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When Katie and I had just gotten married and were moving to Houston, it was a really tough year for teachers. Our State budget for education had a serious deficit and most school districts were on hiring freezes. Some were even letting teachers go.  Thankfully, Katie got a job, but I didn’t, and I just […]

Have you ever had the feeling where one day it’s payday and you feel incredibly rich? Especially if you were crawling to payday, it just feels like this huge sign of relief when you finally make it.  Then, it’s time to release the streamers and start the party. Now that you got paid, you can […]

If you know me, you know that I’m a huge YNAB fan. I think that YNAB is the absolute best way to budget, even if it’s a little complicated.  Yes, it’s true.  YNAB is going to take you a little longer to wrap your head around. But I think in the long term, those that […]

Do you feel like you’re someone who’s super disciplined? Someone who can decide that they’re going to do something and just not have any issue with the follow through? I had a roommate in college who never seemed to have an issue finishing a task once he’d set out to do it. One day, he […]

In my blog post last week, I talked about how to use a credit card if you’re going to use one.  Credit cards can be like playing with snakes.  Remember, there is absolutely nothing that says you have to use a credit card. There are plenty of work arounds. Life doesn’t stop if you don’t […]

Oh the glorious perks that come with credit cards.  Those companies have us right where they want us. In the big scheme, they dole out small rewards and perks that never end up amounting to much and people go crazy over them. People love their credit cards. It can even turn into a status thing. […]

When Katie and I were first started out, I resisted getting into the investing side of personal finance.  When we graduated college, we were in the midst of a super bad hiring environment. The education budget was making it really hard for school districts to be able to hire teachers and in some districts, people […]

Have you ever heard of the FIRE movement?
FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early and it’s a really big personal finance movement online right now.
Essentially, if you are aiming for FIRE, you want to save enough money that you’re able to retire early, like really early. People normally think of a retirement in their 50’s as pretty young right? Most people normally retire from working in their 60’s.

Does having more money make you happier?

I bet I’m not alone when I’ve asked this question.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard about the Princeton study that sought to find out if money makes people happier. This study gets quoted a lot because people like to point out that it says that money does make you more happy but only until your income reaches $75,000 a year. After that, the effect money has on happiness diminishes.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else?”

It comes from personal finance guru Dave Ramsey. I’m a huge Dave Ramsey fan.

One thing that Dave always says that sticks with me is to “Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else.”

It seems like a confusing statement, but if you hang on to it, it can really help you make it through some tough times.