About Me

I’m 23 years old, and I just married my college sweetheart in May 2008. We live in North Carolina with our dog, Howie.

We moved here in August 2007 from Indiana – 800 miles away. The first year here was stressful. My husband is in graduate school studying to become a college professor in Literature and Creative Writing. I struggled to find a full-time job in my field. Unfortunately, I majored in Journalism at pretty much the worst time in history to major in Journalism.

My husband is paid to teach undergrad classes, but not enough to make ends meet, and I worked part-time in retail and worked as a freelance writer for practically nothing while searching for a full-time job. Living expenses, student loans and credit card debt chipped away at our savings. We changed a lot of our habits, and somehow made it through the year without increasing our debt (in fact, we paid off most of our credit card debt).

When I finally found a job as a copywriter, I realized that even a full-time salary isn’t enough without a plan. Determined to prepare for the next financial curve ball, we’re planning now for the future by paying down debt, saving for emergencies and retirement, and developing smart spending (and saving) habits before it’s too late.

My financial philosophy is simple:

Managing money is about making choices. Saving and frugality are important to us, but we’re determined to discover creative ways to enjoy life while still making responsible choices with our money. The reason we scrimp and save in some areas is so we’ll have enough to indulge in the finer things every now and then.

Setting your priorities and spending your money on what matters most to you while cutting corners on what matters less allows you to devote extra money to the important things without breaking your budget. When you make smart choices, you’re empowered to do whatever you want with your money. We’re not there yet, but our goal is to get there without sacrificing the little luxuries completely.

You can read more about our financial goals and what we’ve accomplished (so far) at my first blog post.

Oh, and here’s Howie the Dachshund/Lab mix. Don’t ask how that happened, because we don’t know. We adopted him.

He’s a year old now with long legs, a long body, and the same big, floppy ears. But he’s surprisingly adorable considering his mismatched heritage, isn’t he?

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Basically, I’d love for you to share my ideas with your readers, just make sure they know I wrote them!