budget – little money bee

Teach me how to budget (teach me, teach me how to budget) Part One

July 10, 2019 No Comments

(If you didn’t sing the title, you can leave now.) ;P I thought I wrote a post about this at some point, but it turns out I have not. I have touched on a few things that I’ll mention here as well in other posts, such as fun money, emergency funds, and annual/infrequent expenses. However, writing a budget (and sticking to it) is so much more than that. I’ve given a lot of presentations and taught a lot of classes about budgeting before, and I’ve helped probably 100 servicemembers and their families write budgets. I have learned a few big […]

goals, our budget, our life, Uncategorized

2018 Recap & 2019 Goals

January 15, 2019 No Comments

So, obviously, I fell off the wagon. For a long time. And I’ve realized a few things: things I would tell to other people nonchalantly as if they were obvious, and things people could tell me and I would agree wholeheartedly because they are obvious. For starters, when I say I fell off the wagon, what I really mean is: I stopped budgeting. I just bought whatever I wanted and figured that some windfall somewhere would cover it. I was impulsive and never said, “no” to myself. I needed someone to stop me and say, “for real? This is what […]

budget, goals, our life

Priorities and Comparisons

November 6, 2017 No Comments

finance priorities saving goals house car vacation

This is something I think I’ve started to write about in many posts, and never actually published. But I think it needs to be said, because I had somewhat of an epiphany about it last night. Stop comparing your life to everyone else’s. Of course, in the sense of the blog, I mean your financial life, but this can be stated for a lot of things. When a lot of finance enthusiasts give this statement, especially Dave Ramsey, there seems to be this idea that, “don’t compare yourself against the person with the BMW because they’re drowning in debt.” Which […]

budget recap, goals, our life

October Recap / November Goals

November 3, 2017 No Comments

Wow, this month has a lot of positives and negatives. This was the first month we didn’t spend exorbitant amounts on home improvement. We did pay $500 to have our woodstove and chimney cleaned and repaired, but other than that, it was a “normal” month in terms of home expenses. Oh, and filling our oil tank, which I somehow didn’t plan for. However, this month we had dropped our retirement contributions to re-fill some of our savings accounts, and it was able to help cover some of these expenses also. Big victories for October: We only spent $260 at restaurants. […]

budget recap, debt, goals, military life, our budget, our life, relationship

September Recap & a lot of honesty

September 30, 2017 No Comments

So I skipped my August Recap. I guess I’d say I had a lot going on and, but that’s an excuse. I mentioned briefly on Facebook that a lot of it was shame, and that’s true too. September was not much better for us though, which is a hard realization. While we had some major home expenses that derailed some of our retirement savings goals, our day-to-day expenses were still too high compared to what we want to be spending on those expenses. Sometimes I have a habit of saying, “we had visitors this month,” or “we traveled somewhere this […]