Life After the Dorm Room

Hello all!

Well, as the title suggests, every Dorm Room Curly must leave her dorm room eventually.  I wanted to give everyone an update on the status of this blog, my life, and most importantly what comes next after the dorm room (hint: there is a new blog in town...).

To start, 2015 was a huge year for me!  I graduated law school, studied for the bar exam, got married, moved to a new city, started a new job, and found out that passed the bar!  It was a truly wonderful and exhausting year.

That brings us to 2016.  I am now out in the real world (gulp) working a real world job (gulp).  My biggest task down is, unfortunately, to pay down my real world student loan debt.

Student loan debt is something that more and more graduates find themselves facing after they leave their own dorm rooms.  After talking with my friends from all walks of life, I've come to the conclusion that there is not a sufficient dialogue about student loan debt.

Personal finance has always been a taboo topic among friends.  We update our social media with pictures, tweets, and pins often, but we never talk about the real issues that we are facing financially.  I don't know how in debt my friends are.  While I don't particularly want to know the exact numbers we are all facing, I think we are missing out on a chance to help each other.  We should be able to discuss questions like, "When is it a good idea to refinance loans?" "How do you budget to accomodate your loan debt?" "How in the world do you balance saving for an emergency, a home, a family, or retirement when you have student loan debt?"

I've decided I want to be a part of opening this dialogue.  I have created a new blog to do this.  It is called Big Law, Big Debt.  I have a couple of posts there so far, but it is still very much new to the world.

On Big Law, Big Debt, I will be talking about my finances like an open book.  I want to share exactly how much debt I've got (go ahead, look now, it's already there!).  I want to share how I'm managing repayment.

Here are some posts that I've got planned for the near future:

• My budget.  Including my income, my expenses, and my goals
• Saving.  First, how do you do it? I mean really do it.  Second, how do you know how much to save and where to save it?  
• Compulsive spending.  Look at this blog! I'm a hair product junkie!  How do you control spending?  How can you balance your own happiness with your financial goals?
• Retirement.  It's so far away, and most of us aren't saving for it.  I want to talk about why you have to make room for it, and share my strategies that I've been using so far
• Investing.  My parents were poor.  I knew nothing about investing.  I have learned so much in the past few months and I'm bursting to share.
• Frugal shopping tips.  We've all heard of coupons, but they are way too much work.  What else can you do to trim some expenses?
• Where are the biggest money leaks in your budget?  How do you even figure that out? And most importantly, how do you plug those leaks?
• Taxes! All of the basics, and some of the more advanced (my husband is a tax attorney.  We've got tips coming out of our ears for these posts)

So, Curlies, I hope that you'll consider joining me over at Big Law Big Debt.  I'm really excited about this project, and I think it could genuinely help a lot of people.  I like to think that I've helped some of you figure out your hair.  Maybe I can help some of you figure out finances too.