Young and Frugal

For as long as I can remember I’ve been young, I wish I could say I’ve been frugal, but that would be starting out this blog with a bold-faced lie.  I’m a product of middle class America and was raised to work hard for what I want, and that is what I’ve always done.  I’ve also always had the grace of my parents to help me out…until June 29, 2007. 

On that fateful day I got married to Mary, my high school sweetheart, just 2 months after graduating college.  Don’t get me wrong my parents love my wife and are thrilled that I got married, but in their minds that was the day I was officially off the family payroll.

I don’t mean to bore you with personal posts unrelated to personal finance but I feel at this juncture it is important to understand the point of view that many of my posts will be coming from, and while I am, in fact, young, married, and frugal (sometimes), it doesn’t have quite the ring to it that “Young and Frugal” has. 

Mary and I, like most millennials, are the youngest children of baby boomers, and as a result of that, we have lived a privileged lifestyle, even more privileged than our siblings, because our parents were already making good money while we were growing up.  We as a generation don’t know much about what it means to struggle and save, and this is also where our financial faults come from.

To elaborate, in May Mary and I will be fully in over our heads, for better or for worse.  You see we are building our first house, and will be spending too much money (upper $200s, in Dallas), to get a house that is too big (2500 sq/ft), and way too nice.  In fact it leaves us with an unbalanced budget by about $300 a month, ironically the cost of our car payment for the new car we needed wanted.  Maybe “Young and Stupid” would have been a better name for this blog?

I’d like to think we’ve done a great deal right with our finances because we have no other debt than our car payment, and we got a great deal on the car (future post).  But because of our inability to wait we will struggle.  We are going back to how we were raised: we have both agreed to work hard for it and make extra money.  We’ve thrown around various ideas of what we will do to make extra money, and while we haven’t decided on any yet, I will definitely keep you updated (hopefully 3 times a week).  And in some aspects it’s a very good thing for us because it will make us apply our degrees, as both of us have degrees in finance (ironic, I know) and entrepreneurship.

As a side note, I want the blog and you to be a way for me to maintain accountability as we go through this process.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even get Mary to make a few posts down the road!

-Daniel