Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. I decided today that I was going to calculate my net worth because I had never done so. I was surprisingly astonished when I received a net worth of $37,337! This took into consideration myself and my husband’s information, but I was really expecting to be in the red! To explain our financial situation a little deeper, I am still in my early 20s and my husband is in his early 30s. We both make a decent income for the area of the country we live in. In fact, we earn almost twice more than the median average household income for our state. We own our own house, have a first and second mortgage, both have Roth IRAs, I have a 401K, and we’ve got a nice chunk of savings kept in a high yield savings account at ING. We both work full time as managers in our respective fields, I work in finance, and he works in the food industry. [...]

So sometime last month I made a call to Verizon to add text messaging onto our cell phone plan.  We didn’t have any type of text messaging plan so every time we sent or received a text message we were getting charged 20 cents.  For example, when I texted Mr. Money and he sent one back we’d be getting charged 80 cents. 20 for me sending, 20 for him receiving, and vice versa.  Total rip off, right? That’s why I thought a plan would be worth the money. I talked with a very friendly representative who informed me that for just $10 a month I can get unlimited mobile to mobile messaging with Verizon phones, plus 500 text messages to other providers.  I told her to sign me up.  The month goes by, I’m happily texting my hubby, friends, sister, etc.  On Friday when I came home, in my inbox was my Verizon bill.  $100.20.  My previous bill was only $70.39.  My bill jumped almost $30 in one month!  Of course I freaked out, pulled up the history to see [...]

I spent last week with my whole family at a cottage in Michigan. All 19 of us spent the week in a three bedroom cottage with one bathroom. Thankfully, we all love each other and get along pretty well, so things worked out. We cooked every meal at the cottage and spent most of the day on the lake in paddleboats and kayaks. It was an amazing time just spending time together and reconnecting. It also made me want to move back there even worse, but that’s something that’s been on my mind for quite some time. photo credit: dougtone While I was there, my one aunt made a comment that I “should be taking college courses at night” to try to further my education. This is the same aunt that was telling me to go to school to be a CPA awhile back. I remarked that I have a different career path in mind than that. She made it seem like I was not as good as everyone else in her family because I am not making over $60,000 [...]