image: Seattle Municipal Archives In my 7 years of working for the man, I’ve more than doubled my income from $40,000/year to $81,000/year. It hasn’t been easy, and there’s some things that I would have done differently. Here’s a few thoughts on what has worked for me through the years, and what I wish I ... Read more →
image: Tim Patterson I’ve been working at an office job for the past seven years. I’ve been commuting to the same place, day after day, to complete tasks given to me by my superiors. Sucks, right? HELL NO. I love it. (what now?) Sometime in the past few years of personal finance blogging, it has ... Read more →
In the past two years, we haven’t been good with keeping this blog updated. As we’ve said before, finances weren’t a primary concern for us; we treat it more like a chore. Sure money is important, but for us it remains a tool that we use in order to achieve our other goals. However, like ... Read more →
We’re big fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That show does wonders for turning our brains off after a day of work and being a parent. In the show, Charlie tends to get stuck with the duties and chores that no one else wants, ie, Charlie Work. Since we’ve had a baby, we definitely ... Read more →
image: Number Six (bill lapp) While in the past year much has changed, you know with the baby and all, much has stayed the same. Yes, we’re still renters, baby and all. Remember that unbelievable rent increase of $8 that we faced in 2008? Since then, our rent has not increased ONE PENNY. Yes, in a ... Read more →
image: xkcd So all that non-posting in the past year? Yeah, we were busy having a baby and stuff. Did you realize how much time ONE measly baby takes? What the hell, baby. Also, as it turns out, ONE measly baby also tends to be pretty expensive. It is quite the transformation to turn our ... Read more →
image: xkcd These days Her and I drive much, much more than we used to, for reasons that I’ll explain in a later post. Of course that means that we’re saddled with high costs at the gas pump. We’re having to fill up about once a week, and with gas prices being the highest in ... Read more →
This past month I’ve worked to transfer the blog over from Moveable Type to WordPress. The process was a little difficult, but I think I’ve managed to smooth out most of the bugs. I’ve already noticed that the site is slow compared with how it was, but I’ll continue to fix that. Let me know ... Read more →
So you’ve probably noticed that there was a sponsored post yesterday. The decision to run that wasn’t made lightly. We literally get hundreds of requests to do this type of thing, mostly from companies that we’ve never heard of or whom we wouldn’t want to do business with. When we originally received the email propsal, ... Read more →
This sponsor post is brought to you by 21st Century Insurance. The views expressed here are solely those of the sponsor and do not necessarily represent the views of Make Love, Not Debt. Many drivers spend a lot of time shopping for lower car insurance rates. Once you find a low rate, you’ll want to ... Read more →
(photo: The Doctr) Way back in the day when we were just newlyweds (or 18 months ago if you prefer), we came up with a list of things that we thought would be good to do since we’re now married. Surprisingly enough we managed to accomplish most of those things on the list. One task ... Read more →
photo: Andres Rueda Over the past few months I’ve chosen to close a few credit card accounts. I think that in each case, the card carriers were going to start charging an annual fee unless we started using the card. The most recent example was my Citibank card, as they wanted us to spend at ... Read more →
original photo: Photos8.com, modified in compliance with its Creative Commons License On last night’s season finale of How I Met Your Mother, we’re reminded that almost all of the gang has seen his or her corresponsing doppelganger roaming the streets of New York, except for one (Barney, of course, for all of the HIMYM fans ... Read more →
We at Make Love, Not Debt have distrusted social media for a little while now. We’ve only personally embraced it in the last year or so and finally have wrapped our brains around the whole thing. And now we love it. Over the past few weeks I’ve added the oh-so-ubiquitous sharing buttons found on everyone’s ... Read more →
photo: Gustavo Minas When Her and I first moved into our modest apartment, we bought some room-darkening pull-down shades to cover our windows. Back then we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on window treatments so we cheaped out and bought some low-quality stuff. Fast-forward five years and the shades are cracked and ... Read more →
photo: dark.molly Hey kids! The biggest change we have for this blog is the addition of a new writer, Stacy. You may know her from her blog Birds and Bills, where she writes about… …wait for it…. …personal finance! If you haven’t read her blog, I suggest you do so. She is the CNNMoney.com’s small ... Read more →
photo: 10b travelling This past weekend I was dillegently reviewing the week’s transactions on Quicken, when I noticed two charges made to Newegg.com on my Chase Freedom Card. I’m a huge fan of Newegg and have purchased items from there before, but I was pretty sure that I didn’t buy anything from them last week. ... Read more →
Wow. It has been over a year since we’ve last updated our net worth. And my has it grown! We have a lot to talk about to keep you updated on how we got here. Assets First off, we’ve been more than blessed with the market upturn over the past 12 months. With the combined ... Read more →
Do you need something to do this weekend? March Madness what? How about taxes? Enter to win TurboTax Online Deluxe or Premier by 9:00 PM CDT. Do it. Now.
photo: Ilja The first time that Her and I heard about long-term care (LTC) insurance was about 5 years ago on an episode of Susie Orman. LTC insurance pays for stuff like nursing homes to at home care, depending on the plan. Since then we’ve always had it in the back of our minds, especially ... Read more →