Owner: One Caveman's Financial Journey URL:http://www.thatonecaveman.com Join Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:36:25 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A personal finance blog discussing topics ranging from money management, savings, investments, frugal living, and more. Site statistics:Click here
Friday Link Love - Yard “Sailing” Edition 2008-06-06 09:46:08 Today seems to have kicked off yard sale season in my area. The news completely missed us, but our neighborhood is having its annual yard sale today and tomorrow.
My wife’s already out there shopping for baby and children’s clothing, furniture, toys, and decorations. She even stumbled upon a lucky find of a queen-size [...] Read more:Friday
, Sailing
, Edition
Adventures in Frugality: Grocery Budget Experiment Preview 2008-06-05 11:44:00 Lately, I’ve been in an experimental mood. It’s something I get into every now and then: I push myself toward a new goal; I crunch spreadsheets of data; I find new and more creative ways to save money. I’m pretty sure it annoys my wife, but it keeps me entertained and what’s better than [...] Read more:Adventures
, Frugality
, Grocery
, Experiment
, Preview
13 Free or Cheap Ways To Keep Your Home Cool This Summer 2008-06-04 10:17:16 Much to the chagrin of my pregnant wife, I held off on turning on the air conditioner until last night. In the evening it was getting cool enough to open the windows and let Mother Nature cool our house. In the morning, I would close the windows and blinds before I left for [...] Read more:Cheap
, Summer
Adult Sports Are a Money Sink 2008-06-03 11:32:34 Last night marked the opening night of our summer church softball league. I had a great night on the field with no errors - one “almost” double play and one unassisted double play - and I went 1-for-3 at the plate with one run and one walk. My team, on the other hand, had [...] Read more:Adult
, Sports
, Money
Personal Balance Sheet, May 2008: Net Worth +42.15%! 2008-06-02 08:30:11 Each month, I post an analysis of my finances and my end-of-month net worth. For more on why I do this, please take a look at my explanation post.
May was an uncommonly, unconventionally successful month. Unfortunately, most of the “growth” was from money we technically already had but weren’t tracking.
Here’s the overview for [...] Read more:Personal
, Balance
, Worth
, Net Worth
Use Real Numbers In Your Plans 2008-06-09 09:10:58 Personal finance is a game of numbers, not of nebulous ideas. I’ve heard it time and again: “I want to make more money. If I had more money, I’d be ok.” The problem is that’s not a plan; that’s a wish you make when rubbing on a genie’s lamp (and the results will [...] Read more:Numbers
Graduates, Start Saving NOW! 2008-06-10 08:31:22 I graduated college in 2002, right in the depths of the tech bubble burst, but I left college with a big head since I already had a job - something many of my friends lacked. While I held a diploma for a BS in Computer Science in my hand, I had to settle for an [...] Read more:Graduates
, Start
, Saving
Frugal Food: Quick Fettuccine Cacciatore 2008-06-12 10:58:12 With our grocery budget experiment well-underway, cooking for a growing family on a shrinking budget is our new reality. We’ve always tried to be cost-minded when we shop for groceries, but this experiment has required a complete change in our thought processes.
Before, we would write a list of the things we thought our pantry needed [...] Read more:Frugal
, Quick
Enjoy a Romantic Summer Getaway For Less 2008-06-11 09:35:41 Photo by: slightly-less-random
My wife and I are approaching our 5th anniversary and we have been looking for a chance to reconnect. It’s been a long time since we’ve really had the chance to get away, just the two of us, since our daughter was born. We’re looking forward to enjoying some alone time [...] Read more:Summer
Friday Link Love - Half-Anniversary Contest Edition 2008-06-13 08:15:16 It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been writing here for six months already. Today marks not only One Caveman’s Financial Journey’s 6-month anniversary, but also my 100th post. It’s great to reach two milestones on the same day. In order to celebrate this occasion properly, I have decided to host a contest [...] Read more:Friday
, Anniversary
, Contest
, Edition
Pay Yourself First and Grow Your Savings 2008-06-16 12:11:09 Last week, I wrote about my huge mistake of not saving right out of college. I made a decent income, but by spending it all, I was left with nothing in my savings when I lost my job. I thought I could have it all. In reality, I had nothing at all [...] Read more:Yourself
, First
, Savings
We All Have Room To Cut Expenses 2008-06-17 11:48:53 Let’s face it, we all have discretionary expenses that we can cut in a time of crisis. We may think of these as necessary for survival, but you’d be surprised how little you can get by with and still survive. The reason so many personal finance-minded people encourage everyone to maintain a fully-funded emergency [...] Read more:Expenses
$25 Amazon.com Gift Card Contest Ending Soon! 2008-06-19 12:00:18 In just 12 short hours, our $25 Amazon
.com gift card contest will be over. But that means there is still plenty of time to enter! Just head over to the announcement post to find out how to enter up to 3 times.
I will announce the winner tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s Link [...] Read more:Contest
, Ending
, com Gift
Grocery Budget Experiment: Two Week Check-In 2008-06-19 08:30:58 We’ve finally reached the two-week mark on our grocery budget experiment, so it’s time to check in and see how we’re progressing.
Last time, I mentioned how we were averaging $77 for food and groceries each week. (For the purposes of my experiment, I consider “food” to be any junk, fast, or pre-prepared meals and “grocery” [...] Read more:Grocery
, Experiment
, Check
Grocery Budget Experiment: Save Money With a Meal Plan 2008-06-18 12:09:47 “What do you want for dinner?”
“I don’t know. What do you want?”
“I picked last time; you have to pick.”
That is such a common exchange in our household… We have found that if we leave figuring out the day’s dinner until I get home from work, we’re not likely to decide on anything. [...] Read more:Grocery
, Experiment
, Money
Friday Link Love - New Discoveries Edition 2008-06-27 11:20:17 It’s been yet another hard week of work on the job and blogging fronts, but there’s been plenty to show for it. I didn’t submit any articles to carnivals last week, so there’s not much to report in that direction, but there are a few sites that I discovered in the last couple of weeks [...] Read more:Friday
, Edition
Fighting Tech Lust 2008-06-26 11:52:14 Photo by: DerkT
I can usually feel it coming on, but I just can’t seem to shrug it off once it starts. It happens every time I come across a little bit of money or I run into a problem I know I can fix (if only I had the proper tools or equipment). It’s a [...] Read more:Fighting
Save Big With Summer Bargain Hunting 2008-06-25 08:30:35 The following is a guest post written by my wife, The Cavewife. She regularly writes here about what’s on her heart as a frugal stay-at-home mom.
For the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time shopping for bargains. With the rise in prices for gas and food I will do nearly anything to save [...] Read more:Summer
, Bargain
7 More Ways To Cool Your House For Less This Summer 2008-06-24 10:25:22 Three weeks ago, I listed 13 free or cheap ways to keep your home cool in the summer. But since I was focused on the “free or cheap” aspect, I left out other great, but more expensive, ways to keep your home cool. And thanks to the comments on that article, I was reminded [...] Read more:Summer
, House
How To Challenge Your Property Tax Assessment 2008-06-23 11:19:30 This weekend I received my property tax bill. (What a lovely wedding anniversary gift…) According to the county’s assessment of my property, the decidedly unfair multiplier they use to “balance” the tax load, and the base tax rate, I owe just over $4,800 in property taxes this year. This amount reflects a nearly 13% increase [...] Read more:Challenge
, Assessment
, Property Tax
Friday Link Love - Credit Perspectives Edition 2008-07-11 13:02:01 This week, I decided to get creative and put together a “Devil’s Advocate”-style series that highlighted some of the extreme opinions about credit cards and had the two sides face off using my voice as their medium. I think it went fairly well and I even learned a bit on the way by putting together [...] Read more:Friday
, Edition
Credit Perspectives: Credit Cards Are Dangerous Tools 2008-07-10 12:35:00 This is the third installment of Credit Perspectives. Please visit the introductory post for the other perspectives provided in the rest of the series.
The idea of credit has been around since before money was invented, but the invention of the credit card in the 1950s allowed our economy to grow in new and previously-unimagined [...] Read more:Cards
, Tools
, Credit Cards
Credit Perspectives: Credit Cards Are Evil 2008-07-09 11:55:18 This is the second installment of Credit Perspectives. Please visit the introductory post for the other perspectives provided in the rest of the series.
The idea of credit has been around since before money was invented, but the invention of the credit card in the 1950s crippled our economy. Never before has it been [...] Read more:Cards
, Credit Cards
Credit Perspectives: Credit Cards Are Good 2008-07-08 11:11:10 This is the first installment of Credit Perspectives. Please visit the introductory post for the other perspectives provided in the rest of the series.
The idea of credit has been around since before money was invented, but the invention of the credit card in the 1950s revolutionized our economy. Never before has it been [...] Read more:Cards
, Credit Cards
Credit Perspectives: 3 Ways To Look At Credit Cards 2008-07-07 10:54:25 I’ve heard a lot of bickering over credit cards lately. It appears there are two camps that are dead-set on pushing their conflicting agendas and everyone else is caught up in their fight.
One side is convinced that credit cards are great. They free you from the need to carry cash, they provide you with great [...] Read more:Cards
, Credit Cards
Away On a Business Trip 2008-07-28 08:48:01 No, I’m not dead and I haven’t been kidnapped by roving gangs of credit card managers. I’m just off on a business trip all this week. I hope to be able to write one or two articles in between my schmoozing and scheming. If not, I’ll see you next Monday! Don’t miss me too much!
(c) [...] Read more:Business
Friday Link Love - Leaving Town Again Edition 2008-07-25 10:02:24 Sunday I’ll be leaving town again for a week for yet another business trip. I’ll see what guest posts I can get lined up by then (feel free to contact me if you wish to write a guest post) and what I can write in the evening at the hotel. Don’t think I’ve run off [...] Read more:Friday
, Leaving
, Again
, Edition
Single Step Personal Finance Challenge - You Really Need Life Insurance 2008-07-24 08:46:09 Last week, Mrs. Micah challenged the personal finance blogosphere to come up with a single step they could (and should) take to improve their personal finance system. As always, I’m late with joining just about every trend, but here’s the single step I need to take:
Ever since the birth of our daughter, my wife and [...] Read more:Personal
, Challenge
Frugal Things To Do In Saint Louis, MO 2008-07-23 09:28:29 Saint Louis
, Missouri, also known as the Gateway City, is a wonderful destination for a short-distance vacation for visitors from the surrounding area as well as a great getaway for people around the country and world. In recent years, St. Louis has undergone a bit of modern revitalization and has worked hard to add [...] Read more:Frugal
, Saint
A Second Economic Stimulus Check? Thanks, But No Thanks. 2008-07-22 11:14:26 Photo credit: The Joy Of The Mundane
Sorry, but I’m not going to fall for the election year pandering this time. I graciously and gratefully accepted the first stimulus check - it paid for my bike and helped pay down my car loan - but we certainly didn’t need it. And now the Democrats are [...] Read more:Second
, Economic
, Check
, Thanks
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