Budgeting Inexpensively

No Spend Month, Week 3 Update: 1st Birthday Edition

This week’s expenses were mostly on the official exception list, with a few added costs thrown in for lack of planning. Yesterday was my niece’s 1st birthday, celebrated on Saturday with a large party for the whole family. Traveling always costs a little extra—often even beyond the gas expenses—and I still need to buy the [...]


No Spend Month, Week 2 Update: Broken Furnace Edition

This week hit us with a slew of “necessary” (but unexpected) expenses. Some were definitely more necessary than others—take the furnace, for example. Waking up cold in the middle of the winter is nothing new to me, but when the hubby is the first to say it’s freezing, there’s clearly a problem. And, of course, [...]


No Spend Month, Week 1 Update: Icepocalypse Edition

As far as our No Spend Month is concerned, Indy’s Icepocalpyse couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s pretty easy not to spend money when you’re trapped in your house for 3 days. Of course, the first thing I wanted to do when the roads began to clear was shop—my very first outing was [...]


2011: The Year of IRS-efile and Free Online Tax Preparation (Ad)

This is the year to take your taxes online and to efile your tax return. During the 2010 Tax Season almost 70% of all U.S. individual taxpayers have either efiled their taxes themselves or efiled through a tax professional. That’s almost 100 million people! efile Can Be Free! The efile.com FREE FEDERAL EDITION is absolutely free and guides you [...]


February No Spend Month Challenge

As we went through our budget last month, it became clear that we need something drastic to really get us moving on debt repayment. We have our household expenses down to the bare minimum, we do a pretty good job with groceries and we’ve worked hard to eliminate unnecessary expenses. Still, we end up with [...]


31 Day Budget (Day 31): Examining Your Budget (Again)

31 Days to a Better Budget Examining Your Budget (Again) Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan. Whew—we made it! After trudging through the budget through the last month, we have made some adjustments, eliminated a few things and come up [...]


31 Day Budget (Day 30): Spending “Bonus” Money

31 Days to a Better Budget Spending “Bonus” Money Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan. When an influx of cash comes in, ;either through a tax refund or bonus, it feels like free money. The urge to spend is high, [...]


31 Day Budget (Day 29): Selling on eBay & Craigslist

31 Days to a Better Budget Selling on eBay & Craigslist Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan. If you are looking to generate some extra money this year, consider becoming a seller on eBay or Craigslist. I am not talking [...]


31 Day Budget (Day 28): Taking Surveys to Boost Your Budget

31 Days to a Better Budget Taking Surveys to Boost Your Budget Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan. I have to be honest up front and say now that I am a full time teacher and full time blogger, I [...]


31 Day Budget (Day 26): Increasing Income

31 Days to a Better Budget Increasing Income Each day of the series offers new tips, ideas and a challenge to start the year with a solid financial plan. For the last several weeks, we’ve organized our budget and shared money saving ideas to help lower it. However, there’s another part to the budget equation [...]