Going to Court, Debt, and Investing

Posted by Madison on May 21, 2009

My court date is today. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll remember about a month ago when I got pulled over for speeding and got a ticket. Both kids were in the back seat and had all kinds of questions for me after I got the ticket. Being accountable to a 1 and 3 […]

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Do it Yourself or Hire a Landscape Architect?

Posted by Madison on May 14, 2009

Now that we’ve decided to stay in our house long term we decided it was finally time to do something about our patio. When we built our house, I think it was the only thing that didn’t quite turn out the way we envisioned. The current patio is just too small. We’re planning to expand […]

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I do my best to make sure that we are getting the lowest possible expense ratios on our index funds, maintaining a 0.148% overall expense ratio. So I was pleased to see that another broker is cutting expense ratios in Schwab Brokerage Lowers Expense Ratios, Beats Vanguard. I currently use a combination of Vanguard, Fidelity […]

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Firing Our Nanny for More Family Time

Posted by Madison on April 29, 2009

Yesterday, I had to let our nanny go. It was really hard, since she’s been with us for three years. However, in a nice twist of events, our family is going to get to spend more time together. When I mentioned that Scott was considering switching to a new career, but ultimately passed on the […]

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Visual Guide to Tax Spending, Credit Cards, and Housing

Posted by Madison on April 23, 2009

We’ve had a huge week! My husband finally made a decision about his plans to work for the upcoming year, everything is almost finalized and we’ll be closing on our rental property next week, and there were some new developments with the loan modification that we’re considering pursuing. Add those to the mountain of paperwork […]

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Did You Miss the Stock Market Rally?

Posted by Madison on April 16, 2009

It wasn’t long ago that we were feeling the pains of a plummeting stock market. While it was hard to watch tens of thousands of dollars disappear from our accounts on what seemed like a daily basis, I kept reminding myself and everyone around me to stay put. We’re in it for the long term. […]

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Cashbaq, Housing, and a New Schedule

Posted by Madison on April 9, 2009

For those of you who check My Dollar Plan daily, you may have noticed a shake up in the schedule this week! It’s spring break, so I’m busy taking the kids on day trips, but I also thought it would be a good time to test a new schedule. Starting this week, I switched to […]

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For Sale: My Dollar Plan

Posted by Madison on April 1, 2009

The time has finally come! It’s time to move on. With the new baby’s planned arrival this summer, we’re accepting that our household is going to go from crazy to complete chaos. Three kids ages 3 and under will do that to any family…. but we love it! Parenting has no doubt been the hardest […]

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Credit Cards Compromised, Investing, Debt, and More!

Posted by Madison on March 25, 2009

Our favorite credit card has a new number. Ugh! We’ve had this card for years, since it deposits 2% into our kids’ 529 plans. In fact, we even have the card number memorized! We were notified that millions of MasterCard holders account numbers were compromised last week and issued a new card. Sure, no big […]

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The Decision on a Whole New Career

Posted by Madison on March 18, 2009

I know, I left you hanging! Would You Quit Your Job for a Whole New Career? featured Scott’s opportunity to take over my dad’s business and all the thoughts he had about the possible career change. Readers also left lots of very thought provoking comments about the possibility too, which I know Scott appreciated! His […]

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