I’ve put myself into quite the dilemma that has got me thinking about money versus quality of life. You see, we moved to NC blindly, including renting an apartment based on online photos alone. Probably not the best idea, but that’s what we did. The apartment is fine – it’s nothing special, but it’s totally livable. We signed a 10-month lease that will be up at the end of June. So what’s the dilemma, you ask?
What stocks to buy now
I mentioned earlier how we are getting involved with investing. So far, we have a Synchrony high yield savings account, two mutual funds ($5000 total), my husband’s rollover IRA account and we just invested $7,500 in stocks. Since we’re newbies, it was hard coming up with what stocks to buy now that would make us a profit.
November goals
October is going to be hard to beat. We surpassed our income goals by $1,578 and if I’m being honest, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that again (though I sure hope we can!). November is the start of the holiday season and typically people would much rather spend their excess money on shopping, traveling and dining than they would on a home repair or remodel. We will continue to do everything in our power to bring in business, though, and try our hardest to beat our goals!
October income
I took a look back at my October goals and was pleasantly surprised. I’m normally really good at setting goals, but actually meeting them is a whole different story. So, let’s recap our income from last month…
John’s September Income: $435
Sarah’s September Income: $1450
Keep in mind we had just moved and John was technically unemployed as he was getting his business underway. October was his first full month being self-employed. Here’s what happened…
5 Ways to stay motivated when working from home
Working from home definitely comes with it’s fair share of challenges. I have two little kids (read a typical day in my life here) and I recently wrote a post on how to be productive when working from home with kids. I stay productive in a number of ways – I try to wake up early so I can get a jump-start on my day, I tire the girls out in the morning with an activity that way they’re (more likely) to take a solid, very necessary, afternoon nap, I always work ahead of time and I work every single day. Yup, even weekends (I’m trying to give myself one “rest” day, though).
7 Things I won’t give up to save more money
While I admitted that I’m more about earning more money than saving more money, I’m still pretty cheap by nature. I don’t enjoy spending money on shopping sprees, I get my hair cut at Great Clips about once a year, I can’t remember the last time I got a pedicure or manicure, I don’t go on lavish vacations (though I wouldn’t mind that one) and I don’t spoil my kids rotten (even though I may want to).
That being said, there are definitely still quite a few things I’m just not willing to give up in order to save more money.
How to start investing
Investing is something that both John and I are rather new to. Other than our company 401K plans, we’ve never invested any of our money. We’ve always saved and set goals, but when it comes to taking risks with our money? Nope. Not gonna happen. Recently, our mentality has completely changed. We want to take risks, we want to learn about stocks, mutual funds, REITs and dividends, we want to generate passive income streams, we want to see our money grow, we want our money to start making us money. We want to start investing. In other words, we want to be rich 🙂
7 Things you don’t know about me
So I’ve been thinking about this post all day and, sadly, I think it’s much easier to write a post on finances than it is to think of 7 random things about myself! I feel like I’m a pretty “vanilla” person haha, but here goes! And thanks to Michelle at Making Sense of Cents for the nomination!
A simple formula on net worth
I mentioned before that I was wanting to read Thomas Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door. Well, today I took my girls to the bookstore so they could play and I could do some reading. Sure enough, they had this book and I couldn’t wait to dive in! While I only got to read a few chapters, I did come across one very interesting formula on calculating how much net worth you should have…
How to set – and keep! – your financial goals
I would say one of the biggest challenges my husband and I used to have was keeping our financial goals. We were GREAT at setting them, but not so great at keeping them or even remembering what they were. Setting goals is important in life, but if you don’t keep them, there’s really no point in even setting them.
Now, we’re pretty good at keeping all of our goals. Wanna know our secret?