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Jul 1, 2014    |       31 comments

It Isn’t All About Income

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Yesterday I read something over at Budgets Are Sexy that really resonated with me.  J. Money read an article from Mr. Money Mustache (a pretty famous blog that I follow).  In this article MMM said:

“The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income.  The reason is that every permanent drop in your spending has a double effect:  it increases the amount of money you have left over to save each month, and it permanently decreases the amount you’ll need every month for the rest of your life.”  

I still stick to my guns in saying the easiest way to make fifty dollars is to save fifty dollars.  I had this mantra since I began my coupon journey about five years ago.  This was a time when I went from a single man living alone to having a built in family.  Feeding three people was an eye opener to say the least, especially when you were allotting yourself about $100 per month for food before.  Remember I was in the food industry, and usually always fed myself at work.

What this article did for me was realize that it really isn’t my income that is a problem here.  I have been making it work, and know full well that we could live on the income we do have.  It is really all about eliminating all the unnecessary monthly expenses.  

The biggest being DEBT.

Now I am not saying that I won’t challenge the other expenses, but debt is the biggest.  I have been paying anywhere from $800 to $1,000 every month for the last four and a half years, just on debt!  

What if I was using this amount to put away for savings and retirement?  I would be in a totally different situation than I am today.  

This is also not saying that I will not be looking for opportunities to increase my income.  Because let’s be honest the two go hand in hand.  If I increase my income it will be a much faster route to get out of debt and start becoming the provider that my family knows I am.  

So for the month of July I will be reviewing more of my expenses and seeing ways to cut them out of my life.  Who’s with me?

Jun 30, 2014    |       3 comments

One Last No-Spend Update

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Today marks the last day of June and I’ve got some positive results to report! I’ve managed to do really well (surprisingly well) with our no-spend week and a half! I say “surprisingly well” because it actually wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be! I attribute this to having a freezer full of food to eat (including some already prepared meals in addition to many frozen meats). Using “rollover meals” (where you cook the meat once, then repurpose leftovers into different meals) helped keep us from being bored with leftovers, too.

We did have to run to the grocery store for some milk (which I, personally, could have gone without but the toddlers’ need as part of their daily diet), but aside from that, no money was spent at the grocery store.

The much more difficult task, for me, was in finding things to do with the girls to keep us occupied. When we stay home for more than a day or two the girls start getting restless and acting out. But I think we did a good job of finding fun free things to do in that regard, too! In addition to the things I mentioned in my last no spend post, we also went to the book store (our used book store sent us a free $10 coupon for the girls’ birthday, so we used our credit and didn’t pay anything out-of-pocket), and also met a friend at a free splash pad. I almost spent money on that because there is a nicer, newer splash pad close to our house. It’s free for children under 3, but it costs $7 for adults. But then I remembered about the free splash pad and decided it was worth the drive. It’s about 30 minutes from my house (as opposed to 15), so I suppose there’s a gasoline and time-investment, but I had a full tank and time available so I decided it was worth the trek to save myself the entry fee. I’d still like to check out the new one by my house (we’ve never been, but I’ve heard great things), but that can wait for a new month.

Why did I institute a no-spend week??? Well….because I was over budget across several categories. Sigh.

I was going to try to get the budget update post up today, but time has gotten away from me so it won’t be up until Friday.

Hope to see you then!

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