7 High-Paying Jobs That Don’t Require a College Degree

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  You’ve been checking out Get Lowered Cycles for a new Saddlemen seat. They are quite pricey, but you know they’re well worth it. You start to wonder if you should go back to college to get a higher-paying job so you can afford everything you want. Fret not, you don’t necessarily need a college degree to make a nice income. Here are 7 high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree! Service Industry The service industry is a great way to make a considerable amount of money without having to have a college degree. While the hourly pay usually […] Read more »

Successful Budgeting Requires Looking Ahead

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Looking at the calendar, I knew my wife and I had to do some extra planning during our next budget talk. Our budget cycle runs bi-monthly because that’s how I get paid. Looking at the 2021 calendar, I get paid on January 29th, and then again on February 15th. In between those two paydays are three weekends. We normally split the discretionary funds for a pay period between two weekends, but just how the calendar laid out in this instance, we have three. This situation requires us to look ahead, and plan ahead. Life is full of scenarios just like […] Read more »

Taking Expense Analysis To A New Level

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It’s important to evaluate all your monthly expenses from time to time for value. Eliminate the ones not worth their value, reduce others to be inline with the value they provide. General cable, subscriptions, insurance, and cell phone bills are staples to this process. But during home quarantine due to Coronavirus, I’ve had time take my expense analysis to a new level to make sure I’m getting the most value possible for my money. Here are four things I’ve looked at and made adjustments to over the last few weeks: Broadband Analysis In a conversation with a coworker I realized […] Read more »

5 Reasons I’ll Never Use Grocery Pickup Services

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People are loving grocery pickup services. Many major grocery retailers offer it, each giving it their own name, but the concept is the same. Customers pick the grocery products they want online and with a click of a button someone at the store rolls out a cart and collects the items for you. You can pick it up usually for free, or for a small price have it delivered to your house. People adore it. I have friends that say they will never go back to doing the grocery shopping themselves. I just shake my head. I’ll never, ever have […] Read more »

The Holidays Are Finally Over

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I’m happy, ecstatic, over the moon excited the holidays are finally over.  I’m also exhausted. The time between Christmas and the second week in January is traditionally a financial challenge. My wife works for the school district, so she’s off of work. I typically have vacation I have to use so I’m also off work. We’re both on vacation for about two weeks, which creates an environment ripe for overspending. Reasons For Holiday Season Overspending Some of the things that make this time of year a financial challenge are: Holiday Gifts: The whole holiday season is a series of family […] Read more »

Budget Pro Tip: Oversave Your Purchases

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Don’t buy something unless you have the money in your pocket. That simple sentence is great advice, meant to keep a person from overspending. But having the money to buy something after sacrificing and saving, even after all your bills are paid, may not be sufficient. Personally, I like to oversave large purchases. My wife wanted to order some products online that amounted to a significant amount of money. Knowing we have more discretionary funds in the second half of the month, she asked if it would be better to wait until our middle of the month paycheck. She was […] Read more »

5 Todo To Prepare Your Budget For The New Year

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We’re all about the flip the calendar to a new year. The new year is a time when people mentally wipe the slate clean and begin working on new goals. This perspective makes it the perfect time to reevaluate your budget and make sure it’s ready to go for the new year. Here are 5 things you should think about when reevaluating your budget for the new year: Health Insurance Any changes in cost to your health care plans (medical, dental, and vision) will take effect January 1st. Changes to the cost of your health care may cause an increase […] Read more »

What Is A Budget Retrospective And 3 Reasons You NEED It

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    Budgeting is essential to successful money  management. You have to know how much money you have coming in, and what you’re going to do with it. Without doing that, you may forget about expenses, overspend, and accumulate debt. The tracking of income, expenses and spending is what most people think of when they hear the word budget. However, there’s another aspect of budgeting that many people don’t do. It can be called many things, but I like to call it a budget retrospective. A budget has a duration, although the length of a budget cycle may vary by […] Read more »

Investing in Stocks and Loving It: Top Tips, Tools and Tricks for Making More Money

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Making money from the stock market has historically been one of the easier ways to build wealth for many Americans. Investors don’t need large sums of cash to get started, and the opportunities to generate profits are huge. Yet many new investors tend to focus only on the idea of share trading. The belief seems to be that they only need to pick the right stock, wait for the share prices to go up, and then sell their stocks at a profit. In reality, successful investors use a combination of strategies to build up a profitable portfolio that continues generating […] Read more »

Using The Envelope Budgeting System On Vacation

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Vacation can be a dangerous financial proposition, even for the most dedicated budget savvy family. One might be diligent in planning out their spending in day to day life, but going into vacation mode can lower a person’s guard. It’s easy to justify not wanting to put in the effort, to just want to relax, not worry about money, and believe everything is going to OK. This kind of lapse in financial judgment is exactly what I’m hoping to avoid. My family and I are headed out on a cross country road trip to Florida later this week. We’ll travel […] Read more »

A Wine Sale, A Blown Budget, and Lessons Learned

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Even the most diligent of the financial savvy have an occasional lapse in monetary reason.  I don’t claim to be in the first category, but I can certainly identify with the latter.   When these scenarios play out in life, it’s important to identify what went wrong, what led us down that path, and how we can do better next time. Over the weekend my wife and I stopped by a liquor store that was having a wine tasting event.  The plan was to stop in to taste some new wines and picked up a bottle or two.  We did taste […] Read more »

Bad Things Happen and We Better be Prepared: How I Battled Cancer and Took Charge of Our Finances

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On November 21, 2005, my life turned upside down. Just three and a half  months before that day I had given birth to my first and only child, my daughter Lily. My husband and I waited six years to start a family, planning so we would be ready.  But no matter how hard you try, sometimes all the planning in the world doesn’t prepare you for the unexpected. After Lily’s birth, my health started to fail. I finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma. I was told I had a mere 15 months to live […] Read more »

Will Boredom Bust Your Budget?

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Has the unthinkable happened to you? You created a budget, even talked about it with your significant other. You determined the amount of discretionary funds available and how much you wished to spend, and carefully matched those funds to wants and needs. Yet end of the weekend analysis reminded you that somewhere along the way a decision was made to use funds outside the spending plan. How could that possibly be? The answer is simple; you spent out of boredom caused by lack of planning. This exact thing happened to my wife and I this weekend. We wanted to have […] Read more »

How to Become a Stay at Home Mom (or Dad!)- 16 Tips to Get Started

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How to Become a Stay at Home Mom (or Dad!)- 16 Tips

Becoming a stay at home mom ( SAHM ) or dad is an important decision a lot of families struggle with.  Making the decision to stay at home with the kids while the other spouse works takes plenty of consideration and planning if you really want to make it a blessing for your family. If you don’t consider the advantages and disadvantages of staying home with the kids, you can very quickly end up stressed, unhappy and broke! How to Become a Stay at Home Mom (or Dad)! That’s where this post comes in! Below I’ll show you everything you […] Read more »