All About The Benjamins

I was on the Consumerist website yesterday and I came across a link to this article from the Get Rich Slowly site. Basically, the site asked MSN money columnist Liz Pulliam Weston how closely she follows the advice she gives readers, and she offered to write a column detailing how she lives her financial life. As somewhat of a personal finance geek, I thought it was cool that Weston was willing to pull back the curtains a bit and let us peek in. I was also impressed that she drives an old-ass car--a 1993 SUV with 250k on it--which made me feel a little bit better about the 1997 Buick Century with 100k on it that Rob and I have been driving around in for the past few years. We've started to kind of loathe the car--particularly because it feels sort of like we're driving a boat--but Liz has convinced me to stick with it for a bit longer.

Speaking of Rob and money, I assume that probably 100 percent of our tiny blog readership knows at this point that Rob got laid off last week. We're also in the middle of buying a house, so timing... could have been better. But, Rob's lined up some freelance work, and has some job prospects, so things are looking up.

But it all comes back to my personal finance obsession. I've been a little lax this past year, largely because we were finally in a place where we had a good amount of income coming in and our fixed expenses had dropped. We definitely managed to save, but I also spent probably a little too much time on the Banana Republic site ordering sale merchandise. Now that we're looking at a mortgage payment--and a potential/possible/likely drop in income, I've started re-dedicating myself to a few of my favorite financial resources on the web. Here's what I've been looking at:

I'm not sure why, but I'm a huge fan of the money columnists, advice and message boards on the MSN money site. As a recent college graduate with a journalism degree and mostly non-existent math skills, this is the website I started scouring during my first job, before we got married, and when we were carrying $10k-plus in credit card debt between the two of us.

I learned about the 60 percent solution, which I've been following a modified version of ever since. And I met, and fell in love with, the Women in Red, which started out as a twice-monthly column about a group of women that know very little about "the rules" of personal finance, but want to get rid of their debt.

So, this week, I'm going back and reacquainting myself, discovering some new stuff, and learning some old stuff all over again.