Bumps on the Road to Financial Freedom

It's been a while since I've posted. Family and marriage issues have made it hard to stay focused. Although I've continued to have some success on eBay, but it's hard to see much return when you're only putting up a small number of relatively low priced items.

Meanwhile, money has proven to be a major stumbling block at home. Although things are starting to get better, we're still not making enough revenues each month to pay our expenses. We've tried to cut our expenses, but not enough to shift the balance. I'm also hoping that a higher paying job will help eventually, but it's taking some time for that to happen.

Always on the lookout for personal finance books I haven't yet read, recently I found one entitled First Comes Love, Then Comes Money: Basic Steps to Avoid the #1 Conflict in Marriage While this isn't the only issue my wife and I see a bit differently, it's easily the most frustrating. Even if we succeed in balancing our budget, hopefully reaching the point where we can also put something away for retirement, we've taken a very painful route to get there.

Get Rich Slowly also has a wonderful post on marriage and money.

Today my wife and I have refinanced our home for a larger loan than we originally took out four years ago. The new loan amount is still relatively small compared to the appraised value and will hopefully give us a bit more breathing room while we continue working on improving our cash flow.