Every time I'm behind writing a monthly finance update (like this month), I'm reminded of why I've committed to sharing our spending here on the blog every month. Two thirds of the way into September, it would be easy enough to ignore my August recap and just continue on forward like the month didn't happen.…
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…
The month of May was a busy one for us. We returned from our Arizona trip the last day of April and went back to work May 1st, and then spent the following weekend at Fred Meyer and Home Depot and at home setting up my two newest raised beds for Mother's Day. At the…
April was a good solid month for us, with a nice balance of travel out of town and hanging out around home. The weather has finally warmed up enough that I've gotten to spend a decent amount of time in the garden, more time on the trails behind our house, and it's now light enough…
I adore three paycheck months. While I realize that our overall income doesn't change whether we get paid twice a month or every other week, I do prefer it this way because it feels awesome to have a big "bonus" month two times a year, and it's a big mental boost to be sure. Money…
I have to say, I certainly started off 2018 on a better foot in terms of total savings rate. Then again, we also didn't take my grandmother to Hawaii at the start of 2018. The good news is, March is a three paycheck month and it should go a long way to balancing things out,…
Again, I think this is one of those months where I am way too hard on myself. After missing out on my 2018 savings goal by a few percentage points, I went into 2019 with a renewed focus to hit that full fifty percent savings rate this year. Of course, January was also the month…
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…