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October goals

On the first of each month I’m going to lay out our goals for the month, and then at the end of each month I’m going to recap our income and see if we met our goals. Since my husband and I are both self-employed, our income will fluctuate and it will be interesting to see our income grow (hopefully!) over the months/years. I also plan on talking a lot about our investing strategies and what we’re doing to generate a passive income. Anyways, on to the goals…

OCTOBER GOALS

Sarah income: $1700

Editing $800
Writing $900
Get one financial staff / guest posting job, paid or unpaid

John income: $3000 (first official month as a business owner — not bad!! Hope we hit this!!)

Get more organized with couponing

Set up IRA’s

John rollover: $7,990
Sarah rollover: $1,750

Get Synchrony savings account finalized. We are putting $20,000 into a high-yield savings account with Synchrony. More on this later…but why earn .05% interest when you can earn close to 1%?

Wake up earlier. While this isn’t specifically related to finance, it will help us reach our goals. With two little ones who still wake frequently throughout the night, it is H.A.R.D. to wake up before them. Since our move involved a 3-hour time change, the girls have been sleeping in until about 8:30 every morning. While I’m thankful for this extra sleep, I know I could accomplish so much more throughout the day if I committed to waking up at 6:30 or earlier.

Research more on investing. John and I are relatively new to investing other than having our old company 401(k) accounts. We hope to grow our investments immensely over the years – getting involved in everything from SEP IRAs to real estate.

Read one actual book. I am a knowledge-junkie by nature, but when it comes to reading an actual book…Well, I can’t even remember the last time I completed one. I checked out two from the library today and am hoping to read both of them…but my goal is just to complete one.

Go to Asheville, NC / Blue Ridge Parkway. Another personal goal, but now that we live on the east coast we need to start exploring! Blue Ridge Parkway is ranked one of America’s Most Scenic Drives, especially during the fall. Leaves change color mid-end October and you can bet I will be experiencing this!!

What are your goals for October, finance or otherwise?

Hello, October

THAT is why we moved to North Carolina!! This state is absolutely breathtaking and I am thrilled that we get to raise our family here and call this place our home.

How to move across the country on a budget

This past summer, John and I moved from AZ to NC with a two-year-old, a one-year-old and two dogs. Just thinking about that makes me cringe!

Why did we move? Because we wanted to. I work from home and John works in construction. We didn’t get transferred, we don’t have family out here and, in fact, John had never even been to NC before and I had only been once (and to a different city than we live, no less). Simply put, we’re here because we want to be!

Since we didn’t have a job to come to, we knew we needed to save every penny we could during the move.

We got rid of a lot of our stuff

For two months, whenever I had time, I would go through closets, cabinets and drawers and get rid of what wasn’t a necessity. I cleaned out my closet three separate times and donated roughly 12 full-size bags of clothes and shoes. We got rid of some of my daughters toys, kitchen gadgets, a couch, a dining room table, a grill, miscellaneous pieces of furniture, tools and more. If it wasn’t a necessity or something one of us treasured, it got donated or sold.

*As a side note, I can’t tell you how good it feels to downsize and get rid of clutter! With less stuff comes less stress, less to clean, less to keep up and less to worry about!

We rented a 6 x 12 U-Haul trailer

We packed our entire 3 bedroom + loft house into a 6 x 12 trailer attached to the back of our SUV. That’s how much we downsized!! One thing I refused to part with was our couch that we bought in July 2013. We paid $1800 for it and there was no way I was going to sell it for not even half that. The couch, by the way, is MASSIVE. It easily took up half of the trailer.

We also took a fake fireplace we had purchased the previous Christmas, our girls cribs and mattresses, our mattress (but not the box spring), some of John’s work tools, a few boxes of sentimentals, one box of kitchen items, half a box of bathroom items, clothing and some artwork.

Cost of the U-Haul: $550

We packed ourselves

No one likes to pack and load boxes into a trailer, but if you can physically do it yourself, I highly recommend going that route. I got quotes from movers and it easily would have been $8K to have all of our belongings packed up and moved across the country. Instead, John and I packed everything up ourselves. It took a day and a half and we did it while watching our girls in the 110 degree weather!

We drove one car

Part of why we downsized so much is we didn’t want to rent a full-size U-Haul moving truck. Those cost way more than the trailers plus we would have had to pay for gas for our SUV and the moving truck. Not to mention, we had two babies and two dogs with us, so it just made sense for all of us to be in one vehicle.

Total spent in gas: $650

We stayed in La Quinta’s

La Quinta’s are pet-friendly and don’t charge extra. Our trip was five days, four nights so we stayed at four different La Quinta’s across the country (Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Memphis and Knoxville). We booked a two-room suite each time to allow for plenty of space for all of us. Prices ranged from $120/night to $160/night.

Total spent on hotels: $550

TOTAL: $1750 plus food to move a family of four across the country!

You really can’t beat that!

Readers: Have you ever moved across the country? What advice would you have for others?

Where we started: Income breakdown 9/2014

This is a personal finance blog so I plan on being extremely transparent with our finances, goals and how we’re going to achieve financial freedom. After all, if I don’t include “the numbers,” how are people supposed to know how we’re doing this??!

John and I both work for ourselves. It wasn’t always this way, though. After graduating college, I had a few finance-related jobs (mortgage industry, sales and a university) but didn’t really love any of them. They all involved cold-calling, sitting behind a desk for 8+ hours a day and didn’t provide much room for advancement.

After getting pregnant, John and I decided I would stay home to take care of our baby. Being a stay-at-home mom has always been a dream of mine, and I was super thankful I would be able to do it. Before having our daughter, I knew I wanted to try and get into freelance writing. Stay home with my baby and bring in an income? Yes, please!

So I did just that. I got lucky and a close friend of mine got me a small freelance job at her company. From there, my career has grown leaps and bounds and I hope to only grow even more.

John is a painting, drywall repair and handyman extraordinaire. He worked for himself for a while, but after we had our daughter he decided to work for a company. While he learned so much on the job, he knew eventually he was going to work for himself again. Let’s face it – there’s nothing better than setting your own hours and being in control of your income.

We had our second daughter and moved across the country from AZ to NC when they were 2 and 1 (that’s a whole other story, tho!). After being here a month, John decided to start his own company – Brookstone Painting and Residential Services – and I couldn’t be more proud! We’re now both working for ourselves and have our financial future in our own hands.

Breakdown of our income 9/2014

We sold our house in the summer of 2014 and profited a nice $46K. Between moving expenses, buying a new truck for John and getting ourselves afloat for the first month, we spent around $10K (I’ll do a specific moving cost breakdown in another post).

Sarah’s Income 9/2014

Freelance writing $650
Freelance editing $800

John’s Income 9/2014

Job that didn’t work out $360
First job self-employed $75

Total for 9/2014: $1,885

As you can see, we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination!! Though, John’s income will hopefully be producing 10x’s this amount within a month or so. We are also getting some of our investment accounts squared away, which I’ll go into detail later, as well.

Prior to our move, we were making roughly $4K a month after taxes. Our goal is to be back up to that number in October and go up from there.