Last year we moved from Tennessee to Texas. We sold our paid-for house, and purchased a new house that was about 20% more expensive than the one we sold. Due to the timing and not having a credit score, we had to take out a mortgage for the full amount of the new house before the sale completed on our old house. We had been […]
Completing a Mortgage Recast Continue Reading »
The very strict rules and forms of the Baby Steps helped to establish some discipline for us very early on, but in the long term aging our money to the point that we could budget on the previous month’s income was a lot easier for us to work with and eliminated a lot of headaches.
Being a Month Ahead in the Budget Continue Reading »
Earlier this year I wrote about the hypothetical process of getting a mortgage with no credit score. Now that we have lived through that process, and have finally closed on selling our old house, I want to document what it actually looked like. I hope someone out there went through this process recently and can say they had a better experience. Maybe there was a
Actually Getting a Mortgage With no Credit Score Continue Reading »
Over the course of our marriage, Summer and I have ran several small side businesses between the two of us, including: A photography business Web / application development Childbirth education classes Doula (childbirth support) services We learned a very hard lesson with our very first customer for our photography business. It was a small wedding, and we were just starting out, so the total was
Side Hustles, COVID-19, and the Tide Going Out Continue Reading »
We have been in this house for nearly nine years, and have added three more children to our family since we made that purchase. Three years ago we paid the house off. Over the years, we have toyed with the idea of moving to a house that is slightly bigger. We have five children in a 4 bed, 2.5 bath, 2200 sqft house. Our guestroom
Getting a Mortgage Without a Credit Score Continue Reading »
I recently learned 1) I have zero credit score, and 2) some rental car companies won’t rent to you if you do not have a credit score. Read more…
No Credit Score and Renting a Car Continue Reading »
I started writing this back in 2015 when we still had a balance on our mortgage, but for some reason never hit the “Publish” button. Back then we had a refinanced mortgage of $120,000 that we were aiming to pay off before 2020. Around 2015, our monthly interest payment was somewhere around $300. We ended up having no surprises with the birth of #4, so
Pausing the Baby Steps for a Baby Continue Reading »
A few years ago while my uncle, while he was still alive, made a good argument for why the Christian should not gamble – it is a selfish act – if you want to win, you are wanting someone else to lose. You are violating the golden rule. Put another way: Gambling, then, is an essentially selfish exercise. Not only is the gambler indifferent to the
An Argument Against Credit Card Rewards Continue Reading »
Where I work, we have this concept of Stupid Tax – when someone does something stupid and it costs them money. My wife and I thankfully haven’t had too much stupid tax, but we did have one big expense that came down to me stupidly holding on to something that was “mine”.
The Dumbest Thing We Did With Money Continue Reading »
Tax season is here, and we just received our annual mortgage interest statement from our bank. It is somewhat depressing to see how much money went to pay interest on our loan, but cool thing about it this year is that we paid about half as much in interest than we did last year. As I wrote last year, one of our goals was to
Mortgages and Taxes Continue Reading »
Last year one of my goals, actually a goal for both my wife and I, was to make a serious dent in our mortgage. We set a fairly aggressive long-term goal to have our house paid off by our 10 year anniversary in July of 2016. We moved into our current house in April, 2011, so we had a super-stretch goal of having it paid
2015 Goal #1 : Mortgage Reduction Continue Reading »
Have you ever had a moment where you realized that something the majority of the population hold as true was actually a bad idea? You believed that idea for many years, and those telling you seemed to have good data to back their claim, so you just ran with it? But, after having someone sit down with you and show the numbers, you realized that
Home Mortgage Tax Deduction – Part 1 : Intro Continue Reading »
Let’s talk about a really fun topic today: life insurance. Before we get to that exciting topic, I want to excite you even more with a short meta-post. I sat down and started to write this really long post – what would have amounted to 5+ pages, complete with tables and numbers – and realized that I needed to step back and focus on the most important thing.
Life Insurance: Why? Continue Reading »
When we first started using a written budget about 5 years ago, one of the first semi-irregular expenses that we had to start budgeting for was car maintenance. Up until that point, if a tire wore out or a battery needed to be replaced, we just whipped out the credit card, and worked it out at the end of the month when we paid our statement. It turns out,
Budget Basics: Saving for Car Expenses Continue Reading »
This is part 3 in a series about vacationing on a budget. Recap I’ve said it before, and will do so again – by budget I do not mean “cheap”, I mean “a plan” – on paper, on purpose, before the trip began. There are many people who take far more expensive trips than we did, but our trip was far from being a “budget”
Vacation on a Budget – Part 4 – Recap and Lessons Learned Continue Reading »
This is part 3 in a series about vacationing on a budget. As a quick recap, our budget for the entire trip was $2,400. We broke it down into the following categories: $1,200 for lodging (50%) $300 for gas (12.5%) $400 for food, groceries, supplies (16.7%) $500 for activities (20.8%) As I covered in part 2, we spent $1,188.84 out of our budgeted $1,200 for
Vacation on a Budget – Part 3 – Remaining Expenses Continue Reading »
In part 1, I went over our budget for our 2013 Family Vacation. Our total budget was $2,400 cash. We had saved up that amount in a savings account, and had no more than that to spend. Our rough breakdown was: $1,200 for lodging (50%) $300 for gas (12.5%) $400 for food, groceries, supplies (16.7%) $500 for activities (20.8%) Location, Location, Location Our family enjoys
Vacation on a Budget – Part 2 – Where to Stay Continue Reading »
Our family loves to travel. During the first 3 years of our marriage, we would travel over 500 miles from home at least 3 times a year. One year we went to Hawaii, San Francisco, Texas, and it seems like at least one other place in that year. One year we drove out to Colorado from Missouri to see some property that has been in
Vacation on a Budget – Part 1 – Establishing a Budget Continue Reading »
It has been a long time since I have written anything of substance, so why not break the hiatus and write about a very exciting subject – health insurance. Maybe this is a bit personal, but I am not going to reveal how much my family earns, nor how much of our income as a percentage is spent on health care, nor how much my employer’s group plan
Private Insurance Continue Reading »
I will post a little bit of what I posted to Summer’s blog. I am hoping that we can all help each other out and find ways to cut back in ‘tough economic times’. Cutting Back Another key to getting us back on track was to find ways to trim back. One of our frustrations is that every time we saw a ‘top 5 ways
Cutting Back Continue Reading »
(imported from an old blog) For those of you who are friends with my wife on pleo, who is a gold member, she is about to post something privately that I wrote. It is about our reasoning behind switching to the process that Dave Ramsey calls the “Total Money Makeover”. Several have scoffed at the idea, and I figured some explaining might show others that
Money Makeover Continue Reading »
