4 Financial Benefits of Community Connections + MORE

Hey everyone! A couple of weeks ago I asked one of my favorite bloggers to guest post for me. Just last year she quit her job, and her and her significant other decided to travel the world. I thought she was super inspiring and knew she just HAD to guest post for me. You can follow her lifestyle blog at Mish Lovin Life or their travel blog at Filling in the Dots…

 
You can chose your friends, but you can’t chose your family, right? Good, bad or indifferent our parents are our role models and we soak up their knowledge, wisdom and (sometimes) bad financial habits.
Ever since I can remember, my dad has been a financial disaster poor money manager. He and my mother have very different financial, “styles” and philosophies about money…

I’ve mentioned my debt struggles numerous times on this blog. As part of our journey towards becoming debt free, my wife worked with debt consolidation company, CareOne Debt Relief Services, to consolidate all of her outstanding medical debts into one payment.
Of course that didn’t last long when we discovered that our local hospital does not accept any payment plans other than a loan from the bank that has a loan officer in their billing department…

Today as I stared off into my beach screensaver, I thought about our vacation. A vacation that is not yet planned, but desired. This year as we save aggressively for a down payment towards a house, we are debating what vacations to plan. Some of our friends invited us to go to Cabo with them with a Group On coupon…

The current climate in the commercial real estate market scenario is a frenzied one. With economic instability on one end creating a scenario of a scrambling competition among sellers wanting to make money on their investments to a growing demand for high end real estate among buyers looking to expand businesses or make a sound …

For a couple of years now I’ve been talking about and reviewing a variety of online brokerages. We’ve talked about the features of each and I gave my opinions about which I felt were the best available out there for beginning and intermediate investors like myself.
While I have a moderate amount of knowledge about the subject, it always pays to get an outside look at what online brokerages are ranking well and which ones are getting the top marks in different categories…

Happy Friday everyone! Last week I shared my thoughts on the $175,000 bed that is being made by a British company targeting ultra wealthy individuals in the hopes they’ll see a need for a pricey bed in one of their five vacation homes and got a pretty good response from it. With that in mind I thought I would share about another puzzling article I read on Yahoo Finance this week…

Yep, that is me. The car is not moving though…
That’s right everyone, I am creating something new for my Friday posts.  As a personal finance blogger and someone that has been through the debt gauntlet, I realize the power of keeping positive.  I personally understand that debt can be a drag…

My princess with a “real” princess
If you have children, you’d probably say it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. While I totally agree, I also admit that kids are expensive. My lovely, little daughter is turning six today, so in honor of her birthday, I thought I’d share some mistakes I’ve made  tips on how to save money on kids’ birthday parties…

It’s just about time for Easter to be here, and that means plenty of Easter celebrations are nearly upon us.  I’ve already discussed how you can keep your costs to a minimum while still having a great Easter, but I haven’t told you much about what I intend to do with my Easter.  Given that this blog is supposed to be (at least in part) a chance for me to share my life with others, that’s a bit neglectful on my part…

Happy Easter weekend everyone. I hope you all get to have a relaxing weekend with family and friends.  I am excited for Easter weekend for a number of reasons:
It marks the end of my 40 day fast.  I gave up Tim Horton’s (The Canadian equivalent of Dunkin Donuts) as my personal sacrifice for Lent…

Which path should I take? I have been grateful for the jobs and internships I have gotten lately, but I always want a new path.  I think it is just a matter of me not wanting to work for free.  I miss … Continue reading →The post Should I Follow a New Path Towards Receiving My Degree? appeared first on Financial Black Sheep…

Photo: 401(K) 2013
Even small errors on your credit report can cause big problems. A typo in your home address could make it difficult for you to pull a copy of your credit report, for instance. A larger error, such as a creditor misreporting your financial information, could cause more serious issues…

If you’re a homeowner, or even a renter, you’ve probably done your fair share of “do it yourself” projects.  Some of these can be very simple while others require a bit more knowledge and skill.  With such a large difference, it makes sense that some projects are worth it to do yourself, but not all of them…

Not much to report here this week.

I have been super busy setting up my VPS so I can move this site onto a faster and better equipped server. I recently got told that this site is consuming too many resources, so I have a couple of options:

Upgrade with my current host
Move to a new one.

Seeing as I haven’t been all that happy with the performance of this server (I assume it is over crowded), I decided that a move was in order…

Saving money is critical to achieving financial independence. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly fond of extreme frugality.  I’ve also mentioned that I prefer to make thoughtful decisions about everything that I’m going to purchase.  One of the factors that goes into that decision is how much I feel that a given purchase will improve my life…

We are a nation of television watchers.
A common evening routine for most people is to come home, eat, sit in front of the TV, then go to sleep.  It’s physically and mentally unhealthy.  It’s passive, not thought-provoking, and antisocial. Studies have shown that our brains work less while watching TV, so we become programmed to think and act as we see right there on our screen…

I’m constantly reminded that this hobby is full of genuinely nice people.  I happened to meet one of them through my interactions over on coincommunity.com.  PennyGuy, as he goes by, has one of the most beautiful collections of Two Cent Pieces I’ve ever seen.  Here is a link to his circulation set, and his proof set…

This post was written by Jana Lynch. Read more about her after the post. 
A week or so ago, I was cleaning out the small suitcase I call a purse. Among all the debris, receipts, loose change and random bits of paper that I know my child puts in there, I noticed things like my library card. Appointment reminder cards…

A topic has come up recently in my life that I have put a lot of thought into. I briefly talked about this topic, lifestyle inflation, in an earlier post but I wanted to spend a little more time on it today. Earlier today, a fellow blogger posed a question on Twitter that was a form of “when can I enjoy all of my hard work?” Now, I don’t know the specifics of her situation but it seems like she is asking herself the same question I have asked myself recently, and the same question most people ask when they start making more money…