Weekend Round-Up

Sunday has rolled around and tomorrow the work week starts back up again, I don't know where the weekend has gone.

Starting the new project has been crazy lately, I've been working all kinds of hours and sadly I don't see it lessening any time soon so I've been having to catch up on all my blog reading on the weekends since I barely have enough time to eat dinner and go to sleep before I have to start the work cycle all over again the next day.

Anway....Below are a few articles that caught my eye this weekend as I caught up:

Living Almost Large writes about having financial priorities and it is okay to splurge some times. I'm in full agreement wit LAL - I often write about financial "savy-ness" is all about smart money choice.

Mom at Wide Open Wallet shared about her friend was contemplating a second job instead of reducing luxury spending in her post I deserve it.

Penelope Pince from Our Fourpence Worth also discussed luxuries versus necessities and has a great break down on how to decide the difference. So often I hear people say they have to have xyz when in reality its a luxury.

All in all my thoughts are if you don't have the money stick to the necessities, if you have your necessities covered, are not in debt (other than a mortgage), have a healthy emergency fund, and are contributing to your retirement than you should be able to make wise money choices and fund some luxuries but keep in mind unless you have an endless money supply you can't have every luxury and so you have to pick and choose to stay within your budget.

No Debt Plan's Kevin answered a reader question regarding opening a Roth IRA and minimum investments. For anyone who hasn't already started a Roth IRA I highly recommend it - check out Kevin's Million Dollar Retirement plan using only a Roth IRA.

Kristy at Master Your Card posted about the additional costs associated with paying your federal taxes by credit card. Can't say I ever thought about paying them with credit card but now that I know the costs involved I most definitly will not be paying via credit card, I'll continue to whip out the good ole check book.

The Social Margin's Cinder helped remind me that you need to Treat Your Job like an Investment. I'm wondering with all of the blog posts and articles about leaving bad jobs are not a sign, but then again my job only got bad recently when I was transfered to the "problem project", but all food for thought. Thanks Cinder for posting about this.

I also enjoyed Seb's post at Pinching Copper about Is the Price of gas really that bad? The secretary at my old project would always complain about the rising cost of gas and how its almost so bad people can't afford to pay the gas to go to work anymore and according to her people are actually paying more gas each day than they make. I can't tell you how many times I tried to explain to her using all kinds of examples of how people make more than pay for gas to drive every day. Oh well some people like to focus in on one thing.

Well that's it for this Sunday. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.