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Avoiding Lifestyle Inflation

Last Updated: BY Jordann - 28 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today’s post is from my staff writer Jordann. I’m still loving her posts and she writes every Friday for me. I’ll let her take it away now!

I’m in debt. I have student loans up to my eyeballs and a car loan. I hate my debt, and I’ve been working hard for the past twelve months to get rid of it.

I’ve cut my expenses, I’ve increased my income and I’ve poured every last dollar I have into debt. Now, a year into my little “become debt free” project, I’m starting to see some serious results. I’m projecting that I’ll have paid off over $16,000 in debt this year, and with a little luck I’ll get that much paid off again next year, bringing me slowly but steadily closer to my goal of debt freedom.

It’s been tough though. As much as I’m proud of myself for my accomplishments, and as driven as I am to get out of debt before anything else, I’m tempted. I’m tempted by lifestyle inflation.

With my increased income comes the increased temptation to improve my living situation. I’m tempted to start saving for a house payment, maybe buy a second car. Some bloggers will make lifestyle inflation sound like a quaint little story. They’ll paint it as having one too many coffees or taking an extra expensive vacation every year. They’ll make lifestyle inflation sound like an inconvenience that must be ignored, even though it’s something that might be nice to indulge in.

For me though, lifestyle inflation represents something a little bit more substantial than an overall increase in my spending. For me, lifestyle inflation is part of the act of becoming an adult. Right now, I live in a 400 sq. ft. one bedroom house, and drive one car between my fiance and I.

I’d really like to save for a downpayment on a house, or even upgrade to a larger apartment with a second bedroom and maybe even space for a kitchen table. I’d love to have a second car so my fiance and I don’t need to constantly coordinate our work schedule because we live in a rural area that has no public transportation. These things aren’t extra coffees or a shopping spree. These are real, genuine temptations that would make my life easier. These are things that to me represent adulthood.

As much as I’d like these things, I can’t have them. I want to get out of debt, badly, and I’m not willing to take on these extra expenses at the cost of an extra six months of debt repayment. That’s a slippery slope that I don’t even want to set foot on. I feel like if I did, before I know it, I’m a homeowner with an extra couple hundred thousand in debt and another 45% of my income tied up in minimum payments. It is, however, very, very tempting.

How I Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

Avoiding lifestyle inflation has been tough, but I think I’ve done a decent job at keeping my spending in check, even as my income has increased. Here’s how I’ve done it.

Visualize It – Instead of justifying these things by saying “It’s only a few hundred extra a month.” Instead I visualize the overall impact that few extra hundred a month will have on my goal to become debt free. A few hundred less a month towards debt repayment, for example, would push back my debt free date nine months.

Beyond that, with regard to savings, the results are even worse. $200 per month put into a retirement account starting at my age would easily yield over $300,000 by the time I retire. All in the name of a second car? I think I’ll deal with the inconvenience today.

Enjoy the Little Pleasures – Yes, I live in a small space to save money. That doesn’t mean that I need to live in a hole though. I spend money on making my small house more comfortable to live in.

That includes things like investing in paint, better bedding, and new furnishings. These small investments will make this place more bearable to live in, resulting in me staying here, and thus saving money, longer.

Remember The End Game – I spend a lot of time focusing on what I want. I want freedom. I want freedom from debt, and freedom to make decisions based on what I want, and not on what’s going to get the bills paid.

Being debt free, and eventually having substantial savings will afford me that freedom. In the mean time, buckling down and avoiding lifestyle inflation is a necessary means to that end.

How do you avoid lifestyle inflation?

Should You Get An Internship?

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 16 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Here’s another blast from the past post. Don’t forget to enter my Novica giveaway also! I accidentally published this yesterday, so I’m sorry if this shows up twice 🙁

Anyways, I’ll let the old post take it away now…

Around 2 weeks ago, I started my first reader submission post about college budgets. This week the question is regarding internships. Internships can be very helpful in your job search because of networking, valuable experience, among other things.

There are not many negatives, except for the fact that in some fields and at some companies, it will be unpaid. However, there are also many industries where interns can make $20 and up. Internships seem to be the norm nowadays, and will most likely be expected on your resume.

If you have any questions that you would like answered by myself or by my readers, ask away or e-mail me 🙂

The reader question:

Hello,

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about internships. I’m not sure if I should get one or if I should just stay at my part-time job. I’m currently making okay money at my part-time job, and most of the internships that I’m finding are unpaid. Would the unpaid experience be better than me having extra spending money?

Also, what if all I’m doing in making coffee? Will just having it on my resume look good?

Thank you.

I thought this was a great reader question. I also found a great resource for getting the internship you want. I personally think that experience that pertains to the field you are in or want to be in is very important. Why you should get an internship:

1. Networking.

Internships are great for networking. You will meet many people at the company you work for and this is great for future potential job offers, referrals, contacts, references and so on.

There is also the possibility that the internship might lead to a full-time job after you graduate. Also, if the company does not have a full-time job available for you, then they still might be willing to provide outside contacts or references for you as well.

2. It looks great on your resume.

Having an internship and professional work experience looks great on your resume, there’s no doubting that. Employers like to see professional work experience because it usually means that you can conduct yourself in a professional manner.

3. It can help you decide whether you want to stay in that field.

Yes, you might find out a little late whether or not it’s for you, but it’s better than finding out AFTER you graduate. You can always switch your major even though you will might have to graduate a little later than you planned. However, that is better than deciding just to quickly graduate, only to find out that you don’t like your field at all.

My friend (who probably isn’t the smartest on earth) was about to graduate when she took her first student teaching assignment. She didn’t realize until then that she NEVER wanted to teach as a full-time job. She then changed her major. Better late than never.

4. Gaining experience.

If you have internship or professional experience, it’ll make you look a lot better in interviews since you have real life experience such as if you want to be a book publicist. You can also tell them of direct ways that you applied your schooling to your position as well.

However, there are also times when you might want to say no to an internship. If the tasks and position require things that won’t pertain to the job ever, and it’s unpaid, then it most likely won’t be worth it to you. If you already have a part-time job, maybe try going for a management position because that’ll also look great on your resume.

Did you have an internship?
Was it worthwhile to you?

$75 Novica Giveaway

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 10 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Thank you everyone for all of the great comments I received on my $5,114 Extra Income and Goals post from yesterday. November was definitely great for us, hoping for an even better December!

I hope you aren’t all sick of the giveaways that I’m having. I have a $50 Aldi giveaway from Saturday, $100 cash giveaway on Monday, and now a $75 Novica giveaway for today.

I’m sure a lot of you have heard of Novica. I was able to review some of their products, which I am still extremely excited about. I chose to get a pitcher and a vase. I LOVE both items and I love to be able to have two new and very unique products in my home now.

The pitcher is something that I’ve been needing in my house, and to have a nice hand made glass one is definitely great.

[Read more…]

$5,114 in Extra Income in November and My Goals

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 72 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! Yes, you read that correctly, I beat my goal that I made in October, and I made $5,114 in extra income in the month of November! I thought the goal that I set was pretty high since I made $3,700 in October, but I did again. Check out my Extra Income page that I have for my blog.

This is proof on my online income since some of you have asked. This is for the month of November and before fees and expenses (expenses were around $475, and my actual pre-tax income is reflected in the title of this blog post) being taken out. The other income categories that are listed below were mainly just cash I received from my sister for rent. $5,264 plus $325 in rent minus $475 equals $5,114.

November was yet again another good month. W and I have both increased our incomes by a substantial amount. For me it was because of my online side jobs that I have (my income from my actual job is salary and does not fluctuate), and for him it was because of his job that he was hired for back in September.

November was also good because of Thanksgiving! And I’m looking forward to December because of Christmas and New Years of course. And our vacation too.

You can find my 2012 yearly goals upFind out how I made $5,114 in November from working at home.date here.

November Goals Update

  1. Keep our food budget down to $500. PASS. We did good with our food spending and while I did not keep exact track, I’m sure that we were right around $500.
  2. Workout at least 3 times a week and lose 3 pounds. PASS. Lost 3 pounds!
  3. Make an extra $2,000 this month. PASS. Definitely passed this with a little over $5,000!
  4. Start decorating the dining room. FAIL.  Haha how about we don’t talk about this…
  5. Finally GET CARPET MICHELLE. FAIL. Lets not talk about this either….
  6. Spend no more than $50 on clothes. FAIL. I bought a couple of things, but I don’t believe I spent over $100.

December Goals

  1. Keep our food budget down to $400. Since we are going on a short vacation this month, I lowered our food budget by a little bit since we will not be home (our food while we are traveling comes out of our travel budget).
  2. Workout at least 4 times a week and lose 3 pounds. I increased this by a little bit. Mainly because the weather is actually nice and I want to force myself to run outside before it starts to snow.
  3. Make an extra $2,500 this month. I increased this by a little bit, but not too much. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. I also know that December is usually a little slow for extra income because of all the holidays.
  4. Start decorating the dining room and GET CARPET MICHELLE. This is a repeat from the last couple of months. I know, I am sad. I need to finish this!
  5. Have fun on vacation and spend no more than $1,500. We are going to St. Thomas for 4 days. I know it’s not long, but that’s all that I could get off work for. We have a lot planned and are still debating on whether or not we should get all inclusive while we are there. What do you think? The price for all inclusive is $140 more per night for the both of us (altogether with fees and taxes) than what just a basic room at the same hotel would be.
  6. Read 2 books. Since we are going on vacation, it’ll make this very easy. I finally recharged my Kindle and will have it with me everywhere 🙂

Blog Goals

  • Twitter Followers: Goal was for 1,600 and I’m currently at 1,750. I’m hoping to get 1,850.
  • Alexa rank: Goal was to be under 90,000. And I’m finally dropping. I’m currently at 66,000. My goal for December is to be at 60,000.
  • Guest post at least 2 times this month. I’ve been pretty horrible with this but this is something that I need to work on!


Extra Monthly Income in November

  • Online Income (this includes staff writing, blog, virtual assistant and is after all fees) – $4,489
  • Selling Clothes – $0
  • Miscellaneous – $200
  • Mystery Shopping – $100
  • Rent – $325

So I made $5,114 extra last month!

How did you do in November? Any extra income?

Grocery Tips Giveaway and $1,436 in Extra Income

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 41 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Monday everyone! Above are some pictures from my Instagram again. Having an iPhone now really makes it easy for me to share pictures with you all every week.

Didn’t do a whole ton this week and probably should have focused more time on my work certification. My dog (more on that below) took up my whole day on Saturday and on Sunday I pretty much slept for 13 hours. AH I KNOW!

I also have a giveaway today, just scroll to the bottom if you are interested! I hope you are all loving these giveaways because I have 3 more in the works already. These giveaways will be for another iPad, $75 to Novica, and a gift certificate to an Etsy sellers store. And if you haven’t yet, check out my Aldi giveaway from my Weekly Roundup post on Saturday.

I also announced the winners from my iPad and Cash giveaway and everyone has collected their prizes. Congrats to those who won!

My updates:

Spending:

I didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes or anything this past week. I was too swamped with work and everything else to really spend any money.

However, I did spend money on one of my dog’s this past week. On Saturday I woke up to her hacking up her lungs pretty much and took her to the vet. $300 later, the vet is still not sure what she has but gave her some medication to see if kennel cough is one of the reasons. She hasn’t been to a kennel or seen other dogs so I was pretty confused as to how it could be that.

But if she doesn’t get better then she’s getting x-rays next week to rule anything out. I was very sad on Saturday! I am a big baby and crazy dog momma though. 🙂

Extra Income (this is on top of my salary from my job):

Another great week. I made around $1,436 from online income and rent from my sister (staff writing, website, etc.) last week. This is before fees and everything else though. I am still in the middle of drafting my extra income explanation post and I PROMISE that I will post it soon. Sorry that it’s taking forever.

The $1,436 is not the exact number shown above because my sister just gives me cash for her rent of course, so that is why they don’t add up.

Food: 

We did pretty well with our food spending last week. Spent a little bit on groceries and ate in a decent amount.

Also, in my last Extra Income, Life, Food Weekly Update, a lot of you said that you either do batch cooking or want to. I plan on possibly starting this soon and will keep everyone updated on it.

I don’t have a meal plan set for this week yet, so hopefully that doesn’t kill our food budget! Not the greatest way to start out December.

Being healthy:

I’m still doing good with this still. Lost like half a pound last week but that’s alright with me. My overall goal is to lose 5 pounds so WOOHOO!

And we are still eating healthy. W has recently gained a lot of weight. In the beginning he was trying to gain weight because he was so skinny, but now he has finally realized that he is gaining too much. Funny how that works out right?

So now our plan is to eat healthier all the time together. This will make it a lot easier for me because before I would make HUGE meals for him.

How’s your spending, working out and extra income going?

And now on to the giveaway!

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Weekly Roundup And Giveaway!

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 46 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a great week and have an even better weekend.

I don’t have much planned. I have some stuff to do to finally finish up my work certification (I’ve been working on this for OVER 2 years). So I plan on dedicating most of today to that. And then I plan on working on my blog a little bit too.

I have a giveaway today so you can just skip reading and scroll to the bottom if you’d like!

And as you can see, I finally brought “interesting searches” back to my Saturday posts. The first one is funny so that is the main reason why I brought them back 🙂

In case you missed it, here are posts from my blog this week:

  1. $1,175 in Weekly Income and Life Updates
  2. Budget Busters and my Plans
  3. Identity theft (someone bought a house in my name)
  4. ebooks: A Frugal Minimalist’s Dream

 

Posts I love:

  1. Your Net Worth Isn’t Your Self Worth @ Money Master Mom
  2. Massive Cash Back – American Express @ Money Life and More
  3. The Last Bobby Pin Effect @ Plunged in Debt
  4. How to be a blogging superstar @ L Bee and the Money Tree
  5. Taking Personal Finance Blogs with a Grain of Salt @ Mo Money Mo Houses

 

Interesting Searches:

  1. do i need to worry i broke into a house but didn’t take anything
  2. do my homework for money craigslist
  3. i don’t want him to make more money than me
  4. i make him clean
  5. i like egyptian pyramids

 Giveaway

And on to the giveaway!

I’m sure most of you have heard of Aldi. I tend to shop there whenever I get the chance. The prices are great and I find that the quality is better than the grocery stores around where I live. I especially go to Aldi because their prices on fruits and vegetables are insanely cheaper than what I would find at my normal grocery store as well.

Today I have a great giveaway. Aldi has generously donated 2 gift certificates worth $25 each! Now as some of you know, $25 can be a lot of groceries at Aldi. I tend to spend around $50 there and can buy a lot of food.

There will be two winners, with each person winning a $25 gift certificate. Just enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

Thanks again Aldi for allowing me to have this giveaway!

eBooks: A Frugal Minimalist’s Dream

Last Updated: BY Jordann - 54 Comments

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more info.

eBooks: A Frugal Minimalist's Dream

I didn’t always like reading. When I was very young, my parents couldn’t get me to read. I was behind in the school reading level, and they spent hours with me trying to get me to learn to read. I wouldn’t have any of it, I just wasn’t interested.

I wasn’t interested, that is, until I found out that reading could actually be fun. I was pretty horse crazy as a little kid, and once I got my hands on some “horse books” I went from barely being able to read to a 12th grade reading level by the time I was out of elementary school.

After that, I couldn’t stop reading. I regularly used to get in trouble at school for reading a book during class instead paying attention to the teacher, and my collection of books expanded accordingly.

Things haven’t changed much since my horse crazy days, I still love to read. Unfortunately, I’m responsible for buying my own books now, and with my strict budget and debt repayment schedule, I can’t afford to purchase several books a month to satisfy my reading appetite.

Not only that, but I also have a hard time stomaching spending $20 or so per book. I love reading, but that’s a high cost for something I may very well read only once.

There’s also my minimalist tendencies to consider. I live in a 400 square foot house, with one book case. Needless to say, shelf real estate is at a premium. The poor thing is already heaving and groaning under the weight of all my books, I can’t add any more. I also hate lugging piles of books from apartment to apartment, and since I move fairly frequently, this is a factor that can’t be ignored.

Click here to buy a Kindle or an Amazon Fire.

eBooks to the Rescue

I’ve only recently come around to the ebook craze. I was very resistant at first because I never thought I’d be able to get used to reading a book on a screen. I was also deeply attached to the idea of being able to physically handle my books and turn the pages.

Things started to change when I got my smart phone. It was the first device I was able to read a book on, and it’s when my opinion started to turn. I had some books in storage and instead of digging them out, I downloaded their ebook counterparts, which happened to be free because they were classics.

The convenience of ebooks came immediately apparent. Since I was reading them primarily on my smart phone, I always had one with me. I could read my book literally anywhere, without having to lug a big heavy book around in my purse. I could also read it at night, in bed, without having to turn a lamp on. My fiance really appreciated this.

eBooks are a Minimalist‘s Dream

At first the idea of not being able to handle the physical book was disconcerting. I didn’t like the idea of staring into a screen to get my reading fix. Once I actually tried it, however, I realized that the very thing I took to be a draw back, was actually a perk. I could read a whole book without ever having to actually touch a book. That means no extra weight on my shelves, no extra space being taken up in storage, and absolutely no extra boxes to lug into a moving van.

eBooks are Cheaper!

Not only are ebooks easier on my limited space situation, they’re also easier on my wallet. I always had a hard time buying books that were new releases. Most books are offered in hardcover first, which can run up to $30 in Canada. I remember stalking certain books for months waiting for the soft cover to come out, and waiting still longer for that version of the book to go on sale or turn up used.

J.K. Rowling’s new book, Casual Vacancy is available on Amazon.ca for $26.96 in hardcover right now. In the Google Play store, it’s available as an ebook for $14.99. I’m on a pretty limited budget, so a $12 savings (without even factoring in taxes and shipping) is significant enough to make me take notice.

Letting Go of The Old, Embracing the New

Must like making the transition from DVDs to Netflix, switching from real books to ebooks is a strange change. To me though, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, and getting used to making ebooks my primary source of reading material has been a great decision that satisfies both my frugality, and my inner minimalist.

Click here to buy a Kindle or an Amazon Fire.

Do you use ebooks?

 

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