Pocketmint

Tag: family

1. Our year of radical change

   6 July 2013

   Okay, I went AWOL on Pocketmint again. I’m sorry, but I’m hoping when you hear why, you’ll forgive me. Around the time of my last post, my whole life took an abrupt left turn … and then just kept going. Here are (some of) the major developments from the last three months: 1. Jak got […]

2. Obamacare and affordable health insurance

   4 September 2012

   A couple of months ago, I bemoaned the 14% year-over-year increase in our individual health insurance premiums and expressed my fear for 2015, when both Jak and I will have moved into higher age brackets. I calculated that at the current rate of increase, our premiums would double in just four years. Since the cost […]

3. The Conflict-Free Family Budget: Your Turn

   8 February 2012

   In creating the Conflict-Free Family Budget, I was striving to accomplish two separate but interlinked goals: reduce spending and reduce conflicts. I think these work best in tandem, but that’s not to say that you wouldn’t derive some benefit by implementing just one or the other. I’ll try to tease them apart here for that […]

4. The Conflict-Free Family Budget: Our Results

   27 January 2012

   Our new budget system accomplished everything I hoped for, and then some. Still, I’ve been surprised by a thing or two about my own reactions, and even more so by Jak’s. (This is Part Two in a series. See the Introduction and Part One if you missed them.) I fully expected that for at least […]

5. The Conflict-Free Family Budget: Our Plan

   19 January 2012

   Here’s the complete rundown of the new budget agreement I worked out and proposed to Jak last June. This post is part of a series. See the Introduction if you missed it. First, I started with by calculating our net income from a single day job. (At the time it was me working and Jak […]

6. The Conflict-Free Family Budget: Introduction

   17 January 2012

   My partner Jak and I have been together for eleven years now. We blended our money fairly early in our relationship — sometime late in the second year. Ever since then we’ve had a single pool, into which all income goes, and from which all outflows are jointly approved. Our financial outlooks and spending priorities […]

7. Handmade holidays: experiment in wreath-making

   27 December 2011

   On even-numbered years, Jak’s kids are with us for Christmas, and we often end up spending the holiday with his extended family as well. On odd-numbered years — like this one — the kids spend Christmas with their mother, and Jak and I are usually alone. I wasn’t too keen on buying a whole tree […]

8. Feed a crowd for forty bucks

   9 December 2011

   The calculations are complete. Total cost per person for our Thanksgiving meal (one generous serving each of six dishes and two desserts): $3.50. Note that I didn’t skimp on quality of ingredients — I used such expensive items as pine nuts, heavy cream, whole vanilla beans, and real maple syrup. I also did nothing different […]

9. Movie helps kids relate to economic woes

   24 June 2009

   If tough economic times are causing you stress, you can bet your kids are picking up on the tension as well. Knowing how much to tell them about financial matters can be tricky; you don’t want to overburden and worry them, but neither do you want to leave them surprised and unprepared. I thought the […]