Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Did We Just Walk into a Child Labor Shop?

Did We Just Walk into a Child Labor Shop?
We were at the end of a too-long tour of Cairo, starting with the Giza Pyramids, then driving out of town to Memphis to see the original capital of Egypt, then off to Sakkara to see the very first pyramids on earth, that are somehow still standing after nearly five thousand years.

We were heading home when our guide mentioned we could go to a rug-making school, where children learn how to weave, a worthwhile skill in a place so stricken by poverty. And we could look at their handy-work and maybe buy a little something if we wanted.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Budget Porn: Our 2015 Spending

In the halcyon days of 2012, when this blog was bright eyed, and idealistic, we wrote net worth and budget posts every month. They were my favorite, as the posts basically wrote themselves. I just cut and pasted an image out of my budget spreadsheet, talked about the categories we did well in and where we did poorly, and poof, all of a sudden I had eight hundred words on truly personal finance: my personal finances. Eventually, when people we knew in real life started reading the blog, we took all those posts down, along with any others that crossed the line into the gauche. It felt weird that some friends and family knew our exact net worth or how much we spent on groceries and medical care.