our life – Page 3 – little money bee

goals, military life, our budget, our life

budgeting – don’t forget the annual & infrequent expenses

April 5, 2017 No Comments

This seems like a silly post to write, but when budgeting, it’s really easy to give yourself exactly enough to spend and pay your bills, and forget about something major coming up. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m putting money away for all these so they don’t sneak up on me and ruin a month. It’s also a good reminder that these are things you may not see if you are budgeting based off 1-2 months of your last statements. Car registration. Duh. Yeah, this gets paid every year (or two years, depending on where you are). Our […]

goals, meal plan, our life, recipes I love

weekly goals + meal plan

April 2, 2017 No Comments

Aloha money bees! I know I just posted my goals for the month of April and our budget recap for March, but it is Sunday, and last weekend I had a little too much fun and didn’t get to sharing my meal plan. I know I’m sharing a lot of goals for the month and the week and it may seem like I set too many goals. I encourage you to set big monthly goals, and small weekly goals that can keep you on track to meeting your bigger goals. At the end of the year, I also set yearly […]

goals, our budget, our life, retirement accounts

March Recap / April Goals

April 2, 2017 2 Comments

Well if I thought February flew by, I definitely wasn’t prepared for March. The Bee family financial goals in March were: Find a way to share our budget more effectively. Hmm. I don’t think I did well on this. I actually liked last month’s format, and I might keep it. When I write a full-on budget post, I think I’ll share all of our categories, but to be honest, a lot of them just collect money and go up until they get used, like car registration or our renter’s insurance. Reduce restaurant spending to under $300. Holy guacamole, am I […]

finance quotes, goals, military life, our life

finance quotes – Epictetus

March 29, 2017 No Comments

I have begun creating some “inspiring quote” images to share on the Facebook page for the blog, and I figured I would also take some time to write about the quotes and the financial interpretation of them. Today’s quote is “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants,” from Greek philosopher Epictetus. This quote seems silly, especially as you think about “well, if I was wealthy, I could buy…” but I want you to consider a different type of wealth. Think about the wealth of options. The wealth of financial freedom. If I am not tied […]

budget, goals, military life, our life

the most important start – an emergency fund

March 27, 2017 No Comments

I know not everyone is aiming for early retirement, and that’s totally understandable. However, I have one suggestion that everyone should be working toward regardless of where you are in your financial life: an emergency fund. The amount of your emergency fund may vary based on your life circumstances. Conventional budgeting suggests that you maintain 3 months income (or 3 months of your expenses) as your emergency fund in case of job loss. However, as an enlisted military family, it seems very unlikely that Eric would lose his job unexpectedly at no fault of his own, so we can reasonably […]