Affluent but Frugal

In my opinion, salon manicures were THE affordable luxury for middle class women starting in late 90s. The proliferation of mall-based salons offering walk-in manicures for under $30 contributed to the rise (I think the mall salon in my hometown did them for $12!). It was so accessible and what is more basic white lady than pretty nails? Painted by someone else? Well, these days are kind of behind us now. First, we had gel upsells on nails (+$5) and then toes and then fees to remove your old gel. Now, in my area a basic mani is $35-40 and starting at $40 if you want gel. That is still affordable as an occasional luxury, but the damage to your nails gel causes is insane. After a few rounds, your nails are paper thin, flakey and just trashed.  Photo from when I gave mine away on Buy Nothing Group So what is our solution to save money and keep our nails looking good, strong and healthy? Ok well I have tried many things and here is my take. Impress Press on Nails I saw these recommende...

I realize that I'm unique in that I love budgets! I love them because if you watch the money you know everything that's happening and I'm super nosy. :-) Even if you don't share my enthusiasm, making a budget is the number one way to get your finances in order! But if you have never done it before, it can feel limiting and it can be hard to know where to start. So what do you do? Track your spending Trust me, your money isn't going where you think it's going. It will help you in budgeting if you have a better idea of where your money is going. I like mint.com (it's free!) for tracking spending but there are other applications like You Need a Budget (YNAB) or you can go old school and use a spreadsheet. Fixed expenses To build your budget you need to start with your fixed expenses. These are the items that you pay every month and they are always the same. These will be be big ticket items like mortgage/rent, car payment if you have one, health/...

It can be shocking to hear that 78 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Why are so many people in our country broke? Including many with high incomes? Understanding why you are poor is the first step to breaking the cycle of paycheck to paycheck living. Here are 5 reasons you're poor! You don't budget or track your spending. If you want to save more or spend less, you need to be aware of where your money goes. You might think you know but tracking your spending for a few months can be eye opening. I strongly recommend Mint.com  for tracking your spending, it's free and easy to setup. You can link all of your accounts and it will auto-categorize your credit and debit card transactions. It's nifty. You never eat at home. A lot has been written about the "latte factor" and how a daily trip to a certain green goddess impacts your finances but most people seem to still be unaware how much they eat out and the financial impact. We hav...

We set out to have a small, economical wedding...well that didn't exactly happen. I think we had a nice wedding which wasn't a fancy, black-tie soiree but also not cheap, it was mid-range. Simple but nice. I did several DIY projects which saved us a lot of money, we looked for deals where we could find them and negotiated where we could. We had two splurge items. The first was our venue, which was a little pricier than we'd originally planned on but also in some ways a good value because we could use the venue for the ceremony and reception, included with our catering costs. The catering wasn't cheap  but it also wasn't expensive and they were overall very flexible with our budget. The venue was also wired for sound so we skipped a DJ, which saved us around $800 based on the few quotes I got. The second was our photographer. Not only did we choose a full-time photographer who was really a professional (part-time semi-pro photographers seem to abound!) but we a...