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…
After the last couple of months of less than stellar savings rates, it feels good to write an update that comes closer to where we were at the first half of this year. Juuuuust shy of that 50% savings rate goal I set at the beginning of 2018, but it feels better than that because…
Well, for a month that started off with plans to be a "no spend" month, October was definitely NOT a no spend month. I guess I'll start off with the good part - we are still at a cumulative 47% rate for the year through October. The less good news is that in order to…
Apparently these days we either have a really great month or a not so good month where our savings rate is concerned because in between hasn't happened for some time now. And since August was by far the best month of the year for our finances, September had to be one of the pricer ones,…
When I first embarked on this clothes buying ban eighteen months ago, I couldn't have imagined I would have continued it on past the original year goal I'd set for myself; it seemed overly ambitious, but I wanted to challenge myself to do it regardless. My closet was bursting at the seams, I was attempting…
April was a crazy busy month. Mostly in a good way, but still extremely busy. I started my public service board commission for our city, sent some good friends off on a move to Hawaii, wrapped up a work project and began a new one, and we went out of town three separate weekends because I…
Somehow we've already arrived at the last week of April. Like I mentioned last week, this month has been insanely busy for us and the days have absolutely blown by. We have a two week trip coming up next month, and I'm looking forward to some time where we don't have so much going on.…
Let's just start by saying that having pets isn't a frugal endeavor. One of our dogs, who is only 7.5 years old, has heart problems that landed her in the emergency vet overnight back in August. Against the odds, she's doing *mostly* better, though on twice a day medication for life, which by themselves aren't…
Blog post number 100. I'm not sure how I got here since starting the blog back in July, but I guess it pays off to be strict about posting every Monday and Friday without fail, with an occasional Wednesday for good measure. Instead of writing a post where I go over just my thoughts about…
March 1 marked an official year of my clothes buying ban. No clothes, shoes, accessories, or jewelry. My last purchase was some time in February of 2017, though I couldn't tell you exactly what it was. Like my foray into a No Spend Month, I dove headfirst into this shopping ban with no preparation; one…