Just wanted to wish all the BeancounterBlog readers out there a Happy New Year and the start of another tax season! If you haven’t done so already, be sure to sit down to come up with a few financial new year resolutions for yourself or your family. This is a great time of year to recommit yourself to getting out of debt, saving for retirement, or saving for a big purchase.

Good luck in 2008!

I’ve been holding off on Wordpress (the engine running this blog) updates for a while because I haven’t really needed it. But lately, I’ve been interested in playing with a new feature - widgets - so I took the plunge this morning and made a few updates. And, in order to play with widgets, I needed a new theme that was widget compatible… hence the facelift.

I’ve been testing the new design for a few days now, so I think most of the bugs are worked out. But if you happen to see anything please let me know! Otherwise, enjoy collapsing, opening, and moving around the sidebar widgets! Oh, and if you know of a widget that would add benefit to your fellow BeancounterBlog readers… please let me know and I’ll look into adding it.

Enjoy!

I know this has nothing to do with personal finance, so bear with me.

Any other parent who reads this blog will understand my reasons behind throwing together KinderQuotes.com. My kids, like most, say the funniest, cutest, or most embarrassing things throughout the day. Sometimes it’s funny because they’re learning to master this silly language we call English. Sometimes they try to mimic my wife and I and spout off adult-like language from their little three year-old mouths. But many times my wife and I have turned to each other and said, “we should write that down.”

Enter KinderQuotes.com. We created the blog to help us jot down those funny, cute, and embarrassing quotes in a way we can share with friends, family, and the web in general. However, we’ve also set up a contact form that anyone can use to submit their favorite quote.

So if you’re looking for a daily dose of childish humor, check out KinderQuotes.com, and be sure to tell us your favorite quotes!

For those of you who are stuffing your faces today full of turkey and mashed potatoes, Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you who aren’t, it might be a good time to reflect anyway on what you are thankful for. It is always a good idea to take some time to reflect on your life and to realize all the things you have to be grateful for. I believe it makes us better people when we are able to count our blessings. And hopefully it helps us to overcome that dreadful disease, “Keeping-Up-With-The-Jones’ Disease.”

Sure, there are always going to be people who have more stuff than you - more money, better cars, bigger house - and there will always be people with a better job or who do better in the stock market - but then again, you are probably doing better than many people yourself… and that’s something to be grateful for.

So eat, drink, and be merry my friends… for tomorrow is black friday!

Contrary to popular belief, I have not died. Nor have I inherited $3,000,000 from my great-aunt Mildred. (Although, if I did have an aunt Mildred who did leave me with $3M I can’t honestly say I would still me here writing this post.) The truth is, life has taken a sharp and then shifted to 6th gear which has left me little time to do the things I love - including blogging. It seems as though things are now leveling off for me and I’m slowly starting to add extracurricular activities into my life again.

Now, I’m not going to be blogging as much as I did before, but my goal is to write something at least once a week. So if you have any topics or questions you think would like covered please feel free to drop me an email at jason (at) beancounterblog (dot) com or simply use the handy-dandy contact form. Thanks again for reading and thanks so much for the emails from those readers who wondered what had happened. I’m really hoping this new arrangement will work out for everyone.