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If you’ve spent any time trying to work out exactly how much to put in each of your budget categories, you’ve realized at one point or another that you don’t really know how much to put down in the first place. While you could spend time on the internet searching for the amount you should […]

I failed pretty hard at my reading goal this year. For me, reading is just a matter of being in the habit or being out of it. I can do some good reading, and can make my way through some books, but only if I’m on a roll. It also largely depends on what I […]

A few weeks ago, I was excited to run across the new book by Oliver Burkman, Meditations for Mortals. I also wrote about Burkman when I read his last book, Four Thousand Weeks. For the two books of his that I’ve read, instead of being overwhelmed by everything you could do, he focuses on embracing […]

When I was a brand new teacher just getting started as a band director, I was fortunate enough to work with some truly generous, awesome people, who happened to be great teachers as well. When you first start and work in a big high school program in Texas like I did, you often start off […]

Last time I shared how a book called Profit First inspired me to revisit the idea of assigning percentages to create your budget.  This made me decide to regroup my own categories into Expenses, Saving, Investing, Debt, and Spending. These groups of category groups felt right to me, but you may want to do some […]

Recently, I was reading a business finance book called Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. It’s a book I had been curious to read about business finances, which I enjoyed, but I also took away a lot in terms of helping personal finances.  The book comes about because Mike found himself and the people he worked […]

I’m pretty good at saying no to purchases. With purchases, I don’t experience the weak will like when deciding on whether to eat our perfectly good food at home. For some reason, I don’t mind going without. It’s not that I don’t want things and on occasion can make impulse purchases, but my will tends […]

Recently, the topic of my blog has been following the structure of my framework for a financial system that supports a life you want to live which I call Finding Margin.  Last month, in Building a Life You Want to Live, we stopped to think about living in ways that are actually important to us. […]

Last week I focused on the first part of my framework that I’m calling Finding Margin, which was Building a Life You Want to Live. The premise is that money won’t make you happy no matter how well you manage it if you aren’t building a life you want to live in the first place. […]

The big idea I’ve been working on is trying to take all of the financial advice I have and organizing it into some sort of framework that will benefit others. I’ve been calling what I’ve come up with Finding Margin. There’s four parts to Finding Margin: Building a life you want, controlling expenses, saving for […]