Introduce Yourself

[JanH]

Welcome Crow67. Glad you joined us!

[Aleta]

Welcome crow67. We're happy that you have joined us.

[vishenda]

How about a warm hug for magnate

[stepseven]

Hi everyone,
I'm a single stay at home mom to 4 girls (17,15,12,10). I'm planning to go back to work in a year or two, but for now stretching the money so I can stay home (10 year old gets out earlier than other and I 'm hoping to not do the day-care thing). Also hoping to get a second car so we're not so dependent on me driving everyone everywhere.
I'm doing the Dave Ramsey thing and slowly working a debt snowball. I worry about not puttling more in my retirement fund (as I haven't worked in about 12 years). I'm really excited about this year's $20 challenge to fund a Roth. I'll be using ya'll (yeah, I'm from the south of USA) for some accountability partners!

[saving4mykids]

I'm in my 40's and nervous about my children's future. I'm married and have 2 kids. I've lived in Georgia all my life, with the exception of a couple of journey's here & there.
I like to shop & that's my downfall. My grandmother always said to me, "save half, spend half". I don't agree with that anymore. We have to save more these days in order for our children to have something in their accounts for college and life in general.

[sloper74]

I am a homeschooling mom to 2 boys and we live on 20 acres in Southside VA. We raise goats for milk and chickens for eggs/meat. My son sells our surplus eggs to friends and at farmers market. I am a after-hours advice RN and work from home on the evenings and weekends. My husband commutes 40min to town 5 days/week.

I've already learned so much from the electricity thread - I ran around and unplugged our electronics not in use and will definitely shut down my computer before bed. We use wood stove for heat, have a super efficient front loader washer and dryer and a very inefficient large cubic inch fridge (I thought I got the energy efficient one and bought online but later learned it was the most unefficient, ugh). Our electric bills are around $150/month for our 3000 sq ft house which I still think is high. Trying to train kids and husband to turn out lights, and we've switched to flourescent on the lights we can.

Looking forward to some money saving tips here. I have a great homemade cereal recipe I will post.

[jeffrey]

Welcome one and all. It's always a pleasure to get information about those that visit the site and make it what it is. Hope you all enjoy the stay and both learn and contribute a bit along the way.

[midjam]

Hi guys, great forum you got here.

[nancy58]

Welcome saving4mykids, sloper74 and midjam, glad to have you join us!! You will get people and ideas here, and never hesitate to ask questions or start a blog...this site is the best!!

[Aleta]

Welcome midjam. Hope that you will come back and visit us.

[txex86]

I found this site recently from a google search. There are quite a few interesting ideas and I'm thrilled to have found it.

[FrugalIII]

I found this site quite accidently but I'm glad I did. I'm working on my second career after retiring from my first a couple of years ago. I've always been interested in finance and economics and read everything I can on the subject. Since I have a pension, a second paycheck and my wife just got a huge raise, taxes are killing us. We have no mortgage (house paid for) and no other deductions to speak of. We do put away quite a bit of money for the eventual total retirement. Hope I get some useful tips from this site.
Howard

[Aleta]

Welcome Txex86 and FrugalIII. We'e happy to have you here. Looking forward to you sharing with us. We can always use new ideas.

[FrugalIII]

Thank you. I doubt I have anything new to offer but it's nice to know that what I have to say is valuable to someone.

[Little L]

Hi all,
Well I've posted a few times already but thought I should introduce myself.

After struggling many years with trying to stick to a budget, I realized what part of my problem was. I was using Quicken's budget features and not really liking them.

So after searching the internet for budget spreadsheets, I created my own in Excel. Its actually a weekly budget and it has worked extremely well so far. I'm finding that I like budgeting by week/paycheck better than monthly as it gives me a better perspective of cash flow.

With this new spreadsheet, I'm finding that I am looking at money differently. I'm thinking, 'if I buy X where in my budget will I have to take the money from?' No more robbing Peter to pay Paul mentality.

My focus at the moment is less dining out, more cooking at home, reducing my monthly grocery budget and paying off a small equity line.

Cooking is a challenge right now as my left arm is in a cast. Two more weeks to go!

So I look forward to posting and learning from all of you.

[JanH]

Welcome Little L! Glad you have joined. I, too, have found the excel budget spreadsheets a wonderful tool compared to what I tried before. Let us know what works for you while you are reducing your costs. We love good ideas!

[Aleta]

Little L, I hope that your arm gets better real soon. I can understand where you are coming from. I broke my left wrist and had a plate put in and was out of commission for a good while. I know it must be difficult to cook, but I admire you and hope that you'll become a regular. We all have much to teach one another.

[FrugalIII]

Although I've used Quicken for over 10 years, I also have an excel spreadsheet that I use to track month over month expenses that are not included in the family budget. That give me a better idea where my discretionary money is going too. My family budget is included on one worksheet and my discretionary spending on another. Works great.

[nancy58]

Welcome to all the new members...txex86, FrugalIII and LittleL! I hope that we will learn from you also. This is a great site with so many helpful people, full of great ideas.

[Myame]

Well, the thread says "Introduce Yourself" so I suppose I'll do just that. I'm a 15 year old that doesn't want to end up out of money and begging off my friends for a living.

I guess I'm here to keep myself informed on financial info and the such.. Only have 2 more years of High School and I'm off to college... hopefully with the help of scholarships and financial aid, though much more likely, student loans. Essentially I'm here to keep myself from damaging a decent financial future by being informed of whats out there to be done. My dad works for a financial planning and investment type business and I help with a lot of the secretarial stuff, so I have a basic idea of most of the technical jargon and such so hopefully I'll understand most of what's going on. Another, slightly less major reason I joined up is that I've had an odd interest in working out budgets and different economical things for a while and I'd like to see how I could potentially develop those skills into something to help myself in the future.

Well, Not as descriptive as I would have liked to make it... but for the moment it's all i can think to type up..Me in a nutshell.