Become Financially Free with Me!
This category is all about things I’m doing to lower my expenses, or tips to help you lower yours!
Things have not been progressing as quickly as I would like in reducing expenses for November. I will say that November was significantly better than October! That said, October did have some expenses that were out of the norm.
Please note we are a family of 2 adults and one crazy 5 year old that eats nothing, living in a low-cost, small Canadian city. Let’s have a look-see at expenses for November: Continue reading “Expenses since catching the FIRE bug”
I was listening to an old episode of the Afford Anything podcast, and one of the FI strategies discussed by J Money (blogger of budgetsaresexy.com fame) was CHALLENGE ALL THE EXPENSES! Continue reading “Challenge Your Expenses!”
So the plan from my last post was to review the family budget – especially the Christmas budget – with Hubs.
I bought these adorable desserts. Small, relatively diet-friendly if you only eat one. Lemme just say, this one was MARVELOUS! Continue reading “Update on the last Post – Family Budget Meeting”
Since joining Instagram (@_tonfire), I’ve found a huge community of individuals attempting to achieve FI and/or FIRE. It’s very reassuring to see that so many people think this is a good idea! Also it’s very interesting to see the different methods and approaches that people are using to reduce monthly expenses. Continue reading “Pre-FIRE Monthly Expenses Unleashed!”
This week, my efforts are focused on getting a handle on our expenses. Simply identifying them and following a budget to try to reduce discretionary spending. I felt like this was a priority to achieve FIRE.
My friend recently introduced me to a tool she was using called YNAB – WORST name ever, but it stands for “You Need A Budget”. Which we do. HA! Anyway, I decided to sign up for a trial account at YNAB.com. So far, I’ve been using YNAB religiously for 2+ weeks, and it’s going very well. I feel I have much better awareness of where our money is going (and where it’s being wasted on lower priority things).
Side note: if online subscriptions aren’t really your thing, and you’d rather do your budget “old school” on paper or in a spreadsheet, you can still learn and follow YNAB principles by reading the book “You Need a Budget“, written by the creator Jesse Mecham.
A few lessons learned so far… Continue reading “Week 1 of FIRE – Focus on Expenses”
