One of the many important life skills a teenager needs to learn is money management. As a parent, you want to raise a successful and independent future adult. Teaching money management intentionally is crucial to your teens ability to be a successful adult. Read more
planning
Regional Yard Sale: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Most people are familiar with the concept of a yard sale: you go through your home and collect everything you no longer want or need, then you sell it on your front lawn.
This past weekend was a well known regional yard sale in my area. It’s basically 140 miles of yard sales from Virginia to North Carolina. This was both a good thing and a bad thing, as I’ve learned. There is a higher volume of traffic but also a lot of other sales, too.
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Managing Financial Anxiety
Financial anxiety is a term used to described the overwhelming sense of panic related to money problems. Almost everyone experiences some form of financial anxiety from time to time. It takes on many different forms: an unexpected emergency, a forgotten bill auto-drafting, losing your wallet, or a reduction in hours at work.
Money makes us all crazy. So how do you deal with financial anxiety? Read more
Budgeting Do's and Don'ts
Budgeting isn’t the most fun activity ever but it’s very important to accomplishing your financial goals. If you don’t have a budget, you’re basically shooting blindly at your future. Trust me, there are better ways to go about it.
I’ve created a list of important do’s and don’ts of budgeting to help guide you through the minefield of budgeting. Read more
Creating Strong Financial Goals (DRS #7)
I started to include this a previous post, Making Better Financial Choices, but it made it way too dense. Today we’re going to be looking at how to develop strong financial goals.
Types of Goals
There are typically 3 groups of goals: Short-term, Mid-term, and Long-term. I break them like this:
Short-term goals can be completed in less than 2 years.
Mid-term goals will take somewhere between 2 & 4 years to complete.
Long-term goals will take 4 or more years to complete.
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What I've Learned From My First 3 Months Blogging
This has been a crazy three months. I can’t believe my first quarter blogging is almost over! It’s been a blur!
I started this blog on Valentine’s Day after about 3 months of contemplation. I originally had kind of a general idea of what I wanted to write about, like my journey towards becoming debt-free, why dogs are incredible, and information about mental health. But I wanted to feel restricted in what I wrote, so I threw myself into the lifestyle umbrella.
I came up with a weekly schedule for posting (Money, Wednesday, and Friday). I started out with some theme days: What I’m Reading Wednesday and Friday Favorites. After I got more comfortable (and switched to handwriting my posts first), I shifted to writing lengthier posts with fewer theme days.
Then I decided to do a series about the different pieces that go into creating a successful debt repayment plan. I might have done it a little early into my blog, but that’s okay. I’m trig to decide if I should turn it into an email course or a workbook. Feedback is appreciated!
ANYWAY…
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Friday Favorites | Paper and Printable Planners
I am a journal junkie; a persistent planner; an obsessive organizer. And I love a good planner. I’ve been using a planner for the majority of my life, starting with the free planners my middle school gave out to all students. With that being said, I did not develop a strong planning skill set, or the ability to make my planner work for me, until I reached college (I got better in high school but I still had friends that reminded me when assignments were due).
College was a huge learning curve for me. During the beginning of my college career, I tried a couple different ways to keep myself organized. I also failed miserably for a while. One reason I failed was because I was trying too many things all at once. But the real reason I failed was because I tried to go digital. Now don’t get me wrong – going digital is great, for some people. I’m just not one of them. Once I figured out writing things down works best for me, I was able to make a much more effective system.
So without further ado, here’s a look into some of my favorite paper and printable planners:
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What I'm Reading: Life in Your Twenties
Welcome to this week’s list of articles I’m reading. Today’s list is obviously geared towards the other 20-somethings, but if that number doesn’t apply to you, you are definitely still welcome! Everything in today’s list could be beneficial to just about anyone.
This list is primarily finance-related, but there’s some other good stuff thrown in! Read more
Why I'm Using the Avalanche Method
There is a lot of support for the Snowball Method, including an abundance of success stories of people using this method to pay off their debt. But what about the Avalanche Method?
When you search for “Avalanche Method” or “Debt Avalanche,” there are very few articles solely about this method. The majority of what you will find are comparisons to the Snowball Method. Why is that the case?
These are things I frequently think to myself when I’m looking at Pinterest or Googling pay-down techniques. I love the Avalanche Method and it’s worked very well for me over the past two years.
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Friday Favorite: Brain Dump
Have you ever heard of the Brain Dump? If not, you are seriously missing out on a magical tool to reduce your level of stress and increase productivity.
I frequently have about 25+ things running through my mind at any given time: chores, things I need to do, recipes to try, things I need to buy, post ideas, things I need to get/do for the dogs, general ideas, etc.
I can’t even imagine how it is for you parents out there! Read more