From a young age, my mom taught me all about how to manage my money well, and it’s a heritage I’ll forever be grateful for. I sometimes joke that if I ever went back to school, I would major in personal finance, just because it’s a subject of endless fascination and interest to me.
Our financial journey might be boring to some (because we don’t have the dramatic debt payoff story that some do), but it’s one I wouldn’t change–both my husband and I graduated from college debt-free, and the only debt we’ve ever had in our marriage is our mortgage, which we took on in 2017 when we bought our first home. For most of our married life, we’ve made do on less than $40K a year (sometimes much, much less) and still managed to pay in all bills in full and on time, save up a decent emergency fund, and have some fun along the way.
Since managing money has always been something I’m pretty good at, it’s something I love to share tips about, and below you’ll find a list of some of the more popular posts I’ve done on personal finance and living frugally:
Saving Money
- How to Change Your Grocery Spending to Counteract Inflation
- How We Bought a House Making Under $35K/Year
- How We Spent Just $60/Family Member on Clothing Last Year
- Making a Single Income Stretch With Six Kids: An Interview With My Mom
- It’s No Joke: The Craziest Things I’ve Done to Make Ends Meet Over the Years
- How We Saved $1000 in 100 Days
- An Easy Hack to Save on Medical Bills
- 10 Tips for Keeping Grocery Costs Low
- Grocery Store Face-Off: Which Grocery Store Will Save YOU the Most Money?
- 7 Ways I’ve Been Saving Money Lately
- The Cooking Economically series
- The Zero Food Waste Challenge series
- The Weekly Frugal Wins series
- The Tightwad Gazette Deep Dive series
Personal Finance + Money Philosophies
- Our Plan to Retire by 50
- How We’re Planning to Pay Off Our 30-Year Mortgage in 15 Years
- Our 7 Financial Goals for 2021 – Update 1, 2, 3
- Why Tracking My Net Worth Has Been a Game-Changer {+ Why I Think Everyone Should Do It}
- Our 5 Current Big Financial Goals + Update #1, 2, 3
- Why We Converted Our Old 401K to a Roth (and Lost an $8000 Tax Return!)
- My Personal History With Money
- Our New Rules for Book-Buying
- Why I Can’t Buy Any More Books for 8 Years {A Look at Frivolous Spending}
- Where Our Money Goes Each Month
- Why I’m (Mostly) Okay With Having a Smaller Income
- Some Final Remarks on the Great Capsule Wardrobe Experiment
- Keeping an Eye on the Bigger Picture {Or, Why We Finally Started Saving Up for a Down Payment}
- Final Report on our Month-Long Spending Freeze
- Spending Freeze: Week One
- Why We’re Doing a Spending Freeze
- Money, Money, Money Must Be Funny…in a Rich Man’s World
Making Money
