If you are following me on any form of social media or e-mail, you probably know that Tom and I became debt free (except the mortgage) this month. Check the Instagram post if you don’t believe me. After years and years of working to be more intentional with our money, we finally did it. The funny thing is, 2 months ago I was in the mindset that we would never be out of debt. That this was just a lifestyle I was going to have to get used to. And we only had $2,000 left to pay off. Talk about a Negative Nellie. So what happened after we made that final payment? What drastically changed in our lives within a split second? Well, I’ll tell you…
There is a ton of hype out there around rebate apps, savings accounts
I am a self-proclaimed recovering shopaholic. It’s not a fun term or something that sums up the fact that I love shopping. The older (and wiser) that I have gotten, the more I have come to realize that shopping addiction is a very real thing. Tom loves spending nice days walking around the outlet mall by our house and honestly, I fear going there every. single. time. He’s the kind of person who really likes to shop around and make sure what he buys is exactly what he wants. Which is great. The downside is that if I sit there long enough waiting for him to make up his mind, eventually, my eyes start to wander the clothing racks. There has been more than once where I run around the store filling my arms with clothes and shoes when I had no intention of purchasing anything. Does this sound like you? If so, I have 12 super simple, small steps to help you break your shopping addiction. They have worked for me and I’m confident they can help you as well.
When I started the blog, one thing everyone tells you is that you need to “niche” down. That means you have to reel in your focus and pick one topic (or a few related topics) to write about. The idea of niching down made me incredibly nervous. I like so many things I didn’t think it would be possible to talk about just one topic. It’s not like our normal little family had one awesome, unique thing that made us stand out. We just live a normal life but we chose to do it smaller and debt free. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hear our story. We weren’t doing anything great, big or epic. So why would all the people in the world ever want to hear our borning, normal story? Turns out…because of the people in the world are normal too.
It is crazy to think how far we have come in just three years. Never did I think there would come a day that I would be planning to save nearly half our income each month. For so long I lived with a scarcity mindset. I thought only millionaires were able to live a financially secure lifestyle. Well, let me tell you, that’s is just not true. No matter what size your paychecks are, there are always things you can do to be smarter and save more. So let’s talk about what steps you can take to potentially start saving half your income and create financial security.
