Core Truths

It’s time for me to share the toughest budgeting lesson I’ve learned...time to share my cold hard truth. Budgeting is a two-person job! I will be honest, I’m the one who held budgeting hostage. I was the one who was in charge of the bills, budgeting, reconciling, etc. If things were good, we kept moving along. If things were bad, I tried hard to keep things moving along anyway. I mean, who wants to be the bearer of bad news? Unfortunately, when there’s more month than money, you eventually have to talk about it. Unfortunately, that means the only time we really talked about money/budgeting was when things were bad. Unfortunately, for all these years I equated money talks with bad news. And that’s a hard habit to break! But, we’re doing it. It took Brandon setting bimonthly budget meetings. We first started meeting offsite for our meetings. This made it feel more like a meeting we couldn’t cancel, and it got us away from the distractions at home. The more meetings we’ve had, the easier ...

  There’s nothing like taking on some big project, something that at first might seem impossible, and then little by little you see it come together.   A couple of months ago we started to redo our kitchen by painting our kitchen cabinets (I know, now you feel bad for us). We knew it was a lot to take on, we knew it was going to take a while to complete, and we knew that anyone who has ever painted their kitchen cabinets will quickly say that is a project they would never do again. We knew all of this and we started the project anyway. Yes, it is now two months later and we are still working on it, but I have figured out, I don’t hate painting kitchen cabinets. I actually kind of enjoy it. It’s not bad…you simply put on a coat of paint, show a little patience, wait a couple of hours, then put on another coat of paint. No big deal.   But there has been a part of this project I have hated. Hated so much I thought at one point we were going to give up. It’s not the painting…...

Recently I did something big for our family. It may seem small and insignificant to most (unless you’ve ever tried to toast anything at our house), but to us, it was kind of a big deal. It’s something I could have done a long time ago, but doing it now is a sign the winds are starting to come in differently. My big move is that I bought our family a new toaster. Yes, that’s right, a new toaster. Let me explain. We’ve had our current toaster for somewhere between the last 10 to 20 years. It’s either a wedding gift from 20 years ago, or a cheap replacement of a wedding gift from maybe 10 years ago. Notice the colorful design on the side which is a result of a bread bag that had the unfortunate chance to be too close to the toaster and melted all on the side of it. If you’ve ever tried to toast anything here, you would know that it only toasts one side of each piece of bread at a time. No matter what setting it is on, it never automatically pops up, therefore it will definitely burn, unle...

Talk about a garage clean out...today we sold one of our cars! We still have our family SUV we use on the daily. And we have a 14-year-old paid-off car we’ve kept as the “kid car” so the kids can learn to drive and use it as their first car (more on that later). But we also had the “commuter car.” Also known as “the fun car.” Truth be told, two years ago, we needed it. Or at least we thought we did...because every driver “needs” their own car, right? Wrong. We may have thought we needed an extra set of wheels, and, even if we did, we did not necessarily need a car at that price and, especially, one that was financed. In our recent reflections, we’ve assessed everything. Turns out, we don’t “need” that car. And we certainly don’t need the note! So we sold it. If eventually we need a second car, we’ll share with the driving teenager. And if we need more than that, we’ll find something cheap enough we buy with cash. So today, no more car note, no more maintenance, no more insurance. Now, ...

Have you ever had something so big to say that you felt like you had to say it or otherwise you’d just burst? That’s exactly how we found ourselves about six months ago. We were going through the day-to-day of jobs and school and commitments. We were overextended, over-scheduled, and over-exhausted. Our home was overly appointed and overly cluttered. And much like our time, our budget was overspent. We came to a point, we were simply over it. For years we talked with each other about how there was too much going on, too much money going out, too much of our time spent doing things we didn’t want to do. As the years went on, the conversations started to come on more and more, and our ideas of making big changes began to get bigger and bigger. About six months ago we decided we were going to start putting some of our ideas into action. We knew we didn’t arrive at this place overnight, and we certainly would not get out of it overnight, but we were going to chip away at all the things bit...

HERE IT IS!! The third and final installment of those items that take up our time! We’ve previously shared how the number of our things and the size of our homes can be huge time suckers. Here we are to close out this series with the biggie—the amount of DEBT we carry around in our lives! We’re on a mission to live a simple life. But we truly can’t simplify our lives without addressing how the burden and sheer volume of mounting debt consumes our time and keeps us from living the life we really want to live. Here’s what we know. We can’t do it alone. We hope you’ll join us on this journey!

We previously questioned the things that take up our time, including the number of our things, the size of our homes, and the amount of our debt. In this particular episode, we continue that conversation by addressing specifically how the size of our homes and amount of square footage we purchase--along with the cost to fill, maintain, and upkeep it--consumes our time. We're on a mission to live a simple life. But we can't do it alone. We hope you'll join us on this journey!