The Zero Sum Financial Game: Ideas to Help You Juggle the Month

At the end of the month you need for all bills to be paid, savings goals to be met, and for your checking account to have a balance of at least zero (and hopefully a few dollars above so that you aren’t sweating it). When you adhere to a budget from choice or necessity, cost [...]

Furloughs Causing Bankruptcy: How Many Americans Live Too Close for Comfort?

This article has been featured as a Best of Money Carnival Winner for the week of August 30th. As a state employee, I am hearing all kinds of rumors about the budget for fiscal year 2011, which starts September 1, 2010. Whether or not there will be budget cuts is not the question on the [...]

How Not to be a Starving Artist

There are two main financial obstacles you need to address in order to achieve living your dream of practicing your art without becoming a starving artist. Whether you are a writer, photographer, painter, composer, sculptor, dancer, etc., the first thing you must do is to minimize your expenses, and the second thing you must do [...]

Balance is Key in Life and in Budgeting

For our 4th of July picnic I thumbed through my trusted recipe box and turned to a dessert I haven’t made in over a year: Key Lime Pie (scroll to the bottom for the recipe). I knew that living in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida in my early twenties was going to be a fleeting experience—when [...]