Affluent but Frugal

We got married in our early 30s and already had most things for a household (or two!) but we still felt like we should have a registry for guests who preferred to give us a physical gift and would like to know what we actually needed. When you're engaged, there are so many activities that take up your time and the prospect of spending 3-4 hours in a Bed Bath and Beyond with a scanner gun was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon. Some people love it but that's not my idea of a good time. For us an online registry was perfect. We also had a lot of out of town guests, so they could have a gift shipped directly to us very easily and they didn't need to have the same store we chose nearby to shop for us. Since I already order from Amazon.com every three days, an Amazon registry was the natural choice. And they literally sell everything under the sun, at every price point. The Good So, there were some big pluses to using Amazon for your wedding registry . H...

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/...

I don't like to do Black Friday shopping, there are too many crowds and I don't want to get up early just to shop. It's only a deal if you need something, otherwise, you're wasting money no matter what the price is! Now, after Christmas shopping, that's my jam. Fewer people and better prices. But again, I will only buy something if it's something I wanted/needed anyway, even if it's 75% off. These are my favorite things to buy after the holidays! 1. Bath, body and hair care gift sets. I seriously stock up on all kinds of shampoo, soap, and deodorant every year. I will buy several sets for me and my husband and we will use it the whole year. He really likes Swagger by Old Spice and Wal-mart/Target will have sets that include some variation of a deodorant, shampoo, body spray for about $5. Normally we'd pay $3 for just a deodorant. I usually get him 3-4 sets of various combinations, depending on how many deodorants he has left from the year before. ...

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...

I was recently fortunate enough to be in Germany for work and able to hop over to the Netherlands to visit an old friend of mine and meet her new baby! I promise, my life is normally not this glamorous. Since I live in the US, I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to try out EasyJet, a low-cost, no frills European carrier. No-frills is perfectly fine on a flight less than two-hours. It seems like they hardly finish serving beverages and we’re landing, did I need that ½ a soda for an extra 50 bucks added to my fare? Not really, no. Of course, I comparison shopped my one-way ticket from Berlin to Amsterdam which was surprisingly difficult. The lowest price “legacy” carrier was KLM (the Dutch national carrier) at around $160. EasyJet was offering fares for $85 from Berlin Schoenefeld to Amsterdam. Berlin Schoenefeld is the smaller Berlin airport but I didn’t really care about this, though it was a little further from my hotel. What really made my decision challenging was determi...

Over the 1 year planning period for our wedding we spent almost double what we normally would during that period. Our savings took a big hit. Ouch. We had money saved to pay for the wedding but we still put everything we could on a credit card in order to get our points. If we're going to spend a ton we might as well get some points from it that we could use for a honeymoon or gift cards or something. This would be level 1 - just making sure to use your normal cards. We went a step further and chased sign up bonuses to maximize our value and in doing so gave ourselves about a $4,000 wedding gift! Let me add,  I do not recommend going into debt to pay for a wedding. Have the wedding you can afford - this strategy is intended only to maximize the rewards from what you would spend anyway. We were originally planning to use the points from the wedding spending to pay for our honeymoon to Thailand but unfortunately some personal events have forced us to delay taking that...

Like many of you, our wedding is on a budget but we also want it to be nice for our guests (over half of which are traveling from out of state to attend). To keep on budget and be able to splurge on things like a nice dinner and open bar (for me an open bar wasn’t optional) I am DIY’ing where I can. This includes both of the favors - yes, we’re doing two one that is “me” and one that is “him.” Mine was easy, I made soap . I’ve been making soap a few years and have given it as gifts in the past so that was a no brainier. His favor was harder to come up with…we considered the trendy succulents because my fiancé is a plant addict and succulents are his favorite but we thought they would be hard to travel with for guests with many people leaving them behind or killing them immediately. So that idea was nixed.  I was looking online for ideas with could replicate with a DIY and found some custom spice favors on Etsy that were really cute and we were thinking about ...