It's been a couple of months since we've had a normal grocery shopping month. During November and December we didn't do our normal monthly grocery shopping trips. It was good to get back to it! We waited until nearly half way through the month to do our monthly grocery shopping, though I did make a quick trip to Grocery Outlet at the beginning of the month. I filmed both that haul and our monthly grocery haul, which you can watch below, or keep reading for the item-by-item price ... read more
Annual Spending Report 2018–California Family of Seven
Have you ever stepped back at the end of the year to look at your spending totals for the year? Of course, this is only really practical and possible if you've been tracking your spending throughout the year. We started tracking (and minimizing) our spending back when we decided to pay off over $100K of student loan debt. That was the same time we started using YNAB (You Need a Budget) for our budgeting. With YNAB's report features, we pulled together our annual analytics and made a ... read more
Transparent Family Budget Update– December 2018
Happy New Year! It's time for our last budget update of 2018! Thinking back on December, I can't say enough about how nice it is to have sinking funds for things like Christmas and life insurance. When we were paying off our student loan debt we didn't do sinking funds because we were funnelling absolutely everything extra to our loans, then when big expenses came up (like Christmas or life insurance) we just made a smaller payment to debt that month. It worked great and I wouldn't change ... read more
Join the 2019 Debt Smash-athon!
If you've seen our new BIG goal, you know we'll be pretty focused in 2019. We're excited to have a huge goal to keep ourselves making financial progress. I know so many of you are working hard to make financial strides in the new year, too. I love hearing what you're doing to reach your goals. You're making sacrifices to lower your expenses. You're working extra jobs to increase your income. And you're making progress! You're reminding yourself that the financial freedom will be worth ... read more
How Our Emergency Fund is Fighting Inflation
Have you ever thought about the money in your savings account becoming worth less over time? Aren't savings accounts supposed to grow? If the interest rate is less than the rate of inflation, then you are actually losing money, well, purchasing power, because your money isn't growing as fast as inflation. A few months ago we asked for your advice about where to keep our $25,000 emergency fund so that it didn't lose money as inflation picked up. If you don't want to read the post and ... read more
Transparent Family Budget Update– November 2018
I'm really excited for November's budget update because it's the first month that we've focused on our new BIG financial goal. If you missed it, I wrote all about it here and even shared about it in our first-ever live video. In short, we're going to be working hard to pay off our mortgage. Like in 5 years instead of 15 (or 30). We don't know exactly how we're going to make it happen, but that's our plan. We like a good challenge. So if you're currently working hard to pay off debt, ... read more
Our Next BIG Financial Goal– Why We’re Paying Off Our Mortgage in 5 Years
A couple of weeks ago, we announced our big financial goal for 2019 (and beyond) in our very first ever Facebook live video. We thought about waiting until it was actually 2019 to dive in, but honestly once we made the decision, we couldn't wait. We just wanted to get started instead of frittering away the last two months in the year. You'll see the progress we've already made when I share our monthly budget update next week, but I wanted to be sure I explained how we decided on our goal ... read more
Transparent Family Budget Update– October 2018
If you're here to see what real family finances look like you've come to the right place. As always, I'll share what our family earned, spent, and saved last month in detail. But first... We are super excited to do something new here at Six Figures Under! For more than five years we've been sharing these monthly budget updates on the blog, along with more than 500 blog posts covering content about finance and frugality. About three years ago we published Frugal Fresh Start, an easy ... read more
October Monthly Grocery Haul ($310 for a family of 7)
In October, I spent $310 on my monthly grocery shopping trip for my family of 7. While I try to get most of what we'll need for the month in one giant shopping trip, I still usually make a few smaller trips throughout the month for more milk, bread, and other great deals that I happen to find. I mostly just shop for the staples that we're low on, so I don't have to buy everything every month. We have meat in the freezer (and we're not huge meat-eaters), so I didn't buy any this month. I ... read more
Transparent Family Budget Update– September 2018
It's time for another transparent monthly budget update! I realized that this month's real numbers budget report marks 5 years of personal finance made public. FIVE YEARS! For five years I've been sharing the ins and outs of our family's finances with the world. How crazy is that?! Well, in the beginning it wasn't really the world. It was mostly crickets. I didn't tell my family or friends about Six Figures Under for a very long time. I had a significant readership established long ... read more
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