Blog Posts
I am sure that we all remember the children's story called the "The Tortoise and the Hair." This story has always been one of my favorites, because it is the true underdog story. That's like Coastal Carolina winning the College Baseball Championship. Coastal Carolina has never won a Championship in any sport prior to winning this one. The school's first National Championship in any sport was earned in 2016.
In this country, a new car can seem like a status symbol. Lot's of people can judge you based on the type of car that you drive. I work at a school and my students can be very vain. When they find out that I have a 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix, then some of them will give me a hard time. This doesn't last long, because they realize that it doesn't bother me and that I am proud to have a ten year old car. Plus, I respond with the fact that I have that car to save many and they really don't have a comeback for that. Most of my students believe that I am cheap. I would agree with that statement, but I prefer to call it frugal. Buying a used car instead of a new car can be very beneficial.
Can you believe that we are halfway thru summer? I honestly can't. It has flown by and I can't believe that it is already July. I have been working summer school, so I haven't had a lot of free time, but I still have time to go out and do all the crazy spending that we tend to do in the summer. Like in June, I spent more on gifts than I would normally, because our anniversary occurs in June. That is just something that comes with the month and as you recall from my article on gifts, we only by gifts for each other on our anniversary. Based on our current data, June was the month with the lowest savings rate this year. Let's look at a few things that cause our finances to go thru the roof in the summer.
This is the second spending rate article of the year. As you may recall, our 2016 goal is a 35% savings rate, mainly because we did not hit our goal last year and the fact that we now have a mortgage payment.
As many of you know, I am a big fan of both Dave Ramsey and Mr. Money Mustache (MMM). Both guys have a method and that method has worked for them. Dave believes in budgets and MMM does not. Dave uses the budget to tell him that he can spend money and MMM just avoids spending at all cost. These two methods of finance are where I find myself. I feel like I kind of blend between Dave and MMM. I sometimes spend money because I have it, but sometimes I just won't spend any money. There's a happy medium to be found in between Dave and MMM. The same can be said for their beliefs on when to have a baby.
