My Blog

Our Wedding Story This is how we planned a wedding on a $5000 budget. My husband, Tad, and I are college sweethearts from George Mason University. We got engaged our senior year in college. I was so excited to think about wedding plans.  We were 21 years old and hadn’t moved out of our parents house yet and needed to figure that out first. We enjoyed being engaged and focused on graduating college. In the meantime, I would drool over the wedding websites and magazines.  What can I say, I’m an American Girl. :)  We agreed then we wanted to [...]

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Microstuff.com. I guide families to gain financial confidence to take control of their lives and guide them towards financial independence.    What is financial independence? Financial independence means you have enough wealth and/or assets that generate income to cover all of your living expenses for the rest of your life.  It really means freedom to do what you want and to have enough wealth to live on without having to work. What do you mean?  “Have enough wealth to live on, without working?” Wealth is the money and/or assets that you [...]

It was Christmas Eve. We had just finished watching Home Alone (as is a family tradition) and my son picked up a book about origami. He thought it was a great time to start origami at 9:00pm. He wanted to start on the expert level and was asking lots of questions. Neither my husband nor I know that much about origami, and the book stated that you should start with the easy ones first. We pointed out to my son that we needed to learn the beginning of the steps from the easy section. His reaction was upset and in [...]

What are some of the rules you use to run your household? I was reading an article from an April 2018 Real Simple magazine called “Your Words: What’s the family rule that keeps your household running smoothly?”  This article really got me thinking about our own household rules for our family of 5 - me, my husband and 3 kids.  I really like all of the suggestions. Some stood out because they are the ones we already follow and some stood out as ones we should follow. My favorite one that we are not yet following in our [...]

Everyone has a story Everyone has spending and saving story.    What is your spending and saving story? I don’t want anyone to feel discouraged that they can’t save or they feel that they are stuck because they don’t “save” enough.   I truly believe everyone has a story and if you want to change that story you can do it. It takes some mindset changes.  You must break old habits while creating new habits.   I love Spending and Saving If we sat down and had a cup of coffee and talked about spending and [...]