We just finished up No-Spend February! While not everything went as planned, we're still counting it as a success. Even with the unplanned spending, we still made some great strides that will show up even beyond our February budget update. Now that it's over, I want to evaluate what worked well and where we struggled. If you did a no spend month too, I encourage you to do the same. It's helpful to see where your strengths and weaknesses are. If you're new to no-spend challenges, I have ... read more
When You have to SPEND in a NO-Spend Month
We don't call it a No-Spend Challenge for nothing! If it were easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, right? At the beginning of February, we set a goal to not spend anything on eating out, household goods, entertainment, trips, or any other unnecessary spending. In addition, we decided to make our no-spend month a pantry challenge as well. We chose to cut our normal grocery spending down to just $100 for the month. We were excited to not only save money, but also reset our spending habits ... read more
Debt Smash-athon JANUARY Progress Report
Way to go Debt Smashers! What an amazing month! I was so impressed by all the hard work you put toward paying off debt in January! I absolutely loved reading through all of your progress reports. You are up against some big challenges, but you're making great progress. For those who are new here, in 2019 we're having a Debt Smash-athon! Everyone is invited to participate by reporting how much you paid in debt each month. We're also keeping track of how much we invest for retirement and ... read more
Is a No-Spend Month Actually Worth It?
A no-spend month saves money in more ways than you probably realize. A no-spend month also has a positive overall impact on your future finances. If you think that a no-spend month will just make you spend more later, then you need to read this. I got an overwhelming reaction when I shared our No-Spend February budget on Instagram last weekend. I spent a good portion of Saturday responding to all of the questions. Of course there were all the regular questions I get when people see the ... read more
Real Family Budget Update– January 2019
We had a great budget month to start the new year out. We didn't have any huge expenses and we kept our spending under control. As always, in this transparent budget update I'll share with you exactly how much we earned, spent, and saved in January. We made some serious and surprising progress toward our big goal, which you can see below. I also want to remind you to quickly fill out your own Debt Smash-athon Report for January. I'm so, so excited to celebrate your progress toward your ... read more
How to Save with a No-Spend Month
Are you going strong in your financial goals? Want to keep up the momentum? Or maybe January was a struggle and you want to reset and start over. Either way, a no-spend month could be great for you! Let me tell you what's involved. It's not as scary or as hard as it sounds. Why would you want to have a No-Spend Month? Most people probably don't plan a no-spend month just for the heck of it (though that was kind of how our very first no-spend month started). Having a good reason ... read more
Switching from YNAB 4 to the New YNAB– Plus a hack to make it better
We've been using YNAB for a long time. It was with us through nearly our entire debt-free journey. YNAB 4 was a part of how we handled money in our family and we weren't ready to part ways when the new online YNAB came along. YNAB (the company) understood that parting would be hard so they let us keep using YNAB 4 indefinitely. We took them up on that for exactly 3 years! Now we're making the switch to the new YNAB. First I'll explain our reasons for switching and our reasons for ... read more
$327 Monthly Grocery Haul for Our Family of 7
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
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