Curious Creature

I obsessively read lifehacking blogs.  I’ve been slowly weaning myself from them but the last frontier I’ve yet to conquer is personal finance blogs.  I still read those obsessively looking for nuggets of information that I might apply to my own life.   If only I could find that one last tip that would put me over the edge and on my way to financial freedom!  I’m over the edge, just not the edge I was hoping to be on the other side of

As I was reading Get Rich Slowly today and catching up I came across a guest post titled The High Cost of Having Children in which the author,  Cathy from Chief Family Officer, talked about the choices she and her husband have had to make in their financial lives because of their choice to have kids.   One of the comments also pointed out that many of the top tier personal finance bloggers are kidless.  All this really hit home for me and had me really scratching my head as to why I’m struggling so much with direction in my financial life.

When is enough advice enough?  Why am I reading these blogs and setting my own standards by what these people, in different financial situations, are doing?  Don’t get me wrong, I find these blogs have really valuable information but I think it is far too easy to use these people to set standards for yourself that are impossibly high instead of simply looking at the advice being offered and using it as you see fit.

I, like the author of the post, am not in a position to pay off all of the debt I have right now, really concentrate on it like JD from Get Rich Slowly has done.  I’ll be in his second stage, again as the author notes she will be, for a long time to come.   There is absolutely nothing wrong with that either.  My life is different from JD’s.  I need to make other decisions, hopefully smart decisions, as to how to proceed in my financial life.

At the very least I think I learned that I need to put some distance between myself and the personal finance wizards out there…at least for a bit.

Clearly renting things isn’t a new idea. I lease a car because for my current situation the lease is a better option. But the key is I can afford it even if I were to have the monthly payment for owning the car.

This article points to just what is so f***ed up with America (and Western Europe for that matter). If you can’t afford a luxury item just rent it!

Isn’t a “luxury” item something that by definition you can afford? I guess that’s the old definition.

It just amazes me what people consider affordable. “Oh its only $10 a month” I get told all the time when I hear about this subscription or that subscription to some service a friend has decided on. Taken by itself that one service at $10 a month may be affordable (I subscribe to emusic.com…where at least the $10 a month I pay gets me music that I own) but all those $10 a month services really start to add up quickly.

I have a friend who has satellite TV, a new HD TV set, monthly subscriptions to the Rhapsody online service, a new digital camera every once in awhile, etc. He insists that he can’t afford to save for his kid’s college fund or retirement. It just boggles my mind.

What the hell is wrong with people?