Over the past nine years (the Fiscal Femme had it’s 9th birthday on March 2nd!), I’ve been creating resources to help you succeed in your financial life and reach your goals. And we provide many of them for free.
Here’s a roundup of my favorite free resources. Whether you are new to the Fiscal Femme or you just missed a few of these golden nuggets, I’ve compiled them for you here in one place.
How we traditionally set up spending plans doesn’t work because we aren’t accounting for the big infrequent expenses in our lives. Yes, there are things we can’t plan for (and that’s why we have our rainy day fund) but most of these expenses are things we know about or even things that happen every single year.
Why is this a problem? Not only does this way of spending keep us from planning and saving the way we want, it also makes our financial lives much more stressful. If I have to make a big expense in any given month, cash will be really tight and I’ll have to put the expenses on a credit card or pull money from savings. I have to spend the next month recovering (until another expense comes up!).
The good news is, I am excited to share a tried and true system to stop this spending and saving rollercoaster. Once you take the time to set it up, it will do the work for you and take the stress out of these larger more irregular expenses.
Okay, yes. For any of us who have purchased something and experienced a quick high, we know that retail therapy can work in the short-term. It can be a distraction or even a nice chance to imagine ourselves wearing or using the item we just purchased. That feels good.
What happens next provokes a vicious cycle. We may experience buyer’s remorse, stress about our new higher credit card balance, or feel deflated and guilty for failing to curb our impulses. We may already be looking for that next thing we want to buy.
We often make things harder than they need to be, especially when it comes to our finances. I’m guilty of this myself! I used to have a million bank accounts with a handful of bills coming out of each. I had a big blob of savings that was used for a variety of things. Very little was automated outside of my 401(k), and that even had some room for improvement.
To make our lives easier and less stressful, we can use automation to our advantage. Here are five ways you can automate your finances to reach your financial goals more quickly and easily.
We’re back with our second installment of the Fiscal Femme Anonymous Money Survey. Why? When I first started my money journey it was really helpful to see how much people were spending on certain things. Not because it was important to compare myself with others or that I should spend my money the same way, but more because it opened my eyes to what was possible and gave me a spending frame of reference.
Frugal joys are free or inexpensive things and experiences that make us happy. The best part about them is that we can add more of them to our lives without increasing our expenses. We can also use them to replace more expensive things to reduce our spending (without losing the joy in our lives).
Summer is my favorite frugal joy season because there are so many options when the weather is warm. Here are some of my favorite frugal joys from this summer. I’d love to hear about yours too!
In times of uncertainty, our rainy day funds become more important than ever. Why? They provide us with cash in case of an emergency - like a change in income, job loss, or unexpected expenses.
They also give us freedom to make choices, peace of mind, and space for creativity. Think about it. Maybe you lost your job and are looking for your next career opportunity. If you have a rainy day fund, you’re better positioned to pass up on a job that’s not a good fit because you don’t need the cash as urgently.
This can make a huge difference in our career trajectories, future earnings, and our overall happiness and satisfaction at work.
Aiming to better understand your partner’s money habits and his or her financial situation now will make you happier and certainly make managing money together much easier in the future. According to TD Bank’s Love + Money Survey, 90% of happy couples discuss finances once a month.
This isn’t an easy conversation to have for many reasons, but it’s well worth it. Here’s how to ease into the money talk with your partner without the shame and embarrassment so many of us fear.
