It seems like almost daily now my husband is sending me articles about early season wildfires or poor air quality locally. Considering it is only now June, it feels like this shouldn’t be the case already. And really, this sort of thing didn’t impact us locally until the last five years or so – Pacific Northwest summers used to be the glorious culmination of a lot of preceding months of gray.
Summer also used to be the time where you never, ever planned trips out of the region, because you didn’t want to miss that perfect weather. Now, the temptation to plan a trip away during the worst of it is tempting – though last year I did look and even California or Montana or Canada or Alaska wasn’t far enough because the whole western half of the continent was on fire. (The irony of hopping on a plane to escape the smoke that is in part due to climate change and then contributing to said climate change by flying isn’t lost on me).
I also found out this past week that yet another friend is moving away from our area due to the sky-high cost of living, which was part of what sent our neighbors away as well. As much as I do love the Pacific Northwest and Washington in particular, there are definitely some downsides to living here.

Friday’s Frugal Five
1. Friday night we had another barbecue at our house. Although it wasn’t initially planned out the way, I saw it as a bit of an acknowledgement that we have been in our home eight years as of Saturday. It’s a bit mind boggling that we’ve been there that long already (the longest I’ve ever lived in one home was just shy of ten years), I feel so lucky to have been able to buy when we did because we are in a fabulous spot in a lovely little home.
I didn’t make any food plans when I started inviting people over, so after I got home from work that day I just decided to look at what we already had at home instead of going straight to the grocery store like I would have just a few years ago. I pulled out most of the rest of the pork that was in the freezer from when our neighbor had too much and then otherwise scrounged in the pantry and picked things out of the garden to feed everyone. The meal was simple but tasty, and we didn’t spend another dollar on it. Even better than the thirteen dollar party I threw a couple summers ago.

2. Michelle from Frugality and Freedom was in town for a short while so we assembled a few of us Seattle-based bloggers (A Purple Life, Felicity, and myself) to hang out while she was here. I debated whether to drive downtown since we met at the Olympic Sculpture Park but ultimately decided to bus in. I way prefer the bus to driving as well as paying for parking, but I knew the kiddo wouldn’t fall asleep on the way home that way. Thankfully, I drove down the hill to the main bus stop and he ended up falling asleep on the drive home, albeit much later than a normal nap time.
We kept the meet up cheap ish, though we did stop at a bakery thanks to the kiddo’s request for a peanut butter cookie and then some bubble tea before the bus ride home. There was also a free Orca whale event going on at the Sculpture Park so we hung around for a bit there, eating and drinking by donation and listening to some live music. All in all a very good day.
3. While the kiddo and I were down in Seattle having fun, my husband stayed at home and worked on replacing our back fence. While we love having county park trails behind us instead of a backyard neighbor, it means that the cost of the fence replacement is 100% on us.
However, since my husband already has the tools and the skills needed to build the new fence, we will be spending a fraction of the money on it than it would take to hire a contractor to do it. It’s still going to be a lot of money since we have a good sized yard, but I’m very happy not to be spending the thousands of dollars extra to have someone else do it.

4. Monday afternoon around 3:30PM I passed my neighbor on the street while she was rushing out, but we had time to shout at each other and make a plan to have dinner together at 6PM that night.
One of the best part about having good friends who live within easy walking distance is the ability to decide to have impromptu dinners together any night of the week. Instead of trying to plan one meal for all of us, we simply bring both meals to the same house and everyone just picks what they like and we all eat together. It’s so easy, and we see each other much more regularly than if we only had dinner when we planned out a meal in advance (though the meals in advance are nice as well because we can trade off the labor and cost of making the meal).
5. According to the app, I’ve now been using Personal Capital for one year. Before then, I honestly couldn’t have given you a real ballpark of our net worth without doing quite a bit of calculating beforehand. While Personal Capital isn’t perfect, it’s really nice to have everything at one place where I can look at all pieces of our financial picture whenever I want to.
Of course, said net worth has been bouncing all around these days thanks to both the stock market and our local real estate market, so I’d recommend not checking too frequently if a quick drop is going to impact your saving and investing decisions. Regardless, I find I do better knowing closely what’s going on with our overall picture, and I’m loving that I am starting to have long term data that I can pull up beyond my monthly finance updates here on the blog.
I don’t think just tracking net worth is great by itself because so much of that is outside of your personal control, but I’m finding that just tracking savings rate doesn’t do as much for me either because then I don’t see the long term trends and increases that tracking net worth can do. If you really want to take full control of your finances, I would highly recommend doing both.
If you haven’t set up a way to track your net worth yet, I’d recommend the aforementioned Personal Capital for that purpose, and if do decide to set up an account, I’d love it if you’d use my affiliate link here to sign up (you’ll also get $20 from them for signing up). One word of warning though, at the point your linked accounts cross the $100,000 mark, they will call you and try and convince you to let them manage your finances with one of their advisors. If you ignore the calls, though, they will eventually stop calling. I don’t have a use for their advisory services, but their interface to look at your full financial picture works well, and it’s worth doing.
Exercise Update
Friday was another ten minute elliptical workout squeezed in at the end of my work day. Saturday we headed down to work because my husband had about an hour’s work of work to do, so the kiddo and I along with my husband’s godfather headed over to my office to hang out until he was done because we were all headed south together to visit some friends afterwards. The kiddo wanted to play in the work gym after he’d tired of shredding paperwork, so I got in a bonus ten minutes on the elliptical that day while he played.
Since we bused downtown and we wandered around during the hang out, I got in quite a few steps in on Sunday (with some of them being uphill with the kiddo piggyback) and ended the day at just over 18,000 steps. Tuesday I had planned to go for a run after picking up the kiddo from preschool but forgot to pack my running shoes and didn’t realize until I’d already left work, so I ended up going for a walk down the trail instead. Whoops.
Wednesday was an early morning run with a friend where we caught up on life, love, and finance. I’ve been jogging slow and by myself so much lately that talking and running caught me off guard and this was harder than expected, but so good to go with a good friend. I ended the day with two walks in the afternoon, so I ticked over 20,000 steps by the end of the night even with just over a half hour run to start the day. Thursday was an awkward ten minutes on the elliptical in a dress and heeled boots, but done.
Ps. I’m in The New York Times today.
How was your week? Any great frugal wins you’d like to share? I always love hearing about them!
Send your husband my way please. I have a 6-foot wooden privacy fence around my backyard that I love but that is now 21 years old. I’ve replaced 6 or 7 of the posts that have rotted at the base, but now most of the boards themselves are in their waning years. It’s slowly falling apart. It will be expensive to replace. I have the talent to do it myself (probably), but the time would be huge. I’ll likely just hire a company
Yeah, he’s been completing the project insanely fast so far. Maybe *too* fast, because I really don’t want to pay for more materials until next month….
Great piece in the NYT!! Congrats! Nice to see you getting some props. Also a reminder to me that your list of women FIRE bloggers is what inspired me to go for FI. When I first found out about FI i was a little discouraged because I thought it was just for 20 somethings making beaucoup bucks in tech jobs. But after finding you and Girl FI Day/House of FI I saw that there are women with debt and kids that are doing it so why not me? so, THANK YOU!! Your writing pretty much changed my life!
Thank you!! And… I don’t know what to say. That might be the best comment I’ve ever received.
Found your blog through your mom’s Facebook post about the NYT article and added it to my RSS feed. I also live in Kirkland and a lot of personal finance blogs talk in numbers that are so out of whack for what it’s like here in the Seattle area. I look forward to reading more and am crossing my fingers for a less smoky summer this year.
Hi! Glad to have you along 🙂 And Kirkland is a great place – though better when the summer isn’t so dang smoky.
Even south of the sound, I see the cost of living creep up. We plan on downsizing at some point, so hopefully that’ll benefit us. But on the flip side, our property taxes have gone WAY zip in just 4 years. Ugh. Food costs are a big focus for us right now, you’ve given me some inspiration to look at what we have in the freezer in the garage for an upcoming BBQ. Thanks!
Excellent! Freezers are perfect for parties 😉 And yeah, that high cost has crept quite a ways outside of the Seattle metro area at this point.
congrats on the feature. what would happen if you didn’t have the fence?
i’m running my first 5k race in many years on sunday. ran 3.0 in 17:38 on the treadmill this week so hopefully that translates to something similar.
Want to keep the dogs in 🙂 And the occasional coyotes etc out. Plus people walking the trails behind our house.
Oh – and thank you!
Congrats on getting featured in the NYT!
Sounds like you had a nice week. At some point I’ll make it back up to Seattle, at which point I’ll be hoping to get you and Felicity and hopefully also A Purple Life to meet up with me. But I don’t know when, exactly, I’ll have the time/money/travel points to do that. Still, I miss the area a lot. So I will probably go at some point.
Thank you lady!! And if you don’t mind an air mattress, you’re always welcome to stay with me 🙂 You know we’d get the girl gang together if you come to town!
I’m quite jealous of how much open outdoors you have there, even if it is being ruined by climate change…
Mostly just wanted to say hi and thanks for helping to change the image of who FIRE is for
Thanks for stopping by! And yeah…. climate change is not a pretty thing and we are too much just sitting on the sidelines about it.
Wow! The NYT feature, congratulations 😍🎉!
We moved away from the Seattle area in part because of the rising cost of housing, too. Not so much food and transportation, we were managing that ok, but the cost of actual houses. As you know, we moved away from the city and the cost of living is still high overall. But we’re getting more for our housing dollars here than we were in Seattle. See you soon, friend!
Thank you!! And as expensive as where you live now has gotten, it’s still wayyyy cheaper than around here. Nuts.
See you very soon!
We are paying $1500 for our contractor to put in a fence for our dog. 🙁 It’s 2 gates and maybe 50-75 feet 6 foot wooden fence…so I’m guessing we’re overpaying? It’s about 2 days of work to them. I feel like if hubby was more handy he could do it but it’s not his forte. Could I rent your husband?
Hahahaha. He has talked about someday doing some solo contractor work, but not now 😉 And I don’t know that you are overpaying – Labor is EXPENSIVE.
Lots of unplanned social interactions and impromptu sharing of meals are two of the major reasons I love my neighborhood. Sounds like yours is similar
It’s the best kind of thing 🙂
I’m so impressed with your husband’s carpentry skills. That’s something my husband and I would love to get better at. It’d be a huge money-saver and a fun hobby!
Yeah, it helps that he has a career in construction 😉
We all have a part in the changing weather and the effect it has on our daily lives, we also have a duty and part in improving those conditions for the future. Keep sharing this important message, it is not something that can be delayed or denied.
We’re way behind, and I’m not sure if we can catch up, but I’ll keep fighting like we can.
it is the fight of our lives but most importantly, our children’s lives
And their children 🙂
Very nice fence! My husband once made some beautiful birdseye maple kitchen cabinets for our kitchen – but we sold that house! Your neighborhood & neighbors sound so great. Worth it to live there, despite the HCOL, I bet.
My frugal win for the week – sold a nice table on craigslist. Working on downsizing & selling what I can.
Thank you! He’s doing a great job. Someday we will get to the kitchen… and well done on the table sale!