http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com Maximize your Money Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:57:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I am VERY excited to announce that we are expecting our first child, a little girl, in the fall! My due date is October 5th, so she is just over halfway cooked. Everything has been going swimmingly - just more tired than usual, which accounts for the radio silence over ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/big-little-news/ The other day, I almost had a heart attack. I was looking at our budget in Quicken, and comparing our spending to our one income budget. Our spending was in line, all of our bills had been paid or scheduled, and we had one more paycheck coming in for February. Then I ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/quicken-user-error/ Here we are, a week in February and our new one income budget. My husband was out of town all last week, so I cheated on the menu by eating tons of leftovers and mooching meals off relatives. But now I have to get back to cooking and keeping our ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/menu-monday-new-budget-edition/ I have finally joined the digital age. By that I mean, I finally set up my student loans to auto deduct the monthly payment from my checking account. I graduated in December 2004. So for the past 5 years, I have been logging in every month and manually initiating the payments. Which ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/automating-student-loan-payments/ As part of our 2010 goals, we have decided to pay for all our bills and expenses using just one income. Part of this is to up the intensity of saving for a down payment, but I also want to see if we can do it. Somewhere down the line ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/living-on-one-income/ Another year, another new set of goals. Some are familiar, things that for one reason or another didn’t get accomplished last year. Others are new things we want to try and accomplish. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to set high goals for myself and make them something we really have ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/goals-for-2010/ Happy New Year everybody! Although we've been in 2010 for 2 weeks now, I still write 2009 every time I write the year. (Including when I just typed that sentence.) I have some awesome goals for 2010, but first I want to review my 2009 goals. Save a down payment. FAIL. ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/2009-in-review/ The more things change, the more they stay the same. At the beginning of 2009, our primary goal was to save a down payment for a house. We got sidetracked and lost sight of this goal, then completely derailed when we learned that our home's value has dropped considerably. In the meantime, ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/back-to-saving-for-a-house/ I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We're trying to get back in the swing of things after the craziness & traveling that surrounds the holidays. We have a few more hectic weekends coming up, but we will have a little more time at home. This week's menu will take advantage ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/menu-monday-end-of-2009-edition/ Last week, I made a payment to our second (and final!) car loan, putting it at over 50% paid off! I am so excited to reach one of our December goals already, and we're going to try and pay a little more to towards this loan before the end of ... http://www.thegoodlifeonabudget.com/index.php/halfway-done-with-car-loan-2/