It’s crazy to me that there are so many things in our lives we can be negotiating, but a lot of us just kind of sit back and accept things as they are. I’m one of those people! Recently I have started learning about the power of negotiating and how so many areas in our lives can be negotiated to help us save money. I’ve decided it’s time to spread the word, so I created this list of 23 things you didn’t know you could negotiate with a few pointers to help you get started!
One thing I have always struggled with in my life is talking about myself. I will happily talk about shallow things like funny stories or how I ate too much candy after Halloween (yes, I am speaking from current experience). What I tend to shy away from is talking about my inner most feelings, my accomplishments or any part of my life that may be different from what most people do or live. Which is why even some of my closest friends don’t know that I have a money making blog, that I homeschool, or both! Well, today I felt compelled to reach out to other mamas out there who live with that fear that it’s not possible. This is for those mamas who want to know how it’s done…like really how it’s done. Here’s it is…
Budget hacking was not a term I had ever heard of before and to be honest, I’m still not sure if it’s actually a term or if I just made it up. Either way, it has completely changed our lives and our finances forever. After living on only my husband’s full time income for a decade, we decided we were tired of falling victim to financial struggles and living paycheck to paycheck. When we started this journey I had no idea we would be able to budget hack our way to over an additional $3,000 per month in our budget! Here’s the break down of how we made it happen.
I don’t know about you, but my kids are disgusting. After dropping them off at Grandma’s for a week, I finally snapped when walking into their bathroom. Because they share their bathroom with all of the guests that enter our home, I knew I needed to make some changes. Not only was the bathroom looking outdated, but our son had ensured that everything smelled like ammonia as well. That’s just what you want for a guest bathroom, right? No. I knew this small bathroom makeover would be a challenge in trying to make it both guest and child-friendly, but something had to be done!
A few months ago I got the chance to meet author Ramit Sethi of a book called I Will Teach You to Be Rich. Now that I have fully dived into his book, I love his unique ways of thinking that completely change traditional budgeting methods around. Why? Because he encourages spending money on yourself! So what can you do to start implementing this mindset shift that actually encourages spending money rather than skrimping, saving and avoiding “wasteful” spending.