Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. photo credit: Cats in trees I’m going to share something very personal, and I hope that you will respect the decision I made at the time, and not tell me what a bad decision I made.  I just hope someone can learn from this. In December, a friend came to me, crying because they were behind on their mortgage due to some uncontrollable circumstances. I was very understanding, went through all the options I could think of with her, and then after she told me that she had done everything she could think of and exhausted her family members, she didn’t know who else to turn to.  And if she didn’t make her two months’ worth of mortgage payments that they would be served a foreclosure notice right before Christmas and she, her husband, and two children would be out of a home. So I lent her $1500 and made the mortgage payments for her because she’s my best friend, and [...]

photo credit: bradley j Day after day, I dream of selling my house, buying some land in the woods, and living in a cabin, yurt, or tiny house. Yet day after day I continue the lather, rinse, repeat that is my life. Wake up, go to work, work, come home, clean, go to bed.  Often times I feel like my life is unfulfilled; rather, my job is unfulfilled, but it pays really well and I know what I am doing (for the most part). Sometimes I feel like the biggest sell out. I think that one of the best reasons to be frugal is to be able to live on less and have time to do things we love, yet personally I am not able to walk the walk as much as I talk the talk.  I work this job that is okay, not something I’m in love with, but I do it for the money and the benefits. I’ve been thinking about going part time for awhile, and then I sit down and figure out how much money I [...]

photo credit: Johnath I was talking with someone the other day about trying to get pregnant, and they ended up telling me “You can’t afford kids.” After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked them why they thought that was the case.  They said that kids are so expensive, and they know how frugal I am and that if I have kids they will probably have me stressed out all the time about money. To be honest, one of the reasons we’ve waited to have children is because of money.  We wanted to make sure that we had stable footing before adding a child into the mix.  I don’t think that’s silly, but maybe other people do.  At one point, we had over $36,000 in student loan debt, my husband was in culinary school, and I wasn’t even making that much in a year while supporting us! To get pregnant would have been a strain on our marriage, finances, and sanity. I know that we’ll never be truly 100% ready to have kids, but I want to [...]