While I will never argue with the importance of an emergency fund - preferably a decently sized one - I also find my non-monetary emergency fund to be huge in terms of my peace of mind when it comes to finances. This sort of "fund" will look different for everyone, but in some ways I…
Let's just say that this has been an expensive summer. Between vet bills, backyard fence replacement, and spending for future vacations, we have spent significantly more money than is average for us. That said, for July in specific, we knew it was going to be expensive because of our dog's surgery, so we spent accordingly…
I'm generally an extremely healthy person. I've never come close to ever maxing out my sick leave at work (hardly ever using it), and the only time I've ever stayed overnight in a hospital was to give birth to my son. I'm not allergic to anything, and I generally check "no" all the way down…
February marked three months of very closely tracking our day to day spending. I fell off the wagon a bit the second half of December but hopped back on with daily logging in January. So far, we haven't quite hit the same low monthly spending as November, but it's been close. We ate through our…
We spent what felt like a lot of money this month. I have to admit, I put off adding up our expenses in January because I just knew we hadn’t done as well as I would have hoped when I set our big financial goal for this year. After all, we decided to go out of…
Merry Christmas to me! I finally finished up the last of my handmade Christmas gifts last night (though I still have yet to wrap them). I love making sure the gifts we do give at Christmas are heartfelt and mostly homemade or experience gifts, but they sure take a lot more time and energy than…
“We’re doing so much better than pretty much everyone else our age that we know.” “We don’t ever pay credit card interest.” “We don’t have any expensive hobbies.” “We like good food and we’re okay with spending more on that.” “We’re already naturally frugal.” “I don’t have time to track things so closely.” I’ve had…
Now that we are back from our trip to Hawai‘i, I figure it’s time to do my monthly update on our finances. I originally wrote down goals back in July, but I only started looking at it monthly in October when I realized I had completely ignored the goals after I wrote them. In order…
So I finally finished setting up a Vanguard account this week. Considering I put this as a “short term” goal back in July, it was a well overdue accomplishment. Now that I’ve gotten that one checked off, I figured it was high time to look back at the rest of the goals I set for myself.…
Ever since I first started working, I've always kept some amount of savings in my bank account out of a sheer desire to never spend more than I made. While in high school and college, my income was minuscule, but so was my necessary spending, so I was able to save up a decent amount…