Debt Free Life Hacks: Managing Money Like a Boss

Spending is easy. You go to the store, you see what you want and you get it. Maybe you're more into shopping online. How easy it is to type in your credit card number and hit submit? Even worse, you have different websites that save your payment details so all you have to do is throw some items into a virtual cart and checkout.  Spending can get out of control. You ever hear people talk about retail therapy? You're sad, so you shop, you're lonely, so you shop, you're bored so you shop, you're happy, so you shop. Soooo many reasons to shop.  Reasons to Stop Spending I'm tired of spending money. Have you ever looked around and thought to yourself, "I don't need ANYTHING!"? That's how I'm feeling these days. COVID-19 has us spending more time at home and probably more time online. This is where online shopping can start to get the best of you. In the beginning, I think I did quite a bit of shopping, some for my birthday, some since I couldn...

Every month, I have the same reaction to the percentage of the monthly budget that goes towards rent. It's a large chunk of money, and quite frankly too much in my opinion. Unfortunately, the rent isn't something that can easily be changed ( at least at the moment ). I decided that my energy would be better spent focusing on spending categories where I could make a difference, that is, categories that did have some wiggle room.  Below is the breakdown of the monthly budget.   Monthly Budget Income Allocation Housing 54% Food 18% Savings 15% Transportation 3% Giving 3% Personal 5% Lifestyle 2% Health 0% Insurance 0% Debt 0% You'll see that most categories are below 5% which is great, and no debt is an added bonus. So what next? A few weeks ago, I posted about going over budget on food and groceries. This was not something I wanted to repeat, so of course, it was a topic for the next budget committee meeting. Upon reviewing the budget it was determined that after housing ex...