Easy Change

I have been struck over the past month how many things have really begun to come together recently in my life. I went through a rather difficult period for about 18 months and now things are feeling somewhat better. I thought that in this post I would discuss a little bit about the relationship between your health (both emotional and physical) and your financial situation. For me, there is undoubtedly a relationship between these two things. After my divorce, I found that I was really struggling with a variety of different issues. I had to move multiple times, I was suddenly single, and also was older (much older) than I was when I first 'dated' in college. I am not terribly novel in terms of the story but my story might give someone some help, so I think it is worth sharing. It can be helpful to have a measurement of the different aspects so that I can describe them. The measurements will surely be different for you, but I find the following measurements helpful: For fin...

I'm going to Grad School! For me, in my mid-thirties was the last time I would have expected to be doing this. After over 8 years at my job, I realized that I needed to learn new technologies and also revamp my skills. One might ask why not use Coursera or some other free tools to learn new skills (and I will talk about those in a separate post). In particular there are three items that I am trying to address with grad school: 1. Name Recognition/Degree Currently I hold a Bachelor's Degree of Computer Science. Unfortunately, the school I went to is a well regarded liberal arts university where only BA degrees are offered. In my field, many people want to see a BS. And I personally understand why the difference matters. My education certainly had plenty of theory and programming, but being a liberal arts degree (a double major with a foreign language), I feel strongly that this puts me head and shoulders above many people who are poor communicators in IT, but behind those wi...

Go all cash. It is not a revolutionary idea. Don't wait for something amazing and new in terms of an idea in Personal Finance. It's just cash. That's what I am thinking about as I head into this Month. Sitting now on the 5th, I was considering whether or not I should just go all cash for a month. But let me start with my motivation: I feel like I spend a lot of money. I mean A LOT. More than I should. Perhaps more than anyone should. And that makes me wonder if perhaps the credit card and my personal good fortune to have a good salary really has kept me entirely insulated from how expensive everything is and what my spending habits are. Again, not revolutionary, but this morning it really hit me for some reason.  After I completed this exercise, I found two key takeaways: 1. I spend entirely too much money on coffee out. For me that was a response to spending so much time at my desk at work. I needed an 'excuse' to get outside. Near my office, there is 'ch...

Comparative Compromise, Coping with Change This is the last article in a series of short posts about reflections on divorce. While I would not wish this on anyone for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the financial impact that such an event can have, I certainly feel excited to be working through this process and wanted to take just a few moments to share some of the insights that have really affected me. One of the biggest skills that you need to cultivate as part of the divorce process is being comfortable with change an uncertainty. While this is a financial blog, there are several items that I found very helpful in this manner and these have had immense benefits for my entire life, not just my finances. The Untethered Soul - By Michael Singer Living Beautifully with Change and Uncertainty by Pema Chodron Besides these books I also found three additional pieces of advice are extremely helpful: 1. Go easy on yourself. In a word: compassion. With all of the ...

Dating with Data, Digging for Gold This article is part of a series on divorce which describes my experiences as part of going through a divorce. In short, I found that the dating world had changed somewhat by the time I returned to it as a result of my divorce. Now, the internet has changed dating, changed it even more than when I had originally met my spouse on America Online almost 20 years ago. Now the internet bustles with all sorts of applications for smart phones related to dating. Many of them are related and part of larger conglomerates at this point. I wanted to take this post really to just give my own personal impressions of dating as a result of this experience. I personally used an app called OKCupid which I found to be very good and helpful. Here are the things I liked: 1. It provided pictures and some opportunity to give a description. 2. It did not require for other people to know I was looking at their profile. 3. It allowed me to be able to answer questions...