Tag Archives: lessons learned

Simple ways to sleep better naturally

sleep betterI’ve struggled with insomnia my whole life. Anyone who’s ever had sleeping problems knows that without enough sleep, you’re less productive and less happy. Recent studies have even shown that poor sleeping habits can increase your risk of obesity and all the health risks that go along with it.

In the past, I’ve made the mistake of relying on over-the-counter medications to fall asleep. It was never a habit, but every once in a while I’d be desperate for sleep and believe I had no other options. It turns out I was wrong.

Here are the simple ways I improved my sleep (and my health):

Take a serious look at your diet

It’s possible your diet is keeping you awake. Back when my sleeping problems were at their worst, I was drinking 2 or 3 diet sodas a day (to be fair, this was college). I never drank soda in the late evening, but it turned out I was more sensitive to caffeine than I thought. When I stopped drinking caffeinated beverages after noon, sleep came much easier. Examine your diet closely to make sure you’re not sabotaging your sleep.

Are you getting enough exercise?

If not, you may not be tiring yourself out enough. Once I started working out daily, not only did I fall asleep more easily, but I slept more soundly.

Stick to a schedule

We’ve all heard it before, but it’s really true: those luxurious Sunday mornings when you sleep until 9 or 10 can throw off your schedule. If you’re a problem sleeper, try setting a bedtime and wake-up time and sticking to it throughout the week. It may be tough to give up sleeping in, but you’ll feel better rested throughout the week.

Add a calming ritual to your nighttime routine

Whether it’s a bubble bath, stretching, relaxing music, a cup of herbal tea or a book, do something before bed that puts you in the most relaxed state possible. Avoid stressful activities in the last hour before bed, and give yourself some “you” time.

Disconnect before bed

Though I addressed some of the physical reasons I couldn’t sleep, I still struggle with mental roadblocks. While living during the age of constant connection has its perks, all that electronic stimulation can interrupt your sleep cycle.

We’ve all been there. You log on to Facebook to check up on your friends before bed, and five minutes turns into an hour. You start channel surfing and end up staying up way too late. Or a quick call to your best friend turns into an hour chat.

To avoid these distractions, force yourself to tune out at least an hour before you want to sleep. Put away your laptop, turn your cell phone to vibrate, and yes, turn off the TV. I used to think I needed the TV to help me sleep, but a book turned out to be a much less distracting, more relaxing bedtime companion.

What’s your advice for getting a better night’s sleep?

Photo credit: neaners

Tracking spending on a cash budget

budgetingOne of the top complaints I hear about cash budgeting is that it’s harder to track spending with cash. When you’re swiping a debit card, it’s easy for to track spending electronically. When you’re spending cash, there’s a little more work involved.

I use Mint.com to set and track my budget. The idea of changing my system completely, or using the envelope method was exhausting. So I came up with a system for tracking my cash purchases electronically.

I still use Mint.com to track my spending. Mint allows you to split transactions. Before we were cash budgeting, we used the split transaction feature to categorize spending. If we bought dog food at Target along with other household purchases, we’d split the transaction so that the price of dog food was categorized with “Pet Expenses” while the rest of the purchase went under “Household Expenses.” Simple.

That feature makes it just as easy to split cash transactions. On Saturday, we withdraw our weekly cash allowance. We do our grocery shopping, pick up household purchases, and run errands for the week. I save all the receipts for purchases made with that cash.

Mint categorizes our ATM withdrawal as a single transaction. The following Saturday before grocery shopping, I split the ATM transaction based on the receipts I’ve saved.

To do this, just highlight the ATM transaction, click on “Edit Details,” and then “Split.” Enter the store and spending category. That amount will be categorized correctly in your budget. Cash we don’t spend remains categorized as “ATM Transaction.” If we spend it later, I go back to the original ATM transaction and categorize it correctly.

It reminds me a lot of something I watched my mother do every weekend when I was a kid: balancing a checkbook.

Electonic banking and money management software have made checkbook balancing obsolete. It’s possible to track purchases up-to-the-minute online, so most people are happy to be done with the hassle of checkbook balancing. But tracking spending manually makes me more accountable. It a little extra work, but it’s made me a lot more knowledgeable about where my money goes.

This system takes all the guesswork and stress out of budgeting for me. Instead of mentally adding things up in my head and checking my bank balance, I forget about budgeting until Saturday morning. I only take out the cash I can afford to spend, so there’s no danger of overspending. At the end of the week, I organize that week’s spending and start over again.

Have you ever lived on a cash budget? How do you stay organized and track spending?

Photo credit: spiderpop

A change in perspective

Our no spend summer has resulted in the lowest balance on our checking account in, well, as long as I can remember. I was paid Friday, and after paying our bills and buying our groceries, our checking account balance is now $250.

I know there were times when I was in college, and even after I graduated, when my balance dipped well below $50. There were times when I overdrew my account. I remember these times vividly. But this is the first time since we started living frugally that I’ve seen a bank balance this low.

Don’t worry about us. We have more money in savings than we’ve ever had in one lump sum in our lives. We’re doing fine. Keeping our checking account balance low is a defense mechanism. It protects us from ourselves, and prevents us from spending more money than we want to spend.

But looking at that balance stresses. me. out. Especially since we’re heading on vacation this weekend.

I have access to our savings through my ING checking account just in case we need money immediately. Our low balance doesn’t pose us any threat since every penny is accounted for these days.

I still just don’t like seeing our balance that low. It makes me feel out of control, just like I did a little over two years ago when every penny wasn’t accounted for. When I still had bills to pay and food to buy with that $250 balance, and I was trying to make a dollar out of 99 cents.

I’m tempted to move some money around just to make myself feel better. I don’t like looking at that balance. But then the sadist in me wants to keep going, to see how far we can go this summer without dipping into our savings. After all, that was the point of the challenge. If I move $100 into our checking account just to make myself feel better, that’s technically cheating. So I’ll probably keep going, and it may even dip lower before the summer is over and Tony starts getting paid to teach again.

But it’s made me think about those days 2 years ago when low balances were a fact of life. Back when my bank balance rarely went above $500, and there was no separate account where I kept my savings because I didn’t have any savings. Back when I spent every penny I earned almost immediately. I felt out of control, and I never knew where my money went.

It’s times like these when I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in such a short time, and I remind myself that I don’t ever want to go back. It’s amazing what frugality has done for my perspective.

Mistakes were made: A belated weekend recap

I had a post scheduled for yesterday celebrating my blogiversary, so I was able to take it easy on Sunday. Boy, did we need to take it easy.

From the beginning, our trip to Washington D.C. to see Paul McCartney in concert was thrown off. We planned to go to the Newseum before the concert when we arrived Saturday, but we were caught up in traffic, and by the time we got to our hotel there wasn’t enough time to get to the museum before it closed. We decided to go to dinner instead.

We had a lovely frugal dinner and stayed within budget. Paul McCartney was fantastic, and absolutely worth the trip. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that Tony and I will remember for the rest of our lives. This wasn’t an instance where we blew some money on something we’d soon forget.

The concert was even better than we expected. A setlist that included a ton of our favorite Beatles songs, fireworks, and a killer finale were some of the highlights. We had a fantastic time.

It was all downhill after we left, though. In hindsight, I know a lot of our problems resulted from poor planning. This was a spur-of-the-moment trip, for the most part, and we didn’t put as much planning into it as we do other trips.

We ended up lost in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland for two hours while we searched for a Metro station. I wore the wrong shoes and ended up with feet covered in blisters on our 10-mile hike to find a train station. It goes without saying that being lost in a strange city at 1:30 in the morning isn’t a safe situation.

Sunday pick ups at our kennel are by appointment only, and we set ours at 11 a.m. to avoid being charged for an extra day.

Even though we didn’t get back to the hotel until 2 a.m., we had to get up and drive home at 4:30 a.m. to make it back in time. We considered leaving as soon as we got back to the hotel, but we were just too exhausted and neither of us wanted to completely waste the hotel after paying $100. So we slept for 2 and a half hours before getting up and heading home.

So. What have I learned here?

1.) Never — I repeat, NEVER — wear anything but walking shoes if you think you’ll be walking even a little bit. Trust me on this one. My feet are proof that it’s a bad idea to risk it.

2.) In a stressful situation, the last thing you want to do is start yelling at your spouse. After walking for two hours, we started bickering and snapping at each other. We were both stressed, exhausted, and frustrated. Yelling at each other only made it worse.

3.) Don’t freak out! We followed a group of people from the concert thinking they were looking for the train. When it turned out they were just walking to their car that they’d parked a couple miles away, I completely lost it in the parking lot. It was the END OF THE WORLD. That didn’t help the situation either. It only delayed us and heightened the stress of an already chaotic situation.

4.) ALWAYS charge your cell phone completely if you’re going out of town.

Now that we’re safe at home and my injured feet are bundled in soft slippers, it’s all pretty funny in hindsight. We made a lot of mistakes on Saturday, but we also created a lot of memories. Our relationship is strong enough to endure some misplaced snapping without hard feelings, and we’re able to look back and laugh relatively quickly.

All in all, between the tickets, gas, dinner, and the hotel, we spent a little under $250. The night was half fantastic, half fiasco, but all of it was an experience I wouldn’t take back. I don’t think I’d want to live through the Metro search again, but I don’t have any regrets.

Stop making excuses & start making progress

weight lossI used to be the queen of excuses and procrastination. Whether I wanted to lose 10 pounds, start saving, or accomplish a lifelong goal, today was never the right day for it. I always made lofty plans for the future, but I didn’t realize that when it comes to accomplishing your goals, tomorrow is no good. The only way to make progress is to start today.

Constantly making excuses for why tomorrow is better is a good way to prevent yourself from ever making progress at all. The day I realized that my temporary delays were holding me back, and setting a goal for tomorrow results in a never-ending delay, I discovered the key to achieving all of my goals.

Here’s how to get motivated if you’re battling excuses:

Tell yourself enough is enough.

Have you been talking about losing that last 10 pounds (or 50) for the past two years, but always have good reason to wait? “My diet starts after this weekend,” or “As of January 1, I am on a diet,” were my mantras for years. One day I finally said enough is enough. My diet started that minute, and 6 months later I was 40 pounds thinner. Enough is enough. It’s time to get started, because there will always be a reason to wait.

Visualize your goal.

Now that you’ve gotten started, you’re at the hardest part: you know what you want, but you haven’t started to see the motivating results. Now is the time when you need to remind yourself of how sweet it will be when you’ve accomplished your goal. It helps me to remind myself with a little symbol for what I want. Whether it’s your wedding photo from when you were at your ideal weight or a picture of the dream house you’re saving to buy, give yourself a reason to push through the tough part before you start seeing your progress.

Track your progress.

Once you do start to see progress, it’s essential that you do whatever it takes to maintain your motivation. When I was losing weight, I weighed myself daily and took pictures in my bathing suit so I could compare and see the changes. If you’re saving money or paying off debt, tally your total saved or paid every week and figure out a percentage for your progress. Seeing that percentage increase with every dollar will keep you going.

Good luck achieving your goals, and remember, the only way you’re going to get there is if you get started right now!

Photo credit: nataliej

Can we afford an extended trip to Europe?: Part 2

eiffel tower
Photo by stevenvanwel

A few weeks ago, Tony and I started doing the math to see if it would be possible to stay in Europe for two months. We decided to think about it, see if we could save the money, and go from there. After looking at all of our options, we’ve decided to go back to our original plan for a two-week trip in May 2010.

There were a number of reasons, and I wanted to share them with you:

Money.

We’re on track to save enough money for our emergency fund, moving expenses, and the extended Europe trip. However, we’ll also be moving across the country and searching for jobs as soon as we were to return from our trip. As much as I wanted to take this trip, I think it’s safer and smarter to hang on to as much money as possible in case we need it during our transition.

Timing.

This factored into our decision even more than money. The fact is, the only time we could take this trip would be early spring 2011. Tony graduates in December 2010, so we’d be moving out of our apartment, moving our stuff back up north, and preparing for life in the Midwest at the same time. When I think about planning a big move while simultaneously planning a huge trip to Europe, I feel more stress than I’m comfortable facing.

Ease of planning.

Trying to plan the most frugal way to stay in another country for two months was overwhelming. It’s much easier to plan for two weeks. Short term hotels are easier to book than long term rentals. We’ll be able to afford to see and do more in two weeks of vacation than we could in two months living frugally. Trying to plan a huge trip for our first experience abroad seems a little over my head. And of course, two months is a very long time to leave our dog, even if he is with family.

Stress.

As fun as this trip would be, thoughts of what would face us upon our return to the States could spoil the trip. If we head to Europe before we secure jobs or decide where we’re going to live, I know I would stress throughout the trip about our next steps. Separating our vacation to Europe from our move and going on the trip when I have a secure job with paid vacation time will allow us to focus on having fun. We’ll have six months after the trip to plan the move and decide what to do after Tony graduates.

In the end, all of these factors combined made us decide to nix the extended trip. I’m not saying it was a bad idea. It was an idea — one that I’m really glad we considered.

If every time we wanted something big we thought to ourselves, “There’s no way we can afford that. We shouldn’t even consider it,” then we’d be limited by our decision to live frugally. Instead, I choose to weigh all of our options, think things through, and balance our wants and needs.

I love that frugality allows us to dream big. We can often accomplish these big goals. But sometimes after weighing the options, we decide on a different course. That’s okay. To me, the ability to make these choices for ourselves is one of the best parts about frugality.

Thoughts on our first month of cash budgeting

cash

Photo by lincolnblues

I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since we began our cash budget. It has flown by so quickly, but I guess that’s a good thing.

As I wrote yesterday, the longer we go, the harder it gets to keep it up. A lot of our initial excitement and motivation has faded. For the first couple of weeks we had plenty of money left over. For the last two weeks, we’ve spent every penny of our weekly $90 allowance for groceries, household expenses, and entertainment (sometimes a little more).

But there have been some definite benefits to our cash budget. I’ve lost 7 pounds, and I think Tony’s lost a few, too, though he doesn’t know what he weighed in the beginning. We’ve also been having a lot of fun rediscovering frugal activities and trying new meals.

I’m surprised at how well we abstained from using our debit cards. One week we forgot to pick up romaine for the salads I bring to work for lunch. We ended up debiting a little under $4 for 6 heads of romaine at Costco. That’s the only debit charge that’s come out of our main bank account.

I’d be lying if I said that’s the only “extra spending” we’ve done. I started the summer with about $50 in an ING checking account (including a $25 bonus they sent me for opening the account). I didn’t count this with our summer money, because I was counting on some slip ups.

A few dollars here and there have been charged on the card for expenses that we didn’t plan for in the budget (a little under $20 total). I’m leaving the $30 left in the account out of this month’s budget, too, so it’ll be there if we need a little help making it through the week. Yes, it’s technically cheating because it is a debit card, but I knew we weren’t going to be perfect. Planning ahead for errors has made it easier to manage.

The good news is we’re getting better. Last week we trimmed our grocery budget down by $10 to avoid going over budget. Motivation is harder to come by, but practice is making us better at cash budgeting without going over.

As I look at our success, I’m feeling a renewed motivation. I’m going to need it to get through the next two months!

A little symbol to remind us of our goals

euro
Photo by benklemm

Just last week I wrote about the importance of dreaming big. Sometimes the day-to-day reality of living frugally can be tough. Having big goals to remind you why you decided to scrimp and save can make it easier. By keeping my eye on the prize, I’m reminded of why the daily sacrifices are so worth it.

It’s been almost a month since we cut back to a limited cash budget for the summer. Even though we’ve been living frugally for almost two years, this is more extreme than anything we’ve ever done. I’ve been reminding myself of our big goals more frequently lately to stay on track as it’s starting to get a little tougher.

One of our biggest goals is an extended trip to Europe after my husband finishes grad school in a year and a half. We’re trying to save enough cash for two frugal months in Europe in addition to money for moving and an emergency fund. This is a huge goal, which is part of the reason we’re cutting back even more than before.

Last week, I received a tangible reminder to keep with me. My lovely friend Kacie at Sense to Save sent me about 15 US dollars worth of euros that her husband collected in an overseas trip. Her bank wouldn’t let her convert the coins, so she sent them over to me in the hopes that we’ll be able to use them on our trip. (Thanks, Kacie!)

These little coins have actually been incredibly helpful. It seems silly, but having something tangible to keep the trip on our minds is exciting! It motivates me to push that much harder toward our goal. I look at those little coins, and I’m so excited about the possibility of this trip that the daily extras don’t seem so important anymore. They serve as a symbol for why we’re working so hard.

If you have a big goal you’re working toward, why not see if a tangible reminder can help keep you on track? If you’re saving for a new car, maybe you could pick up an air freshener and save it until you can hang it from your new rear view mirror. If you’re saving for a new house, maybe pick up a piece of art at a yard sale or a welcome mat for when you move in.

Having a tangible symbol of your goals not only feels like a step toward accomplishing them, but it also serves as a reminder of why you’re working so hard.

Have you ever tried this? Leave a comment if you have an idea!

The importance of dreaming big

frugal goals
Photo by martie

I’m the first to tell you that frugality is a real struggle sometimes. No matter how committed I am to this lifestyle, no matter how appreciative I am of the security and peace of mind it brings us, I still have weak moments when I look at what other people have and want.

I want to own a pretty little house with a huge fenced-in backyard and a cozy fireplace.

I want to travel every other month and see the world.

I sometimes even want to buy big ticket items that we don’t need just for the luxury, like a big screen TV or new furniture or even a second car.

But the hardest part isn’t the big stuff. I can always easily remind myself why we need to wait for those things. I remember what debt feels like, and I don’t want to owe a furniture store or a credit card company ever again.

The hardest part is not spending little amounts every day. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could spend $5 on a frou frou coffee drink from Starbucks or $15 on a book or $30 on a restaurant meal.

Don’t get me wrong, we give in to those urges every now and then. But we can’t give in every time I want to or we’d never make any progress. We’d nickel and dime ourselves right out of our savings.

When I find myself struggling to say no to the little things, I remind myself of our big dreams. Our trip to Europe, the house we want, the family we plan to start in the next couple years. When I think about those big dreams, and how every penny is bringing us closer to achieving them, it’s much easier to resist the temptation to spend a little here and a little there.

When I think about our big dreams, suddenly buying a frou frou coffee drink isn’t nearly as important. I can live without that little stuff if it means we’ll have the big stuff sooner.

How do you keep yourself going when frugality gets tough?