I’m a bit of a broken record on the topic of personal finance being personal. How I manage my money and how you manage your money are going to be different. Our priorities are different. Our resources are different. Our expenses are different. And even though there are a handful of money tenets that are generally good to live by (have an emergency fund, save at least 10% for retirement, try to avoid high-interest debt, etc.), even those are a little squishy sometimes.
In my conversation with this week’s Home Economics writer, we started talking about stashing money in a high-yield savings account versus investing in the market. She has a fully funded emergency fund, so she’s been focused on saving more for retirement while also investing some in a brokerage account. But after reading two recent pieces Alicia and I wrote about Fed independence and the S&P 500 index, she asked me if she should be doing something different with her money.
I’m not a certified financial planner (yet1), and I like to regularly remind readers that they should do their own independent research before making any financial decisions. And I generally shy away from offering advice to the women who share their stories in Home Economics, again, because I’m not a professional.
Our conversation made me pause, though, to think about how Alicia and I are approaching the topics we write about for our weekly links roundups. We both have backgrounds in service journalism, and I like there to be useful takeaways at the end of the news we cover—other than just, “Ugh, the world is on fire. What can we even do??” Yet, sometimes there isn’t a clear answer. And I don’t want someone to read one of our weekly roundups and make a big financial decision without first doing more research. So much of being good with money is about being patient and not having knee-jerk reactions to what’s going on in the world that’s beyond your control.
In an email exchange after our call, today’s Home Ec writer reassured me she’s learning a lot from the weekly news roundups. She told me that no one taught her the specifics of investing, even though it’s her main vehicle for saving for the future. I know a lot of women (and men) feel the same way. I feel that way! Selfishly, what I choose to write about usually coincides with topics I want to understand better.
As I alluded to in the September Receipts newsletter, Alicia and I will be rolling out more how-to type articles on The Purse website in the coming months. But if there’s a topic you’d like to know more about, please let us know! Same goes for the news in our weekly roundups. You can always send us an email at hello [at] thepurse [dot] co (not com!).
This is also a good place to add that we’re also looking for new Home Economics entries. It’s been a while since we got any new submissions! You can fill out the form here.
Okay, now on to today’s Home Economics! I hope you enjoy!
Age: 34
Location: Columbia, Missouri
Relationship status: Single
About me: I’m a single woman who lives in a college town in the Midwest. I work in communications. I prioritize retirement savings while still being mindful of the fact that many people don’t make it to retirement. We gotta be traveling now, while we can!
Income:
- Your job title/salary: Associate director of communications, $83,000
- Your monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $4,264
- Additional monthly income: I do take on some occasional freelance work. I’m not doing any at the moment, but I recently got around $10,000 in a lump sum from a project that took a few hours a week for a year and a half.
- Total monthly income: $4,264
