Saving and Managing Money

Oh, how the morning hush was deafening. The sun, hiding just beyond the rolling crests of the evergreen laden hills, cast a yellowy pink glow across the horizon. The fog crept eerily between the trees and through the thicket, dancing atop the mirrored surface of ponds. Ducks cut their way through the glass-still surface in silent patrols, bringing what appeared to be the only motion to the morning. Silently, I observed my small world, sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car, bound for school in a small suburb some forty minutes from Portland. I was just a boy and this was my world.

I know a lot of people are making resolutions right now, and college savings are top-of-mind when we’re thinking about responsible financial planning.

My little sister, Colby, has moved to Los Angeles for college! I’m so excited that she’s closer to us – now two and a half hours away instead of the far-off four and a half hour trek where she last lived in Santa Barbara. She’s making her way on down the coast, and I have my fingers crossed that she’ll end up here in San Diego at some point down the line.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been watching a lot of Shameless lately. One of the things about the show that drives me nuts is how the father figure, Frank Gallagher, spends ALL of the family’s money at a bar. I’ve been doing our own family’s finances lately and contemplating what good we could do with our own frivolous spending. We could redirect money from eating out and coffee shops to charity, a vacation, or more natural food. But if I could take a portion of Frank Gallagher’s wasted money and git it to his daughter Fiona, I would tell her to get herself to the spa. STAT. That poor girl needs a little TLC and time to herself.

There’s this drawer in our house that everybody refers to as the "junk drawer." It’s filled with random stuff that doesn’t have a place: Post-It Notes, lighters, eyeglass repair kits.

For quite awhile after college, Nate and I operated without a household budget. If you had asked me about my monthly budget checklist at that point I would have said, "You mean the check I send to the credit card company every few weeks?"

Looking for creative ways to gift money? Look no further! I am the captain of lazy gift-giving. That isn’t a personal criticism, though. I truly believe that cold, hard cash is one of the very best gifts to dole out or to receive. Everybody wants it, nobody will ever return it and it comes in any size.

This is one of the most common questions we get from soon-to-be-parent readers. "How do you set a baby budget?" Nate and I laugh when our friends inquire and we give them the most honest answer we can come up with, "Um, you don’t! Good luck with that!"

We’ve been making meals at home a lot more lately, so I’ve been contemplating all things domestic…like ways to save money on groceries.

Nate and I have struggled for years to come up with a basic money management system that works for us and our home, and we’ve gone through a lot of tips and tools in the process.