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I started saving. For over a year, I was putting upwards of $1,000 into debt balances, every single month. Now I had no more debt. I kept working at the same rate for about half a year, still saving that much every month. But I started saving it in several key areas: 1) a six-month emergency fund, 2) a fund for the down payment of a house, 3) monthly contributions into my fresh new individual retirement account, 4) a fund for travel and 5) a fund to help start my business. click here, click here

Corporate finance teams have been slower than their counterparts in sales and human resources to embrace cloud software options, but more are finding spreadsheets inadequate for financial planning.

This takes us to about 2010, when I started getting the Modest Money blog off the ground. MM didn't become my full time gig for a couple more years, but I had learned the basics of web marketing through one of my jobs, and I knew I could do this thing myself. I spent thousands of hours learning how to really do this thing. click here, click here I bought my house. I don't know if I just missed the memo on home ownership when I was growing up, but it has turned out to be an awesome way to build wealth. My home has appreciated about 7 percent every year I've owned it. Because my taxes and interest payments are written off on my taxes, that's a 28 percent return on my investment since I bought my house. Add to this the steadily building wealth I've gained through equity, and my home might be the single best investment I have made in life thus far. It makes me want to buy more real estate. click here, click here Just a personal project, but it's something close to my heart. The way I look at it, it's a way I can grow my money while providing a service that people actually need. click here Investments for my children. I don't have kids, and my girlfriend and I have no specific plans. But I want them someday. Before I start reproducing, I want to have investments in place for them to at least be able to go to college, to get a level of education somewhat better than the one I had. click here

Evidence: several venture-backed startups pioneering this space—notably Anaplan, Host Analytics and Tidemark—just reported record growth during 2014. Their specialty: applications for producing budgets and forecasts an ongoing process. click here

Tidemark (which has raised $80 million in venture capital) tripled total revenue under contract. Its customers include BlackBerry, Chiquita, Hostess, HubSpot and Netflix; and its technology interoperates with applications from Workday, Salesforce, Box, NetSuite, and New Relic. click here