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Our Debt Free Family

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Putting the Spirit of Springtime Into Your Financial Planning

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<p>Springtime is such an amazing time of year. It is one of my favorites. I love to find ways to improve my life around this time of year. Many people focus on spring cleaning or specific tasks, but I like to take a big-picture view of things at this time to improve our finances and more. How can you put the spirit of spring into your financial planning? Here’s how we are doing it.</p>::Pexels

Springtime is such an amazing time of year. It is one of my favorites. I love to find ways to improve my life around this time of year. Many people focus on spring cleaning or specific tasks, but I like to take a big-picture view of things at this time to improve our finances and more. How can you put the spirit of spring into your financial planning? Here’s how we are doing it.

Why We Focus on Springtime

I suffer from a bit of seasonal depression, which a large number of people do. This makes springtime a great time to start doing anything. I usually lose focus throughout the winter and I’m really just trying to survive that time. When spring hits, it feels like I can breathe again and, more importantly, give attention to the areas of my life that need it.

This might be different for other people. However, chances are there is a season when you’re more productive, more enthusiastic, and more positive. That should be the season you take to focus on improving your life – whether it is your finances or otherwise.

How to Put Spirit Into Your Financial Planning

When I think of spring I think of rejuvenation and growth. These are two important things when it comes to financial planning for your family. You have to think about ways to change your budget and your financial approach to match the growth you want.

Additionally, rejuvenating your approach to money can help you better align your lifestyle with your long-term money goals. Here are some ways we are doing this…

  1. Plan out a monthly review of our finances. We often neglect to sit down and talk about our financial habits, review our money management, and really look at how our financial plan is working for us. Moving forward, we will have a monthly “money date.”
  2. Keep a long-term mindset. In general, it’s easy to get caught up in the here and now. However, your money will work for you more if you keep your eyes on the future.
  3. Maintain our emergency fund. We’ve had issues maintaining our emergency fund in the past and it creates big issues in our debt freedom plan.
  4. Invest in ourselves first. When we don’t set aside money to invest in ourselves we don’t feel positive about our finances. That’s just a fact!
  5. Place any contributions to savings, retirement, etc. on automatic. Another thing that could use some rejuvenation is the way we “do” savings. We usually transfer things manually and it doesn’t always get done. Putting these things on auto-pilot will help a ton.

Readers, do you ever get inspired to rejuvenate your financial plan? Does it happen around the same time every year? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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Now Is The Time To Prepare A Summer Spending Plan

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Our Summer Spending Plan

It may seem a bit early to you, but I’m ready to start prepping our family’s summer spending plan. Generally speaking, the warmer months tend to be more expensive for us. We go out more. This year, we may even get to take a day trip or two to the beach. Not to mention, the cost of cooling our home in the South can be shocking at times.

So, now that spring is officially here and warmer weather is on its way (it’s 85 degrees and sunny today), I’m ready to start plotting out some of our plans for the summer.

How Does Summer Impact Spending?

As I briefly mentioned above, the summertime tends to bring along some additional expenses for my family. Nobody wants to stay inside when it’s a beautiful warm day. So, there are often additional expenses that pop up.

Namely, our electric bill usually goes up to about $200/month from $100 or less during the winter months (we have gas heat). On top of that, it is generally a time of year when we take more trips, have more day adventures, and living is easy. We simply don’t always pay as close attention to our finances as we should from June to September.

That being said, we started tackling a summer spending plan a few years ago that helps us map out necessary expenses as well as things we’d like to do during the warmer months.

Our Summer Spending Plan

I haven’t written out our summer spending plan in its entirety yet, but I know we are planning to do a few things…

  1. We would really love to take our daughter to the beach. She hasn’t been yet and both of us would love to be able to do that this summer. We live within a 3-hour drive of several great beaches here, so that is doable on a budget. If necessary, we wouldn’t even have to stay overnight.
  2. Another small pool needs to be purchased for the backyard. Last year, we bought a baby pool for the backyard and, even though it cost about $10, it provided our little one with countless hours of fun!
  3. We need to adjust our monthly budget to account for the increased electricity and water costs for our home during the summer months.
  4. Our little one is also going to need new clothes. We don’t have any spring or summer clothes that fit her currently.

Right now, we are working on nailing down what our budget for the summer needs to be and how much money we will need to save for certain holidays, trips, etc. For instance, Father’s Day falls in June, we will budget a little extra money for the holiday and find something my husband would like to do.

We are still hashing out the details, but these are the four things impacting our summer spending plan right now. Readers, do you construct a different budget or spending plan for different seasons? I’d love to hear about how you manage it.

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My Word For 2023: Productivity

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<p>Social media has changed the world in so many ways (some good, some bad). One thing it has certainly done (for me) is provided me with new, interesting ways to think about things and approach projects. Recently, I have seen people choose a word to represent the year to come. Many people have chosen words like “hustle” or “positivity.” My word for 2023 is “productivity.”</p>::Pexels

Social media has changed the world in so many ways (some good, some bad). One thing it has certainly done (for me) is provided me with new, interesting ways to think about things and approach projects. Recently, I have seen people choose a word to represent the year to come. Many people have chosen words like “hustle” or “positivity.” My word for 2023 is “productivity.”

Why I Chose This Word

Of course, everyone wants to be productive, but I chose this word this year because last year was really busy. Even though I was running around and felt exhausted and busy constantly, I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to. Then I came across this inspirational post on Facebook and it really spoke to me. It said…

Be productive, not busy.

When I read that I was like, “that’s it! That’s what I need to focus on.” It is kind of like that old adage “Work smart, not hard.” I want to focus on improving my everyday processes to reach my goals (both short-term and long-term). Before starting projects, I’ll analyze what the best approach is to protect my time (and money).

Productivity Goals

A lot of my productivity goals for 2023 will require a bit of planning. To start, I’ve begun waking up just a bit earlier every day and jotting down a brief schedule of what I have planned. If you saw my last post, I talked about my main goals for the year and I plan to achieve each of these by being productive and planning out my day.

For instance, to achieve my goal of learning German, I will carve out 10 to 20 minutes every day for a quick lesson. To be able to read a book a week, I am scheduling about an hour a day devoted to that alone. My goal of practicing self-care every day will be achieved by waking up just a little earlier and taking care of my skin and practicing yoga.

Our main finance goal of paying off at least half of our debt will also be helped along by being productive instead of busy. Last year, we were a bit frantic with our financial plans. This year, we will track every penny and have a set plan for paying off our accounts.

All in all, I am hoping that setting a goal to be more productive (and less busy) this year will free me up to do more of the things I enjoy, like spending time with my husband, hiking, reading, doing makeup, and crafts. As I’ve stated in the past, a huge part of me being successful in life, and in my finances, is being able to achieve a balance. That’s why I’m choosing to be productive and NOT busy this year.

Readers, do you choose a word to describe your year? What is yours?

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Planning for Unexpected Expenses

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planning for unexpected expenses

There is no doubt we’ve made strides in the right direction as far as our finances are concerned. However, there is still one area in which we are failing: planning for unexpected expenses.

This week I got the bridesmaid dress for an upcoming wedding in the mail (two weeks out from the wedding) and my worst nightmare occurred. It didn’t fit! It was far too late to return it for the correct size, so I decided to take it to a local alterations place. The total for the changes needed came out to $250.

The price definitely threw me for a loop and, because we aren’t using credit cards, it came directly out of savings. I was frustrated with myself for not planning ahead for alterations costs.

Why is Planning for Unexpected Expenses Important?

Planning for unexpected expenses is key to becoming debt-free. If we weren’t so devoted to not swiping our credit cards, I could have easily racked up another $250 in debt without batting an eye. The same is true for other expenses that may come your way out of the blue.

Failing to prepare for this is can lead to you hindering your debt progress. Not to mention, it can have an impact on your emergency savings and take away from paying off your debts. It can also put a dent in your emergency savings. Then you have to readjust your finances to refocus on padding your savings accounts once again instead of using the money for my debts.

How to Plan for Unexpected Expenses

Thankfully, there are things you can do to plan for the unexpected things in life. Here are a few tips to help you avoid the mistake I’ve made.

First, identify your unexpected expenses. Of course, we can’t always see into the future, but if there’s something that comes up with some regularity, you can try to plan ahead for it. For instance, property taxes, medical expenses, birthdays and holidays, and car repairs can all be planned for.

To identify other unexpected expenses, you can take a look at the past year’s bank and credit card statements. Note any irregular purchases and try to budget for that. You can add up the total of all the expenses and then divide it by 52 weeks. Set aside that amount every week moving forward. This can help you have the money set aside when something unexpected comes up.

Doing this will help you plan ahead and (unlike me) have the cash set aside when something may pop up. Do you have any additional tips you’d add? Leave them in the comments below!

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