One year ago Friday, I hit publish on a blog post that I had been turning over in my head for months. I thought it was something that could really add to the conversation in the personal finance space at a point where big time bloggers were publishing their selections of other money bloggers to…
The kiddo was home sick again at the start of the week, so I stayed and worked from home on Monday. He was feeling bad enough that he just laid in bed watching shows all day, so I actually got quite a bit of work done. While I hate seeing him sick, I sure do…
We doubled our savings rate this past year. Literally doubled it. When I first started tracking our finances closely, we'd been doing "reasonably well" for years when it came to our finances, but there was a lot of mindless spending that occurred each month and we didn't have a very big buffer left over each…
Well, we're now a few days into the new year and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with myself since I've yet to write 2018 (though that will probably change now that I've jinxed myself here). I'll take my success where I can since I have yet to create any kind of goals or…
Amazing that this is somehow the last of my Frugal Five posts of the year already. Even more incredible is that I've been writing them consistently since October 2017. Something that began initially as "filler" posts has turned into something I love to write. My Monday posts tend to be more broad and personal finance…
Apparently Tuesday was the darkest day in the last two years with almost no sun output (0.55 mJ/m^2, if you're counting). The good news is, we aren't even to the shortest day of the year yet. Oh wait. Perhaps that isn't good news. I do love the Pacific Northwest, and I do love the holiday…
Once, when our son was a newborn, a couple of our neighbors mowed our lawn when they noticed it had gotten quite long. I was home with our son during the day, but my husband was back to work and regularly gone 12+ hours a day, so cutting the grass just wasn't high on our…
Last Saturday after Thanksgiving, we headed out for our second annual trip to a tree farm outside of Sequim to get our Christmas tree. Since we live in a more urban area, there aren't many tree farms to choose from close by, and even those are a good 45+ minute drive from us, so we've…
My youngest brother went off to college out of state this fall, but he's in town for the Thanksgiving holiday. He and our son are close buddies and they were so, so happy to see each other this past week. My brother and I are twelve years apart, and the two of them are fifteen…
I know I've talked about it before, but I really don't enjoy how dark it gets so early in the evening this time of year. But once Thanksgiving happens and the Christmas lights go up, it feels not nearly so bad because it isn't nearly so dark outside. Maybe not the best use of electricity…