Category: Money Management

We’re working towards financial freedom. How we save, invest, and spend is a big part of that. Read about what we do to save more, invest better, and spend wisely in alignment with our values (family, travel, and FI).

Why I Spent $64 on a Journal

Our family is on a three year journey to double our net worth and become location independent. So why did I spend so much on a journal?!

Why I Spent $64 on a Journal--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

Doubling our net worth is a stretch goal, a BHAG, and it means we’ll need to spend the next two and a half years saving as much of our incomes as we can, plus working to earn as much as we can.

That means we need to plan our purchases carefully. This month, inspired by Mr. Tako’s family, we’re not eating out, and I’d like to keep that going.

We also spend very little on clothing, especially for the kids because we get great hand-me-downs. Our cars are used and gas efficient, and our furniture comes mostly from Craigslist (but I promise our house doesn’t look like a college student’s).

Living room--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com
Our living room, complete with new-to-us furniture (everything but the rug was bought Craigslist or yard sale).

In the past year, though, I’ve made a very conscious effort to spend MORE money on certain things. There are minimalist bloggers who talk about embracing fewer things of quality. If you buy fewer, but better, goods, they write, you will care for them better and they will last longer. Continue reading “Why I Spent $64 on a Journal”

Book Review: The Truth About Your Future

I read a lot, but I generally pick up books from the library or from our Overdrive service–the online library my local library provides. This fits in well with our minimalist and frugal philosophies, both.

Our library is small. We live in a town of about 3,500 people, so the library doesn’t always carry the latest releases and it carries few personal finance tomes. Sometimes, though, I’m surprised by the books I find.

Two weeks ago, I happened upon The Truth About Your Future: The Money Guide You Need Now, Later, and Much Later, by Ric Edelman.

Truth About Your Future--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

I’d never heard of Ric Edelman before, but he “has been ranked the nation’s #1 Independent Financial Advisor by Barron’s three times, named among the country’s Top 10 Wealth Advisors by Forbes and one of the “10 most influential figures” in the advisory field by RIABiz.” He also has a radio program that has been around for 25 years.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of his book, then. Well, truthfully, I expected more of the same financial information every other personal finance books has ever regenerated. But this book was different. Way different. Continue reading “Book Review: The Truth About Your Future”

Are You Camp Earning or Camp Saving?

I have subscribed to Ramit Sethi’s emails for years, ever since he was a fledgling blogger at I Will Teach You To Be Rich. His websites are now slickly professional and he runs a multimillion dollar empire, selling courses on how to increase your earnings. I’ve never bought a course, but his emails are full of advice about negotiating and growing your business, and he writes compelling headlines (if you don’t believe me, sign up and see what I mean). He’s helped thousands of people earn more money in their businesses.

Are You Camp Earning or Camp Saving--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

Three days ago, he sent out the email, “What Successful People Don’t Tell You.” It linked to an article by the same name. The premise of the article is that people who truly love their jobs will never stop working, no matter how much money they make, because “you would enjoy being on the beach for about 3 weeks…then you would get bored and want to get back to work.” Apparently everyone that this guy has ever met who’s made big money feels this way. Okay. Let’s accept that premise for a sec.

Ramit goes on to slam the FIRE community, for delaying gratification and staying at a job they potentially hate, eating rice and beans, and leading colorless, boring lives (including WALKING as a hobby for God’s sake), only to retire early and then have no purpose for the rest of their lives.

Apparently, there’s a subreddit detailing the dark underbelly of FIRE, which is that once people have sacrificially saved for 14 years, they then have no purpose beyond amassing their $600,000 so they can live off the $24,000 a year in perpetuity.

The article ends by asking you to pick a camp: Continue reading “Are You Camp Earning or Camp Saving?”

July Net Worth Update

If you’re just joining, our family of four is on a three-year journey to double our net worth and become location independent so we can move. Each month(ish), I’ll keep you apprised of our progress. This year, we’ve got some major goals, including paying off our outstanding debt (car and apartment in Chile), replacing our roof, AND saving around $70,000. As of June, we were roughly 18% of the way to doubling our net worth.

August has arrived. The ThreeYear family has been reunited, after the boys and I were away for the month of July in North and South Carolina. New England has a decidedly cool, rainy bent this month and, to my utter frustration (repeated every year at this time), tops of the trees are starting to change colors, and little red leaves are falling down all over my driveway. “I’m not ready for fall!” I always think, but it is coming, nevertheless.

The month of July was fantastic, in terms of deepening family relationships and making lifetime memories. It was not fantastic in terms of spending less and saving more, as I’d hoped. Our income always drops in the summers, since I’m not teaching, and while we were away, we spent a lot more than normal on eating out. Plus, we had the other half of our new roof to pay for. Still, thanks to the bull market that just won’t quit, our net worth continued northwards.

July Net Worth Update--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

 

Continue reading “July Net Worth Update”

Tools of the Frugal Trade

There are certain tools that I believe are essential for saving money and getting longer life out of your possessions, especially in your home.  The following is a list of my tools of the frugal trade, simple tools or ingredients that I use time and again for saving money.

Frugal Tools--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

The truth is, in our modern world, we’ve lost sight of part of the old adage,

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

It’s the “make it do” part that is an anathema to us. In our age of planned obsolescence and products engineered to fail, we’ve lost the repair skills that seemed like second nature to our parents and grandparents. It’s only natural that we buy new instead of repair, because:

  • We often have no idea how to repair things, and
  • It’s cheaper to buy a new version of something rather than replace it.

That’s true of a lot of things. For example, when I broke our blender a couple of months ago (long story), I didn’t destroy the motor, just the jar (the top part where you put your liquids). But to replace that part cost about $50! Mr. ThreeYear opted to get a brand new, on sale Ninja blender with two single serve cups for just $70. While it was $20 more expensive, it’s a way more powerful blender. We plan to sell the motor on eBay and recoup some of that cost, as well. Continue reading “Tools of the Frugal Trade”

June Net Worth Update

If you’re just joining, our family of four is on a three-year journey to double our net worth and become location independent so we can move abroad. Each month, I’ll keep you apprised of our progress. This year, we’ve got some major goals, including paying off our outstanding debt (car and apartment in Chile), replacing our roof, AND saving around $70,000. As of April, we were roughly 16.5% of the way to doubling our net worth.

It’s now mid-summer (sigh! can summer go a bit more slowly, please?). The junior ThreeYears and I are currently on a month-long road trip in the Southeastern US, visiting family, and Mr. ThreeYear just flew back to New Hampshire, having joined us at the beach for a lovely, sun-burned week.

June Net Worth--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

Part of Mr. ThreeYear’s plans upon return will be overseeing the replacement of our roof. Unfortunately, our thirteen-year-old roof had defective shingles, and so must be replaced. For most of April and May, we priced out having new roofs put on, having previously exhausted our options of using the warranty (it was invalid since we were the second owners of the home) and seeing what the builders of our home would do (nothing). All over our little town, homeowner after homeowner is having to replace his or her roof earlier than expected because of this particular brand of defective shingles. Our freeze/thaw climate is very hard on shingles, and this brand did not pass muster.

That “little” purchase, which we’ve been saving for all year, and will cost, all told, $14,000, was big enough that our net worth was negatively affected. While we didn’t count the money we’d saved toward the roof in our net worth calculations, we did have to take some money out of savings, which meant our number dipped down, very slightly, from the month before.

Continue reading “June Net Worth Update”

My Favorite Online Tools to Save Time and Money

There are hundreds of new apps that purport to make our lives better, but sometimes it’s hard to wade through and figure out which are really worth incorporating.

That’s why I wanted to share a couple of apps and browser extensions that I’ve been using lately that are awesome.

Online Tools--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

Unroll Me

Unroll Me is a free service that cleans up your inbox. I get a lot of subscription emails from LinkedIn, my local hardware store, the National Council of English Teachers, etc. These are emails that I don’t want to unsubscribe from, because the information they contain might be useful. But it mostly clutters up my inbox (there should be an “appropriate amount of emails to send weekly” course for these stores!). This brilliant service allows you to either unsubscribe from or “roll up” the emails you don’t want to hit your inbox. Continue reading “My Favorite Online Tools to Save Time and Money”

Planing Our Way to Frugality

When Mr. ThreeYear and I decided to turn our financial lives around in 2008, we had a lot to learn. When we first started to budget, we wasted tons of money on what we now consider unnecessary expenses (things like alarm systems, cable, and yard service).

Planing Our Way to Frugality--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com

We were living in Atlanta at the time, and the dominant culture in that city can be a bit… showy. Since public transportation is limited there, as it’s one of the most spread-out metropolitan areas in the country, cars are a must. And one of the most popular Atlanta pastimes seems to be car one-upmanship. There was even a Lexus Lot at Turner Field, so that Lexus owners could park their cars in an exclusive lot much closer to the field. We were driving a BMW and an Acura at the time (although they were both very used), even though we had debt.

Then we moved to New England and we were exposed to a completely different culture. In the rural New England hamlet where we live, people like to say that they’re of hardy stock. After all, you have to be tough to brave seven months of snow, mud season, and the fierce weather that characterizes the very northeastern-most region of the country. Natives of this region are often seen in January in nothing more than plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, with temperatures in the teens (that’s roughly -10 for you users of Celsius). Continue reading “Planing Our Way to Frugality”

Our Simple Financial Management Plan

Einstein said there are five ascending levels of intellect:

  • Smart
  • Intelligent
  • Brilliant
  • genius
  • and simple.

So many times, we think that complicated strategies are inherently better. But have you seen Einstein’s theory of mass-energy equivalence? The one where he challenges all conventional notions of matter moving in space and time? That puppy is simple. Continue reading “Our Simple Financial Management Plan”

April Net Worth Update

If you’re just joining, our family of four is on a three-year journey to double our net worth and become location independent so we can move abroad. Each month, I’ll keep you apprised of our progress. This year, we’ve got some major goals, including paying off our outstanding debt (car and apartment in Chile), replacing our roof, AND saving around $70,000. As of February, we were 9% of the way to doubling our net worth.

I waited until the end of April to post our net worth update, because, frankly, our March update wasn’t very exciting. Thanks to Mr. ThreeYear’s annual stock “gift,” however, April’s update actually moves our net worth dial. Mr. ThreeYear works for a 100% employee-owned company, and each year, in April, he receives a share of company stock (which is privately owned) equivalent to at least 8% of his base salary. The company is audited each December to set the stock’s yearly price.

Although this is an incredible “gift,” we consider it part of his total compensation, because that is what it effectively is, albeit tax-deductible (for all the ins and outs of how such a plan, called an ESOP, works, head here).   If he were to leave the company, he would need to take equal distributions over 5 years and roll the shares into a retirement account.

Kuchen--www.thethreeyearexperiment.com
Spending lots of time baking (and eating!) in snowy, cold March.

March and April were rough months for the ThreeYears, ain’t gonna lie. It’s always one of the toughest times of the year for me, living in New England as a transplanted Southern Belle (or, just…Southerner…). March and April are hard-wired into my psyche as a time when the birds are supposed to be chirping, flowers are supposed to be blooming, and snow is definitely NOT supposed to be still falling. Continue reading “April Net Worth Update”