Paige Power

  Is this cheating? I have a lot on my plate over the next couple of months so it thought I would share this fantastic YouTube video produced by PBS New Hour way back in 2016. In the YouTube video titled “All the financial advice you’ll ever need fits on a single index card”. The link appears to be broken so look it up based on the title. The video features Harold Pollock, a university professor who offers great advice for the regular working person. If you can’t find the video here’s the gist of the advice and my own commentary if I feel it’s needed- Financial experts say the same thing- Save 10-20% of your income. Saving is hard, and if you don’t make a lot it’s even harder, but even small savings can add up over time. Remember to pay yourself first by setting aside some of your income every pay period. Pay your credit card balance in full every month. If you can’t do this try to stop using your highest interest rate card, pay it off and then do the same w...

  Recently I went on vacation with my spouse. We had two vacations in one, we flew to the east coast to attend a wedding and hang out with family, and then we flew home to get our car so we could enjoy a tent/car camping vacation. Overall the experience was pretty amazing. However, there were things I didn’t take into account before I left. Firstly I didn’t realize how much time away from work I would need. Since we were going to be away for about three weeks I needed a week before we left to organize everything. What everything? Packing for lots of social events surrounding the wedding for example. Packing for a wedding is different than packing to go camping. We had to prep the car for a long drive in varied conditions. We packed the car with our tent, sleeping bags, pillows, camp gear, shoes for different conditions and more. In the end, it ended up being perfect, but also time-consuming so I decided to stop writing for a while to focus on our vacation time. Upon retu...

Back in mid-April, I started what has become a pretty chaotic late spring season.  We flew to Atlanta for a wedding that included many social gatherings. I have anxiety which has been challenging to manage over the past two years so the many events were hard on me, but I managed with the use of some drugs, even though I say in my headline I don’t manage stress with drugs.  How do I square this? Am I a liar? Not really.  After we went to the wedding we flew home picked up our car and went car camping for two weeks in the American Southwest. It was glorious, but not without challenges as well.  Upon return home, we hosted a lovely Mother’s Day luncheon. I served tarragon chicken, dauphinoise potatoes, and a pretty lemon Swiss roll cake, filled with berry jam and a coconut cream cheese frosting. After that, we hosted my spouse’s son for about a week.  All the travel and hosting required a lot of planning, something I love, but also it was stressful and disruptive ...