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June 2020: wedding stuff begins

Oh, hi, y’all. Why the hell am I even bothering to post a spending report 11 months late? No one cares about last year’s spending, and I don’t particularly care about it either.

But honestly, if I don’t finish out my 2020 spending (starting with June because that’s where I left off), I am pretty sure I’ll never get back into blogging again. More on that later (it’s one of the many posts I keep meaning to write but can’t seem to get around to doing).

So, here we are. Continue reading “June 2020: wedding stuff begins”

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We’re buying a house and we’re leaving DC

Honestly, I was going to write a long-ass thread about moving, how goddamn expensive DC is, and about grief, buuuuuuuut messing with the character limits was too much work. So I wrote this Twitter thread-style post instead.

I’m about to scoop myself; I am deeply aware that I have yet to even do APRIL’S spending report, let alone May or June’s, plus a Q2 update, plus anything about wedding planning, plus the update on the “will-we-won’t-we” saga of moving. Long story short: as of last week we’re buying a house and moving out of DC at the end of August. Surprise! Continue reading “We’re buying a house and we’re leaving DC”

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We need to talk about FinCon

Since the pandemic I’ve had a hard time focusing on writing blog posts; they seem pretty out of touch for our current environment. That’s only increased since George Floyd’s murder (and Breonna Taylor! Let’s talk about her!) and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality. I’ve been struggling with what to say that doesn’t sound flippant about what’s happening in the world right now.

I’m a very privileged white woman and have for my whole life been content to just be not racist. I, like so many other people, am currently coming to terms with the fact that that’s not enough and I need to be actively anti-racist.

I’ve been having lots of conversations with my (mostly white) coworkers: I work at an institution that on paper looks decent in terms of diversity, but in reality has a very stark divide between who works certain types of jobs. To its credit, I believe my company is seriously invested in changing how and who we hire, how we work across all of our departments, and the legacies we perpetuate. It’s been interesting watching a reckoning coming for the personal finance community at the same time, as well.

It’s long past time for us to talk about FinCon. “Where money and media meet.” Where a whole bunch of personal finance bloggers and nerds go to hang out with their friends once a year. Where I’ve been uncomfortable supporting the founder and CEO for years based on rumblings I’ve heard, but had ignored until now.

I tweeted about it, but not everyone is on Twitter and it turns out this blog I’ve had trouble writing for lately is actually my platform, not my social media accounts. So here we go. Continue reading “We need to talk about FinCon”

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20 for 2020: Q1 update

This post is ridiculously late. I’m gonna be real: I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at the goals a baby, naive version of myself made way back at the beginning of the year, back before all this shit happened. 

That’s not to say that the pandemic is the only thing that’s thrown me for a loop this year! Some other (good!) things have happened, too: I sure as hell didn’t think I’d be spending most of this year planning/paying for a wedding! But it’s striking how different the world was a few months ago—some of these goals just straight-up aren’t possible in the world we now live in.

In theory I’d be writing this post in April and wouldn’t know as much about the pandemic as I know now, buuuuut obviously that’s not the case. “Hindsight is 20/20” is the most fucking darkly ironic phrase for this hellscape of a year. Anyway, let’s get into it. (-sob-) Continue reading “20 for 2020: Q1 update”

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March 2020: quarantine month 1

March lasted one thousand years, plus I’m very late on writing this so now I hardly remember what happened. It’s amazing how time becomes very fluid and subjective when you’re at home all day every day.

It was a month of contrasts: for the first half of the month, we were going everywhere and doing everything. And then for the second half, we were going (almost) nowhere and doing nothing. Continue reading “March 2020: quarantine month 1”

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Love Life in the time of cholera COVID

Well, um hi, everyone. When last I left off, everything had happened. Now everything has also happened, but differently.

I’ve been struggling with writing a post for weeks because what am I even supposed to write about in this wild world we live in? I have a few posts on the back burner, but honestly finally writing about my non-budget approach to spending money seems ridiculously inappropriate right now when people are losing jobs right and left or losing their lives. Every Monday night I’ve tried to sit down and write something to post on Tuesday and decided to push off posting until Thursday. And then that doesn’t happen either because I’m still at a loss for what to say.

We all know time doesn’t exist right now, so weeks have passed by without me posting. So, for lack of anything better to write, here’s a check in on how life looks at the moment. Continue reading “Love Life in the time of cholera COVID”