Four years ago, I married the love of my life.  We had a beautiful wedding at the church I attended throughout my life, took pictures at a beautiful park, and then went and partied with our friends and family members.  The last four years have been incredibly amazing, and I look forward to the rest of our lives together.  I remember when we were on our honeymoon we said we wanted to go back to Hawaii on our first anniversary. Hah.  Wishful thinking.  Instead, we drove out to Colorado to visit family. A few months ago, we decided we wanted to go back for our five year anniversary, but we’ll have to see how life is next year.  Hopefully we’ll be having a baby! The past four years have been financially rewarding as well.  We learned to live on a very small amount of money when Mr. Money was in culinary school, we paid off $36,000 in a short amount of time after he graduated, we bought a house, and bought a new car. I think we’re living a great [...]

Working in a bank has many benefits. Not only do I collect a paycheck every two weeks, but I also get benefits and the ability to network with our clients. So when one of the insurance agents came into the bank one day and asked me about my homeowners and car insurance, I was open to discussing it with him because he did business with us. He seems trustworthy, and I like him.  I gave him our drivers license numbers, the make and model of our cars, and he went back to the office to get me a quote.  The next day, he gave me a call. For six months, our 2005 Ford Freestyle is $240.35, and our 2002 Ford Mustang is $287.24.  Total that is going to cost us $527.59.  We were paying $727.39, so of course I was ecstatic!  Of course I’d like to save $200 for six months!  I made sure that the coverage was the same limits (it’s actually better!), plus the deductible was the same.  The quote he gave us included a $500 deductible versus [...]

Ever since the bank I work for was bought out by another bank, there have been changes occurring. I knew that there would be, as change is inevitable. Some of the changes have been small, and some have been huge. I’ve taken it all in stride, and rolled with the punches. There’s not much more I can do besides that. This morning we had a meeting on some of the changes to our benefits plan.  The first thing we went over was health insurance plans.  The old bank offered a high deductible health plan, and now the new bank is going to follow suit.  We’ll still have other options like PPOs and HMOs, so I’m not freaking out about that too much.  I can pick health insurance pretty easily now. The next topic we touched on was retirement accounts and pension plans.  As it is currently, my company matches $1.15 per every dollar I put into my 401k, up to 6%.  I also have a pension plan I was grandfathered into that they put money into each month.  Very nice!  [...]