Well, cool. I just realized I have been blogging here one entire year.

Before joining this site I thought because we had money we had done very well. But we weren't really looking at the big picture. & frankly we had little money left.

My husband lost his job and I became pregnant in October 2002. We had $30k in the bank (cash) and had always lived on my income alone. Nothing much changed. We decided he would stay home for a few years with the kids. As long as we could swing it. We had plenty of money to hold us over. We just didn't really have much plans to save, but at 25 we were WELL ahead of the pack and knew we would have plenty of time to catch up.

We really had a lot of luck. Though I work for a small employer he kept my job open for me during 2 maternity leaves (no obligation under the law, beyond the initial 6 weeks disability - I took much more time). I can't say we never saved. We saved big for my maternity leaves. & with disability I don't remember touching much of our other savings during those times. So we didn't do all bad.

But I was lucky both kids came rather close together (we had hoped, but didn't exactly count on it). So dh's time home would not have to be prolonged as it would have if there was more space between them.

In the meantime my job went through some insane times. My pay went up 10% every year because there became such a shortage of CPAs. A lifestyle we planned hard to live on $40k suddenly didn't matter any more. My pay almost doubled in a few short years. So we started to enjoy more. We looked at bigger houses (never bought). We hired a gardener and put our son in preschool. Dh upgraded some video equipment. Our health insurance went from $100/month to $800/month in the course of 2 kids and 3 years. We didn't really think about savings because "dh would save his paycheck when he returned to work." If he did we would be no further behind in the long run. IT really wasn't the worst plan.

I freaked out though when we took our last $15k in the bank and bought a car. We financed $5k so we could keep $5k in the bank. It was a scary place to be. I knew we had not wasted all our cash (much had gone to retirement and good stuff. The car wasn't a horrid purchase), but with a newborn, we had a ways before dh was to return to work. Started worrying about saving again.

So I found this site and in the last year I have learned so much and changed our thinking so much about how we save our money.

This year I have came up with/saved $8500 I wouldn't have otherwise by managing our money better and looking for more opportunities to make money. (Focus groups, rewards, higher interest rates, freelance work; a lot of stuff that was little effort). [see my challenge posts].

I completely revamped my investments and am paying less fees and getting better returns.

I think the other thing that woke me up is when we mostly drained our cash we decided that dh needed to get some part-time work. But it was very hard in coming. For whatever reason. Discrimination at his stay-at-home status (very apparent) versus being over-qualified for kind of min. wages that would have fit his schedule, we kind of realizes we may be in this for the long haul. We never really wanted him to go back to work full-time in the near future. But part-time work was really hard to come by when we needed it. So we kind of realized maybe we need to rethink things. This is where I am most happy with my time here. We have restructured our budget and everything and are on track to not only pay all the bills on my check but save $5k/year for household/next car purchases as well as 15% of my pay (on top of my boss's 10% match).

If you told me one year ago that we would have decided dh would probably stay home forever and I could pull all this off on one check, gardener, preschool and all, I would not have believed it.

So basically I have loved my time here. I have learned a lot. I think we were on a decent path already, but we had lots of pitfalls to work around. Now we are on a MUCH smoother path.

I think the biggest things I have learned are to maximize my assets (make them work for me) and also to find extra money where we can. That extra $8500 this year has gone a long way to make thing possible. It's not "all" my wage. But finding a little extra to prevent the need of a second W-2 job is pretty sweet. We had never seen the point of working 2 full-time jobs, but we also weren't really utilizing the fact that we could come up with another few hundred dollars a month without working 40-hour weeks.

I know almost 1/2 my challenge is a big check my parents gave us. But last year I would have used it to pay the bills. The property taxes, the insurance. Maybe the daycare. This year it is all sitting in an untouchable efund. & that is huge. Just a huge example of how far we have come along. I am hoping to put all that extra in my retirement going froward and when dh does bring a wage, extras like that will go to investments and/or mortgage.

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Along the same lines I was just looking in Quicken (some nice comparison reports I never really looked at) and our grocery expenses are down 20% this year. I can't say we have really done much but eat smarter. The foods we buy haven't changed; our diet hasn't changed. We do eat very well. We have spent $3900 to-date this year and last year we were at $4900. WOW! Dh has been working hard to get the costs down. Just trying to think in terms of what we already have on hand, and clipping more coupons. Stocking up on things on sale. The difference is amazing. We have always pre-planned menus and shopped with a list. (Note: our "grocery" category includes all household goods/tioletries. I just lump it all in because we don't buy much in the way of non-food items). I am sure we could spend much less if we did the beans and rice thing, but no need for that!

Dining out is $500 to-date vs. $1k last year. Not the kind of thing we spent a ton on, but has gone down with our groceries too.

We've also been doing well with our gas expenditures. Our gas is about the same as last year but we have been driving a lot more (but a lot smarter. Driving the compact car more and consolidating trips). This stuff has made a huge difference too. More left over for other stuff.