Navigate your life to Financial Freedom

Have you been telling your money where to go? Ever wonder what happened to your paycheck? Do you spend your money before it hits your account? I challenge each of you to do better in February. Maybe that is saving an extra $20 or maybe that is staying within budget. Wherever you need help, make February the month to do better and challenge yourself. I will be showing you how we allocate our money, if you haven't read the 1st payday post , I suggest reading that one first. Just like that post, I will not be using my actual paycheck amount. JP and I get paid on the 15th and last day of the month. When planning out our budget, we use the amount that hits our account. So, this will be after taxes, 401K, medical, FSA, etc. I suggest you do the same.  I used the same paycheck amount as my last post of $2,500. This will include any bills due before our next paycheck. We have listed our mortgage, electricity, internet, gym and yoga, Netflix estimate and a dentist bill. Our Netflix...

Does your work offer a 401K plan? Do they offer a match? Are you contributing? Do you have an IRA? Other investments? There are a variety of ways to save for your retirement and future, today we will discuss the importance of a 401K.  2/3rds of Americans aren't putting money in their 401K The 401K contribution increased to $19,500 for 2020 and the catch-up increased to $6,500 . My company offers a 401K, as well as, a contribution match. JP and I both take advantage of this and plan to max out for 2020. For those of you who are unsure what a catch up is, a catch up is offered to those 50 years and older. They are allowed to do the max of $19,500 plus the catch up of $6,500. So, maybe your company does offer it but you don't know what to do from there. Do you choose Roth or traditional? Which funds do you choose? What percent should you put in? Who is the beneficiary? These questions and others are valid and great questions. You can either do the research yourself and mak...

Ina Garten Spaghetti and Meatballs Sunday meal prepping day! This week we are making a recipe that I took note of when my girl, Taylor Swift, recommended her go to list of recipes. We have made this a few times and it is alway so good. If you don't have time to make your own sauce, noodles and meatballs, you can always buy a jar of sauce, packaged noodles and a bag of frozen meatballs. For all my readers with kids out there, get your kids involved! Have them help roll the meatballs. There is no such thing as starting too early. Getting into the groove of meal prepping is hard but in the end, it is way healthier and can be fun. As you've read in my earlier posts, the average meal out that I have seen is $10-15. We are using an average meal out of $12.50. Average lunch out: $12.50 Weekdays: 5 Total each week: $62.50 Average for a year: 3,250 Cost for our Spaghetti and Meatballs: 1lb ground beef: $5.61 1/2lb ground pork: $2.96 1/2lb ground veal: $6.50 Parmes...

One of our 2020 goals is to not eat out as much this year. And I am happy to say that JP and I are doing so good on that so far. I know it's only been 3 weeks, but we really spoiled ourselves in December and I wasn't sure if we would be able to stay out of restaurants. JP and I love a good, seared, ribeye steak. We have tried eating ribeye's at steak houses but they were always so disappointing. JP knows how to make a steak just the way we like it, charred medium rare. The best part of eating a great steak at home, is it is always too much to eat and we have a brunch meal for the next day too. We buy our steaks at Whole Foods, but Costco has pretty decent steaks too. If we had a nice meat market nearby I would buy from them, but not a fan of the one by our house. For those that are near a Marczyk , I envy you and miss that place. We make steak about once a month. I always get so excited because I really do love the brunch meal the next day, especially if JP makes me a Bl...

What is your "why" to wanting to build wealth? This is the first question you need to answer before you get started. Maybe you have debt and you are sick of paying on your student loans and want to be done with it. Or maybe you want to give more but feel you can't until you get a handle on your finances. Whatever your reason, find out what your why is. We started in 2015. When my dad died we decided to take over paying for our wedding and ended up cash flowing our wedding and honeymoon. Starting in January of 2016, we decided to tackle the student loans and car. You can read more on that here . Over time our why has changed. First, it was that we were sick and tired of having debt. Once we got out of debt, we were in a fortunate position to buy a home. We put down 25% on our house, furnished the house, gave more and enjoyed some over due vacations. Fast forward to 2020 and the mortgage has weighed on us and we are ready to be free of its chains.  Our why is constantly...

I first mentioned our flywheel account in my payday post . This is just a holding place for future bills, vacations, purchases, etc. Over time we have added to our flywheel account, but when we first started it was the bare necessities. If you are just starting to do this, you should include annual bills and then add to it based off your monthly income and what you can afford to include. Below is our entire flywheel account. Each item can be a different number of months than another item. When you decide to add an item, you then need to figure out when you will need that item fully funded and count the number of months until that item is needed. As you can see we have included many items on our list. We have very small items of $50 and our largest at $40K for a new vehicle. The items in green are fully funded and the rest is gradually saved up over time. At the bottom is the amount we need to save each month and the yellow is how much we will need from our next paystub, should t...

Another week, another day of meal prepping. Each week I plan to show you what we meal prep for lunches for the week. This week is fajita salads, yuuum! With salads, you can add whatever you want. We had the fajita meat in our freezer from our last trip to Texas. That's right, this is HEB brand fajita meat. I am drooling just thinking about Texas fajita meat. I did include how much we purchased this meat for even though we purchased this so long ago. Like all my meal prep posts, the average meal out that I have seen is between $10-$15 so we are using an average meal out at $12.50.   Average lunch out: $12.50 Weekdays: 5 Total each week: $62.50 Average for a year: $3,250 Cost for our salads: 2 lemons $1.18 4 avocados $3.52 Seasoned Fajita Meat $9.52 Romaine (for JP) $3.99  Spinach (for me) $1.49 Total: $19.70 Weekdays: 5 Total per day per person: $1.97 Total per week for 1: $9.85 Average per year for 1: $512.20 Average differenc...

Garlic Roasted Crab Legs Is it me or is eating out costing more and more these days? Sure we have our low priced spots like Pho 555, Nola's and Star Kitchen , but if we want a proper date night, it costs about $100.  One of our biggest budget breakers is our food category and this year we decided to do better. We looked back on our spending and we realized that we didn't need to spend that much, so we lowered our food budget. Do you ever eat out and think that it wasn't worth it? I hate spending money on bad food. We felt like we were eating mediocre food and throwing our money away at it.  One of our goals is to cook expensive meals at home, but at a much lower cost. Side note: Denver food is not that great, so to my Houston readers... best of luck staying out of those delicious restaurants! Did you know that Texas is the best food state in the nation? This post is one of our favorite meals to cook at home. Crab. We buy this crab at Costco and at the time of th...

When you are needing a new cell phone, do you just go out and buy it? Do you budget for it? Lease it? Something else? JP and I are allowed to get new phones every 4 years. JP got his iPhone X in 2018 and this year I was up for my iPhone 11 Pro. Just thinking about spending over $1,000 on a new phone was hard to swallow. So, I kept waiting for any sort of deal to come along, and it finally did. Verizon was offering a buy one iPhone, get one iPhone free deal. So, JP and I both were able to get new phones this year. We switched from Tmobile to Verizon. It took a few trips talking to the Costco guy at the cell phone stand to feel good about switiching over. Was the monthly services prices going to be the same? Tmobile paid our Netflix bill, does Verizon pay for a streaming service? We have unlimited at Tmobile, does it make sense to do that at Verizon? I did the math, slept on it for a while and then took the plunge before Verizon removed that offer. Which, as of me writing this post, Ve...

How excited do you get for payday? Why do you get excited? Do you get excited because you can pay those bills? Or buy those shoes? Or maybe you're like me who gets excited because it's buuudgeeet tiiiiime! 78% of workers live paycheck to paycheck. Do you budget? How often do you budget? Do you have a general idea of where your money goes or do you tell every single penny where it will go? I tell every penny where to go and this post is going to show you how I do that.  Full disclosure, I will not be using my actual paycheck amount. We get paid on the 15th and last day of each month. Below is an example of what I do when I receive that paycheck. I do this for both myself and my husband, JP. I use the net amount of what shows up in my bank account. So, after taxes, 401K, medical, HSA, FSA, etc. You will see what I put as my paycheck total example of $2,500. This includes our water bill of $26.68 and cell phone bill of $142. You will also note when those...

New week, new lunch meal prep. Each week I plan to show you what we meal prep for lunches for the week. This week is sandwiches with chips! With sandwiches you can get as cheap or as fancy as you want, we are going for semi-healthy. I mentioned in the last meal prep post that the average meal out that I have seen is between $10-$15 so we are using an average meal out at $12.50.   Average lunch out: $12.50 Weekdays: 5 Total each week: $62.50 Average for a year: $3,250 Cost for our sandwiches: 1lb Chicken Deli $11.10 Italian Bread $2.99 Chips $4.19 Avocados $2.78 Sprouts $2.99 Ground mustard $1.39 Total $25.44 Recipe for 2: $26 Weekdays: 5 Total per day per person: $2.60 Total per week for 1: $13 Average per year for 1: $676 Average difference between eating out and meal prepping: $2,574 Did you meal prep this week? What did you make? Comment and subscribe.

Have you prepared your spouse and family for your death? In other words, do you have a Will in a place? If you do, thank you, you are relieving your family and spouse of even more stress when you die. If you don't, get one but you're not alone.   A recent study found that 57% of Americans do not have a Will in place. JP and I finalized our Wills today. I had it in a draft form for the last few months and today we got it notarized and done. Why didn't I do this sooner? I have been wanting to get this done for years but just never got around to it. And maybe that is your excuse too. I challenge you all to make 2020 the year to get this done. It is so important and in the event you do die, this relieves your family of the additional stress they will have to go thru if you do not have one. So, let's go thru some of the reasons people say they do not have a Will. "Getting a Will is expensive and you need a lawyer."   - Nope and likely nope. G...

Jessica's Marinated Chickpeas One of the things that we do to save money is meal prep every Sunday. We have been doing this for years now. I have friends that eat out every single day and a typical meal to eat out is anywhere from $10-$15, now let's do some math on that. Average lunch out: $12.50 Weekdays: 5 Total each week: $62.50 Average for a year: $3,250 Now let's do some math on making this meal for the week. I probably make this meal for a week each month. It is seriously one of my favorites. Average cost of this meal: 2 cans of 15oz Garbanzo Beans: $1.98 1 can of Artichoke hearts: $2.49 1 Garlic bulk: $.49 2 Bell Peppers: $1.98 Goat cheese: $2.99 4oz fresh basil leaves: $3.99 Everything else I already had but will add an extra $3 when allocated. Total of recipe: Roughly $17.00, but let's round up to $20. Recipe total for 2: $20 Weekdays: $5 Total per day per person: $2 If this is a rough estimate of my meal preps here is the math: To...

When I started telling coworkers, friends and family that JP and I had a 5 year plan to pay off our house, it was met with a lot of opinions. Some wanted to know why I would financially choose to do this when my money could make more in the market, which is fine. But when I mentioned that we were going to put off major vacations for 5 years, it was met with gasps as if I just told them I was going to die soon. JP and I have a 5 year plan to pay off our home. It is a very aggressive plan but I believe that we can do this. There will be hurdles that will be thrown our way and months that will not allow us to pay extra, but our plan remains the same. 5 years.  Why are we doing this? For one, I really hate bills. We paid off all our student loans, car debt and consumer debt in 2016 and it was one of the most rewarding feelings. We were able to pay about $50,000 in debt in 8 months. We worked our regular full time jobs, picked up gigs, started a tutu business and really did anyth...