Dan feeds his family of 3 for roughly $300 per month of groceries. Dan’s family dines out for a meal or snack roughly a less than one meal per person per week. Here’s how he keeps his grocery bill as low as he can:   Shop at no-frills grocery stores. This includes everything from Walmart […]

A lot of people think that they can afford something if they can take it home from the store without stealing it. Sure, you can buy it, but can you afford it? This distinction is exactly what lands so many people in credit card debt. If you need to make the minimum payments on your […]

This time, I am trying a slightly different format for this report since the graphics from my 2010 version of Quicken were not exactly… HD. I have since figured out how to export to Excel for some different graphical representation. (Way easier than I thought!) Not too many kinks with converting it other than it […]

Dan’s Unconventional Approach to His Car Loan   As I’ve posted earlier in this blog, my wife and I purchased a new car in December, 2016. The price was worked down to $26,000 and we put $9,000 down meaning we took a loan for $17,000 at 2.05% APR for 36 months. If I paid the loan […]

Statistics don’t lie; people using statistics lie. People can turn and twist numbers to tell whatever story they want. They do it for profit, marketing, perception, and a wide array of other reasons. Ultimately, it’s up to us to decipher what we’re being told and educate ourselves. But why is this important? As both a […]

This will be a short post, mostly just some simple math. My wife made salmon cakes tonight along with a side of Brussels sprouts that were seasoned with cayenne pepper and some balsamic vinegar. The salmon was canned and cost $5.52 and the Brussels sprouts I ate were probably from a package that cost about […]

1. First, Count What You Normally Spend Making a budget doesn’t have to start with you figuring out how much money you should spend on food, drugs, alcohol, and clothing. I have seen plenty of attempts at budgeting fail because the person making it wasn’t realistic about where his/her money was going to go. Before […]

How many times have you seen kids straight out of high school or fresh out of college driving a brand new higher end car? Why is it that Facebook and Instagram show us pictures of our peers “living the dream” with high end toys and exotic vacations? Millennials tend not to have a good concept […]

This is my first time giving you all my spending. Sure, it’s weird discussing money, but since I work in the public sector, my pay is publicly available for all of you to see already. I’m open for critiques anyway, so for all the financial bloggers out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Of […]

  The use of a vehicle, in most places outside of urban cores, still remains a necessity for most Americans. Uber, Lyft, and bumming off your friends are great, but in the case of the first two, they can get expensive and in the case of your friends… well, you’ll lose them if you keep […]