Becoming Frugal

In my last post, I mentioned that I would share some things that we've changed to help decrease our spending. Two quick disclaimers: 1) We make tons of mistakes. I am going to highlight some of our successes, but for every success, I'm sure we make a mistake. 2) We live a very good life. We have found ways to cut our spending, but there are still "luxuries" in our life.  We eat out, we travel, and we have some nice stuff. We know that we are very, very fortunate. That being said, here are some of the changes that we've made:

1. Cell Phone: In July, we switched to Metro PCS for our cell service. Metro PCS runs on the T-Mobile network. Service is good (especially on the east coast), but maybe not as quite as good as Verizon or ATT. We spend $60/month ($30 per line) for unlimited talk, text, and data. That's about half the price of most other major cell phone carriers. We are iPhone snobs so we bought unlocked iPhones (iPhone 5 SE) outright from Apple. Even though we had to pay for the phones upfront, we calculated that we would hit the break-even point within a few months and then save $60+ every month after that. 
2. Haircuts: I cut George's hair.  My parents gave us a set of clippers and I watched several YouTube videos on how to give a men's haircut using clippers only. This only works if your spouse is pretty easy going about their hair, which George is. After 3-4 haircuts, I got the hang of it -- it's actually way easier than you'd think. It's not much, but it saves us about $15-20 per month. I have already given Luke one little haircut and will continue to do that, which will save us another $10 or so per month. Madeline and I will continue to go to a professional! :) 
3. Insurance: In March, we cut our car and home insurance bill in half by shopping around for insurance with an insurance broker. Haha, that sounds like a line right out of an insurance commercial. We have exactly the same coverage, but with a lesser known company. We save about $60-70 per month. 
4. Cable: We got rid of cable and bought a $20 digital antenna off of Amazon (one time cost) to get the major networks. At one point, we had Sling, which is an internet based cable provider. It was much cheaper than regular cable at about $25 per month. We really don't watch that much TV though, so we cancelled it. We do have access to Netflix (thanks, Emily!) and use that when we're in the mood to watch something. 
5. Eating out: George and I both enjoy eating out and trying new restaurants. It's a form of entertainment for us. We didn't intentionally make the decision to cut back on eating out, we were forced into it because our kids usually don't cooperate at sit-down restaurants and more often than not, the experience ends up being really stressful. When we do eat out, we stick to fast casual restaurants. Sunday-Thursday we almost always eat at home. It's easier, less stressful, and much healthier. On Friday night, we like to go to places like Chipotle, Qdoba, Jersey Mike's, or Zoup. Lately on Saturdays, we have been going to Reading Terminal Market downtown and getting lunch from one of the vendors there.  Obviously fast casual is cheaper than sit-down restaurants, plus we don't have to pay for a tip. We do spend more on groceries since we eat at home most of the time, but overall we save about $150 per month. 
6. Entertainment and Travel: We love to be out and about on the weekends. Almost every Saturday, we go somewhere or do something. George and I are both pretty adventurous and Madeline and Luke are already little adventurers too. We try to balance our desire take advantage of our time in the Northeast while not going crazy with spending. We bought memberships to the Philadelphia Zoo and the Please Touch Museum so when we are in town, we often end up at one of those two places. We broke even on the second visit to both. We have also found a lot of free things to do. For example, almost all of the historic sites downtown like the Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin square, and Independence Hall are free. When we want to go on a little trip, we either do a day trip (doesn't always make sense) or we stay just one night in a hotel. For example, when we went to NYC in the fall, we drove up early on a Saturday morning, stayed in a hotel on Saturday night, and drove home on Sunday afternoon. 

So there you go! Hopefully we will add to the list over the next few years. I personally have some things that I need to work on to cut spending even further. Between the two of us, I am definitely the spender! I know that a lot of my loyal readers are really, really good budgeters and savers so I'd love to hear your tips. If I get a few responses, I will share them in another post! Goodnight! :) 

We're Debt Free!

Just like that it's already February! And like usual, February is already flying! January was a jam packed month for us. We spent 10 days in AZ, I turned 30, we attended Nick and Shelby's wedding, and work was pretty busy for both of us. I also took on a fairly big project for a small business that involved making about 500 headbands -- it consumed my evenings and weekends for the last 2 weeks of the month. This weekend, things finally slowed down and we have been laying low and relaxing. Tonight, we are having our own little super bowl party complete with chicken tortilla soup, guacamole, and smoked chicken wings. We even gave the kids a bath already...at 3PM!

Without getting too specific on the numbers, I'd like to share something that I'm very proud of.  George and I hit a big financial milestone this week. We paid off the student loan from my MBA and became debt free. Or for all of you Dave Ramsey fans out there....we're debt freeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!! I should clarify that we are debt free except our home mortgage. No credit card debt (we don't even own a single credit card), no car loans, no student loans, nothing, nada! 

About 2 years ago, George and I took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University (FPU) at our church. My parents have been following Dave Ramsey for over 15 years and have always made sure to teach us the importance of wise financial decisions. And for the most part, George and I have made pretty decent financial decisions. We've never gotten ourselves into credit card debt and we live within our means. However, in FPU, we developed a deep, deep desire to have complete financial freedom. It sounds cheesy, but we started dreaming about having no payments, a completely paid off home, the ability to be completely pay for children's college, retirement in our mid 50s, the flexibility in our budget to go on nice vacations, and the ability to act on our desire to be outrageously generous. So, 2 years ago, we started our journey to financial freedom. 

Starting out, we had two debts: 1) my student loan and 2) our mortgage. Our first step, which took about 8 months, was to pay down our mortgage enough so that we could get the Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) removed. We were basically flushing almost $200 per month down the toilet on PMI. We put a nice dent in our mortgage debt and in December 2015, the PMI was removed. For the next few months, we hit the pause button and instead of paying off debt, we started saving for the cost of Luke's birth and some unpaid time off that I was planning to take after my paid maternity leave. In March, we re-focused and hit the gas to get my student loan paid off. We hit some bumps along the way and actually missed our goal by a month, but last week, we finally did it! It felt SO good to see a $0 balance. 

The next step is paying off our house. It is obviously our biggest and most daunting step. We are estimating that it will take us 3-3.5 years, We have identified some milestones along the way that will help us sustain our excitement and intensity. Sustaining that "gazelle intensity" that Dave Ramsey talks about is the hardest part. As cliche as it is, we try to keep our eye on the prize. We spend tons of timing talking about how awesome complete financial freedom will be. We also have starting saving for and planning our celebratory trip. As soon as we pay off our house, we going to Disney World (w/ a stop in Nashville along the way to do our real debt free scream)!! 

In a later post, I will talk about some of the changes that we've made in both our budget and in our mindset, that have helped us so far. 

I'll leave out you with two pictures....

Here's my mom and dad doing their envelopes. My Grandma Warren captioned the picture on the back: "The Budgeteers: Stephen and Audrey Warren". They have been big cheerleaders for us and it is fun to share our successes with them. On Wednesday night, we called them to do a debt free scream :) 

See you in 2020, Dave!