www.itowler.com

If you spend any amount of time reading about personal finance on the internet, you will eventually find a common thread about what to do.

• First, stop the bleeding. This means stop using your credit cards.
• The second thing is to establish an emergency fund. Most places advocate an emergency fund of $500-$2000 dollars, with $1000 dollars being the most commonly recommended.

End of the quarter Review :

Well 3 months have passed since the start of the year, which means that it is time to do an end of the quarter review. I am going to see how I am doing on the goals that I established at the start of the year.

Last week I talked about VINE, a research tool for those doing research in Indiana. In the post I mentioned that I had found several Towler Obituaries and a few Hoffman’s. Using the information that I gathered in VINE, I sent away for copies of each of the obituaries. One of the Obituaries that I sent for was the Obit of Mrs. Mary Hoffman.

About a week ago, I was surfing the Internet, looking at some Indiana Genealogy sites. Indiana, along with Kentucky, and Virginia are areas that I have done the most research in. Looking at my family tree, my previous 4-5 generations all have solid roots in Indiana, on both my Mothers side and my Fathers side. While surfing I somehow managed to find my way to the Indiana State Library webpage. I have been to the site before, and I have had a little bit of success, but not a tremendous amount. I generally have a little better luck at the Individual County or City Library pages. This time while making my way through the Indiana State Library page, I found a new resource named VINE, that should be helpful. VINE stands for Vital Information Exchange, and appears that the intent is to make a single point to search for multiple types of records. The VINE project overview page states:

Book Review (#2)

All The Money in the World, How the Forbes 400 Make And Spend Their Fortunes.

Written by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan, this book examines members of the Forbes 400 list. The Forbes 400 list has been compiled every year since 1982 as a list of the 400 richest Americans. The list is published by the Forbes Magazine, and was the idea of Malcom Forbes, who was a firm believer in Wealth building. The list is based on the personal fortune of its members. The list has attracted attention since its inception, and some of those who have been named in the list have even sued Forbes, wanting to keep the extent of their wealth private. In 1982 you needed around 75 million dollars to make the list, in 2007 you will need to be a billionaire. The book is pretty well written and flows nicely. At times it can be a little dry, but all in all it was a pleasant read.

While I have a goal of having 2650 people in my tree by years end (and I think that this can be done) I have a bigger goal of getting the tree Documented in an appropriate manner. To that end I have spent a great deal of time recently cleaning up the sources I use in my tree. One of the efforts that I have undertaken is attaching images to the sources If I have them. This is useful for a number of reasons, First off, you no longer have to leave the family tree section of the webpage to see a document, now you can view it along side the individual that the record pertains to. For the record, most of my sources are United States census records, and as such I have named the file using the year of the census followed by the head of the Household.

One Nation, Under God, with liberty and Debt for all….

Before we start, I am not an economist, and I have never taken an economics class, this is just my opinion, so take it or leave it.

It has been hard to miss all the news about how the economy is not doing well, and that we are looking at a recession. The story of our floundering economy has become big enough that it has even topped the list of voter concerns for the 2008 Election (we are more concerned about the economy that the war in Iraq). With all that said, how did we get to where we are? Lots of people blame it on the housing slump, and while I am sure that has something to do with it, I do not think that is the real cause.

The Wild Trees : A story of Passion and Daring By Richard Preston.

I have been a pretty big fan of Richard Preston’s work. Perhaps his best know work is The Hot Zone. He has also written The Demon in the Freezer, and The Cobra Event. I have read each of those titles and I really enjoyed all of them. So when I saw a new Preston book out, I figured that I should go ahead and read it.

I was looking back at some old emails to try to figure out when I actually started to get interested in genealogy. The earliest record that I could find was an email that I sent to an aunt in early February, 2001. That means that I have been doing this off and on now for about 7 years. In the very beginning I can remember being very frustrated because I was not making ANY progress at all. I could not even get my an agreement on my paternal grand fathers name or birth place. I vaguely remember trying for a little bit and then setting it aside, I was in grad school and was pretty busy at the time. In July of 2002, I was getting married. The wedding provided an event for my Fathers family to get together. In the days leading up to the wedding, my Uncle Phil gave me a file that contained some of the information that he had gathered on the family.

This is going to be a long post, so brace yourself. I have been doing a lot of reading about personal finances in the last year or so, and since one of my goals this year has to do with Money I figured that I would share with you, an article that I found interesting. I found the Original article at the online version of the Smithsonian Magazine. The article highlights a Memo / Contract between a father and his son. The memo was written on the first of May, 1920 :