid off $34,000 in debt. But we’ve got a ways to [...]

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Financial Peace University: The First Class

by Jessica W on September 18, 2009

I mentioned in my last post that the family is attending Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at a local church. Last Sunday was our first class.
My husband and I are attending, and dragging along our oldest daughter–who had to attend the first class on her eleventh birthday (we may be the cruelest parents yet [...]

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Start Them Young!

by Jessica W on August 24, 2009

I’m not sure how many readers here at DebtKid have children, but I have two.  In our family we joke that we didn’t have debt before we had kids. I actually believed this until a few days ago when I was clearing some old files and found our financial paperwork from when we were first [...]

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Smarty Pig: Savings Automated (and cute)

by Jessica W on August 6, 2009

As long as I can recall, I’ve had a savings account. My babysitting money or my birthday money went there and sat.
Later, it became my “Just in case a check bounces” fund.
Now it’s the “major auto repair, tow bill or gigantic medical bill” fund. The sad thing is, I’m not very [...]

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Virtual Financial Advisors – Good or Bad idea?

by creditcruncher on July 20, 2009

I was browsing new finance articles earlier this week and read about a few new web-based financial “advisor” websites that received high remarks.  I do not believe these websites were developed to replace financial advisors but to a) keep your current advisor honest and make sure they are giving you sound advice b) give you [...]

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The past few weeks I’ve had something happen that has not happened in years…
I’ve felt content.
Contentment is not usually a bad thing. In fact, it can be a very healthy emotion.
But not for me. I need to stay hungry, stay motivated.
Here’s what’s been working for me to stay motivated even when things are [...]

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Are side projects worth it?

by debt kid on April 14, 2009

My blogger pal Pinyo of moolanomy recently launched a pretty cool news and blog aggregator called Greatnexus.
If there are any Star Trek fans in the house, you’ll remember from “Generations” that “the nexus” was pretty sweet. So you can only imagine what a great nexus would be, right?
Greatnexus got me thinking: are side projects worth [...]

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How much is my small business worth?

by debt kid on March 17, 2009

I remember in college, in a business finance class, we did calculations on how to value a business.
They made it seem so stinking easy in that darn class. Take the net present value of future cash flows at a certain discount rate and viola! A nice tidy business valuation.
The reality is that a business, especially [...]

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My Big Hairy Goal for 2009

by debt kid on January 7, 2009

My Big Hairy Goal for 2009…
Improve my net worth by 200K
Money Goals

Max out $12,000 in payback to Mother
Pay off IRS Debt ($30,000)
Pay off car ($10,500)
Settle old business debts (86,000)
Save $70,000 for house down payment (20% of 350,000)
Buyout old investors in my corp ($63,000)
Large emergency fund ($20,000)
Hire part-time employee to full-time ($55,000/yr)

Personal Goals

Get Private Pilot’s [...]

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7 Business lessons from the Legend of Zelda

by debt kid on April 8, 2008

Da-da, duh-da-da-duh…
Even though I haven’t played the original Zelda for at least 5 years, every once in a while a Zelda song pops into my head. Then yesterday, as I was walking out of my apartment, I realized my building layout was very similar to an underground dungeon. It got me thinking about all the [...]

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