Core Truths

In this three-part blog series, we have shared how we learned to have a good budget meeting and how we create our monthly budgets. In this third and final post, we are excited to share what has probably been our favorite part…reducing expenses! In the past, when we have thought about reducing expenses, we think of going without something and choosing things to give up. While that can be a part of it, there’s more to it than just that. The downside is that reducing your monthly expenses can take up quite a bit of time. Shopping around for better savings and actually making the switch can take months to finalize, but don’t let that stop you from giving it a try. Once we got started, it was almost like a game or a new challenge to see how low we could go on some of our recurring expenses. Our first bit of advice on this one is to go after one thing at a time. This is important when you are looking at expenses like wireless service, internet providers, and home and auto insurance coverage....

  In part one of a three-part blog series, we shared how to have a good budget meeting. We mentioned some of the things we have learned, such as schedule the meeting, meet offsite or away from all distractions, use budgeting tools to help you budget, come up with your plan, and execute. And of course, be ready for the unexpected. In this post, we want to share some of the budgeting tools and how-tos that have worked well for us. Most of what we have found to work comes right out of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University teachings. One key to good budgeting is creating a zero-based budget, meaning you budget and account for every single dollar that comes in and goes back out. What this means is after you have accounted for all your expenses, whatever is remaining is used towards debt, thus your bottom line is zero. Sounds great, right? It is, except this requires you to predict how much money is going to be spent before your budget month or week has even started! For me, the Ever...

  There’s no better way to get control of your finances than creating and sticking to a budget.   Sounds easy enough, right? In this three-part blog series, we will share with you the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to how we started having good budget meetings, how we actually create our budget using budgeting tools, and ways we were able to reduce spending to have more money to put towards our student loan debt.   So first things first, we had to learn to talk to each other about money…and not just when we would run out of it! I don’t know about you, but it turns out, Brandon and I had very different viewpoints when it came to how we should budget our money. Turns out, we also had very different viewpoints when it came to how we should pay off debt. If there was one viewpoint we did share in common, it was that we wanted to pay off those student loans. Turns out, the only way to do that was to find a way to face these differences and to come up with a plan tog...