It has been a ridiculous amount of time since our last post on this blog. Going on a year and a half. This amount of time has shown me how extremely fast time can fly by, and it has made me realize more than ever how important it is to begin living a life of intention immediately and stop letting time pass me by. That’s not to say though that we haven’t accomplished a lot during this time. We have paid off all of our debt and saved enough for a down payment on a duplex. We are going the duplex route so that we can rent out half of our home, and hopefully make enough from the rental income to cover our PITI (principle, interest, taxes, and insurance). Being able to do this has required us to cut back, but the changes haven’t been nearly as limiting as I had once thought they would be. Some of the key changes we made that have helped us in our journey are:

• Subletting our apartment and moving in with family
• Reducing our monthly “allowances”
• Going through our finances with a fine tooth comb and reducing costs
• Reducing our food allowance, and separating this from our main checking account
• Searching for lower cost activities

I will get into each of these more deeply in my next post, but for now I just want to chronicle what I believe to be the key changes that we have made that have helped us. And we are constantly trying to come up with new ways to decrease our joyless spending. Notice how decreasing our spending in all areas is not necessarily a goal of ours, but rather more specifically in areas that don’t make us happy. Having our own apartment was great, but living with family has been fun and beneficial for not only us, but our family as well. Having less money to spend has made me more intentional with the money I do have and made me realize how much I buy that I don’t use, wear or particularly want. And the list goes on, which I will certainly share more in future posts.

Is anyone else on a journey right now to try to live more intentionally, or to save more money? What are some things that are working for you?