budgeting

  • FI – Financial Independence

    What does financial independence mean to you? Is it a number? A time frame? What is financially independent? What does it look like? These are questions I never really asked myself before until recently. Early this year I reached out to a friend whose advice I value about some financial choices I was weighing at Read more

  • Renting vs. Owning: Making Informed Decisions for Your Future

    After a handful of years working very hard to repair rebuild my credit, a whole new adulting idea came to mind. The thought of owning my own home. I made a call to a realtor last year and made it very clear that I wasn’t ready to buy, but that I wanted to gather information Read more

  • Debt Payoff Methods: A Personal Success Story

    I believe it’s true that wise people learn from their mistakes and experiences. Even wiser people learn from the mistakes of others. We can all learn from each other, but only if we are willing to share those experiences. I would like to share some of mine with you to give you an example of Read more

  • Debt

    “Don’t have the money right now? Just charge it.” This has become the norm for too many of us. We can’t afford something so we purchase it with a credit card. We don’t have the money for a new car so we get a loan. We carry student loans for decades. We get sucked in Read more

  • Emergency Funds

    The average American Household doesn’t prioritize saving, let alone have money set aside for emergencies. Typically, most people do not have enough to cover an emergency that costs $500, let alone a more expensive one. In most households, dealing with an emergency involves going into debt. We’ll talk about this in the next post, but Read more

  • Rolling Funds (A.K.A Sinking Funds)

    Some expenses don’t happen on a monthly basis. They might be something that is needed every few months or even less often. If you buy certain things in bulk, such as toilet paper or paper towels, you might only buy them every other month, or every few months. Other examples might be things like insurance Read more

  • Managing Your Spending

    If you’ve been tracking your expenses you may have a good idea of what your spending habits look like. If not, go back to the blog and read Awareness and Budgeting. Most people spend more than they realize on various categories, even after making a budget. But a budget only works if you follow it. Read more

  • Cutting Expenses – Memberships and Subscriptions

    You can literally get a subscription to almost anything these days. Streaming services, apps, food boxes, books, music, movies, and a thousand other services. On sites like Amazon, you can literally turn any purchase into a subscription. They offer discounts for signing up and generally, the cost seems pretty low. “Just $9.95 a month for Read more

  • Cutting Expenses – Cable, Internet, and Phone Services

    These are common services most people utilize and pay for and often pay more than necessary without thinking. It’s possible to utilize these services for a lot less than you might think. Cable For me, the cable is eliminated. I don’t typically watch tv so in our household, it’s an unnecessary expense. We do watch Read more

  • Cutting Expenses – Food

    After gaining an awareness of your spending habits and creating a budget, it might be a good idea to look at what you can spend less on. Sometimes simply being aware of how much you spend on certain things is enough to make you think about purchases before you make them. That action alone can Read more