If I haven’t convinced you to use YNAB yet, I think this one will likely do so (or if you already use it, give you some more ideas to make it work even better for you!). In this part, I show unique ways that I use YNAB to manage my miscellaneous other accounts and transactions. […]
10 Simple Ways I’m Protecting Myself Against Identity Theft
In light of the recent announcement about the data breach at Experian, one of the major credit reporting companies, it seems most appropriate this week to share some simple ways that I am proactively protecting myself against identity theft. While the exact current situation is new, the threat of identity theft definitely isn’t new at […]
The Advantages of Keeping Separate Money “Buckets”
For the past few months, ever since detailing out the organization of my financial accounts, I’ve been considering whether I should simplify and consolidate a little more. The real truth, though, is that I mostly like having numerous accounts for different saving purposes. It takes some extra time, but I feel that it’s time well […]
How I Lowered My Grocery Bill While Switching to Mostly Organic Food
It’s been a goal of mine to decrease my grocery the amount I spend on food this year. Seemingly in contradiction, so is switching my family to a fresh, mostly organic diet. I’ve discovered that these two aims aren’t at odds at all. My top 5 expenses (in order) are housing, taxes, charitable contributions, food, […]
YNAB Tutorial Part V: Ways I Use YNAB to Organize and Simplify
I absolutely love how customizable YNAB is when it comes to setting up and rearranging accounts and categories. This allows for some unique ways to use YNAB to fit an individual’s personal finance needs. I’ve gone through the all of the basics of using YNAB in the past tutorials: Part I: Setup Part II: Budgeting […]
Organization is the Key to Financial Success
I’ve always loved to organize things. My idea of playing with my kids is sorting their toys into the correct bins, color coding the Legos and setting up new storage systems. I truly believe that there is a correlation between having an organized method of tracking your financial matters and having increased financial success. Those […]
5 Financial Measurements You Must Know (and how to calculate them)
I’m a big proponent of treating your finances like a business in many ways. To achieve true financial success, it’s essential to be just as diligent and intentional about your spending and saving. Savvy business owners use key metrics that help them ensure that their business is running smoothly. In addition, these measurements can help […]
YNAB Tutorial Part IV: Net Worth & Tracking Accounts
The main core of YNAB is in its budgeting capabilities, but you can definitely set it up to manage your entire financial life as well. YNAB is so customizable that it can track any of your accounts and calculate your net worth. We’ve looked at the budgeting aspects of YNAB in the previous tutorials: Part […]
YNAB Tutorial Part III: My Step-by-Step Budgeting Process
Now that we’ve set up YNAB (Part I) and learned a little bit about the budgeting basics (Part II), we’re finally ready to jump into the logistics of actually using YNAB for budgeting tasks. The key to using YNAB successfully is to remember that the benefit of using YNAB is to assign all of your […]
5 Ways A Password Manager Will Improve Your Life
Do you know that feeling of frustration when you need to log into an account that you only use occasionally and can’t remember the password? I certainly do. Something that should take a few seconds turns into a few minutes instead to request a password reset and go through the whole process of creating a […]
