As you’ve probably gathered, I’m a bit of a budget enthusiast here.  It’s a budget that got our finances back on track and it’s a budget that keeps them headed in the right direction.  Our budget tells us when we’ve overspent and helps us adjust to bring us back to balance when we have overspent.  [...]

I dislike getting a refund from the government. I don’t like having to look up the my tax refund status.  I don’t have any good reason to give them an interest free loan, but any changes I make to my W4 don’t seem to make any difference.  I keep getting a refund every year.  This [...]

Personal finance isn’t all just about the best ways to save money and live frugally.  There are other things to consider; other rules that should be followed.  Some have absolutely nothing to do with saving money.Many of the posts here at Beating Broke deal with saving money, budgeting, and living frugally.  On many occasions I [...]

Just what is reactive personal finance?  It’s the management of your personal finance in reaction to events or situations as opposed to the management of personal finance in anticipation of events or situations. The best example of this is a budget.  A budget is built and held to in anticipation of events in your financial [...]

They weren’t exactly forgotten, but unpaid all the same. Our habit for doing our budget and paying bills consists of throwing everything in a pile and then sorting through the file when we sit down to enter all the data for our budget into the spreadsheet.  One of the first things we do is go [...]

Here and on other PF blogs, you’ll hear us all talking about the need for a well stocked emergency fund.  And, unless you have one, you likely don’t know that we aren’t just saying that because we think we should.  They really do have the benefits that we claim they do.  These last couple of [...]

You’ll hear me talk about it all the time.  Well, you won’t likely hear me at all, but read me write about it just doesn’t sound right.   If you want to succeed at your personal finance goals and your personal life goals, you need to continually work towards them.  (Make some if you haven’t [...]

What’s a Winter Financial Checkup, you ask? Winter, and more specifically, the time around the holidays is when most people have the most problems with their finances.  Gift purchases throw off their budgets.  Bonuses give them a unexpected bit of cash and they spend more than they expected. Whatever the case may be, your financial [...]

In every purchase we make, we should ask ourselves how much is it worth to me?  It’s a very simple question, but in many cases, the answer may surprise you.  And it applies to much more than items. Let’s try a few examples. I’ve been keeping my eye on LCD HD receiver televisions.  With the [...]

If you’re smart, and you are since you’re reading Beating Broke, you’ve got an emergency fund.  But just how much do you have in your emergency fund?  And how much should you have in that fund? Ramseyan thought:  Start with a goal of $1000 and then after your bills are paid off, move it up [...]