This post may contain affiliate links; please see our disclaimer for details.
What a Couple on the Same Financial Page Looks like 🙂
Money plays a vital role between two people in a relationship. It’s no secret that money problems can be a big reason for relationship problems or even divorce.
One way to prevent this is to ensure you and your spouse are financially on the same page.
So how do you get on the same page with your partner regarding finances? This is a common and important question that many of us ask ourselves.
When I first married my wife we had many disputes about money. At that time, truth be told I did not have good money habits.
While my wife is great at managing money, I used to be a spender!
Over time my wife took some steps to help me change. I was willing to listen and started to change even though some of my changes came slowly.
Now we are completely on the same page and let me tell you, this has made our marriage much more enjoyable and happy. 🙂
Based on our experiences, here are 9 tips to use when working on your finances as a couple.
1. Understand Finance Backgrounds & Be Willing to Change
Couple discussing financial background & goals
Let each person share his/her understanding or background in finance.
Learn how each other was taught money growing up! You’ll gain a better understanding of how and why two people have different views on money.
When I first heard how my parents-in-law handle their money, I began understanding why my wife has such an amazing saving and investing mindset.
When my wife heard how my family spends money, she understood why I loved spending money to buy things I didn’t need, haha.
There is no need to be angry if your spouse has a different financial perspective because most of the time it comes from the way they were raised or lack of education.
INSTEAD, we should be understanding and helping each other by sharing money stories and explaining the importance of saving and investing.
When first engaged, my wife did not push me to change my poor spending habits all at once, but really gave me a better idea of what good personal finance looks like.
She shared many stories about how her parents worked so hard to save money and then invested in real estate and stocks, which is why they are free to travel everywhere, really, I feel like they travel every day haha.
After hearing my parents-in-law’s financial story and seeing how they have such an amazing life, I knew who I wanted to be.
A big thanks to my wife for sharing her story and background about finances, which sparked my desire to learn and change.
Being open and willing to change will help you and your spouse in many ways!
2. Read Valuable Finance Books (or Watch Videos)!
If you or your spouse have never had any saving, budgeting, or investing ideas since childhood, I highly recommend reading good books or watching videos to help change your financial mind which will open up a new world.
The first finance book I read was ” Rich Dad Poor Dad”. This book is so amazing. My eyes were opened, and a seed was planted for improving my personal finance and investing decisions.
Later, my wife found out about Dave Ramsey, and she started watching many of his Youtube videos. She always recommended a good one to me when she watched it.
My wife and I changed A LOT after watching Dave Ramsey’s video and learning about his baby steps.
Now we have zero car debt, and we regularly contribute to our emergency fund. Through hard work, I could graduate with my MBA student debt-free. We thank Dave Ramsey for teaching us to get out of debt.
We do not 100% follow his teachings because everyone has different views about finance, but in many ways, he has really helped our family’s finance a lot.
By recommending good finance books or videos and hopefully soon, your partner will be on board and on the same page with you.
3. Recognize the Impact of Bad Money Decisions
When you get married, everything becomes family-centered. Having stable finances is important, especially when children come into the picture.
If you or your significant other likes to spend money indiscriminately and doesn’t like saving money, you should discuss how those decisions will impact your family’s future.
For example, you should both discuss the need to save up an emergency fund, and understand the negative consequences that could arise from not having one.
Many people lost their jobs during times like the 2008 economic recession and COVID-19. If we were one of them and without an emergency fund, our family will be in big trouble.
But if we save up a 3-6 months fully-funded emergency fund, we will have money to cover our bills and expenses – talk about peace of mind!
Another subject to discuss is how to avoid or get out of debt. Here is an article I wrote specifically identifying 11 Strategies to Get Out of Debt Fast!
4. Be Honest With Each Other
Marrying another person means you both become a team. You are not independent anymore, but you can accomplish more with two minds and hearts working together.
Make sure there are no financial secrets in the relationship, and you’ll stay accountable and build a stronger relationship.
It is dishonest not to disclose your income, hide money, secretly spend money to buy what you want, owe an undisclosed debt, etc.
If you keep these things a secret, it will be a weight on you and hurt your mental health, and relationships. You’re burdening yourself with guilt and jeopardizing your partner’s trust in you.
This type of dishonesty will make both parties miserable.
If you and your partner are working on becoming on the same finance page, it’s important to be completely open and honest with each other.
I’m glad that at this point, my wife and I have not had any of this type of dishonest conduct, but have been very honest about our finances even before we got engaged.
Be real and be honest with each other. You won’t regret it!
5. Set Financial Goals Together
One of the best ways to get your spouse on the same financial page as you take time to sit down together and make the same financial goals.
What do you want your finances to look like in 5, 10, or even 30 years? Do you want to be completely out of debt? Do you want to save up your kids’ college education fund? Do you want to retire early?
The end goal for my wife and me is to achieve FIRE (Finance Independence Retire Early). We have been working hard for this goal to make it happen one day through saving, investing, and being wise with our money.
Setting the same financial goals together will give you a direction of where you hope to end up.
Once you and your spouse have the same financial goals, you will be on the same page and working as a team!
Goals also motivate us and give us a positive vision for the future. 🙂
When married couples have the same goals, it will also strengthen their marriage.
A budget is one of the most important steps to financial success.
Write down all of your family expenses and ensure that both of you have enough money for when those bills are due.
After expenses, see how much money you have left and can go toward investing for other things.
It’s also good to look through your bank statement history often and see where you both need to improve.
One way we love to save money is by using Mint Mobile where you can get a great plan for just $15 a month!
Part of budgeting should include investing –
M1 Finance is a great investment opportunity with its robust yet simple app. There are ZERO commissions or account management fees.
Deposits $1,000 or more into your M1 Invest account within two weeks of signing up and get a cash bonus of $30-$500 to that account.
It is not just a trading stock brokerage account but also offers an IRA option that allows you to invest in your retirement.
We highly recommend using M1 Finance to open a brokerage or retirement account! M1 Finance can undoubtedly help you on your financial independence journey.
We combined our finance the day after we engaged! I still remember it was in a taco bell at our school, and I gave my debit card to my wife because I knew she was better at managing money.
We were also working together to save our first house downpayment; combined finances helped a lot! We to on the same page when money is being saved or spent.
I’ve seen many couples keep their finances separate for many reasons like previous bad marriages, or getting married at an older age, etc.
No matter what kind of reason, separate finance may work for a few married couples, but it doesn’t seem to work for most.
One of the youtube channels we like is called Our Rich Journey. In their channel, a very happy couple worked together as a team and were able to retire at 39.
They are our example and motivation!
Combining finance has many benefits as you work together towards your goals and dreams.
8. Open and OFTEN Communication
When you work to get on the same page with your spouse about your finances, often and open communication is CRUCIAL.
Talk about what you and your spouse have accomplished and what you hope to accomplish next.
You can review/reevaluate your budgets, financial goals, and plans to achieve them.
You can also share your true feelings, happy and unhappy things about each other, and things you hope the other person can improve upon.
Oh, if your spouse made a good change, like eating out less, don’t forget to tell he/she a good job in your communication!
Give praise for wise money decisions your spouse is making!
My wife and I both like to communicate before bed, and we express ourselves very directly.
We are grateful that we can talk freely and openly and feel safe sharing our thoughts.
We feel an often and open communication can help us understand each other better, work better together as a team, and stabilize our marriage.
9. Love and Patience
Unfortunately, fights will often occur when money comes up in a conversation between a couple.
If you wish to get your spouse on the same financial page, you must find a healthy way of communicating and use love and patience instead of fighting.
Remember that you have been raised differently and have different backgrounds as mentioned previously.
Quarrels don’t typically end in an agreed-upon solution, but love and patience will help you get to a happy solution much faster.
You can’t expect your spouse to change immediately. It is impossible.
Big changes are made by small changes consistently and sustainably. Over time, these small changes will compound into big changes.
During the tough and painful waiting process, please be patient. Showing your encouragement and love is more useful than blaming and anger.
I made a rule with my wife: every time we fight, we kiss or hug each other and have to hold for three seconds. It’s amazing what a little love or affection can do to diffuse heated situations.
This method worked so well for us; we got better immediately and would laugh together.
You can try or find a method that could work for your marriage.
In Conclusion
I know that life is difficult when you and your spouse are not on the same financial page. You may feel helpless or hopeless sometimes, but hang in there! Read this post with your loved one and know we’re rooting for you!
The 9 tips below will guide you to get your spouse on the same page during your journey to financial freedom!
Share Your Finance Background and Knowledge, Be Willing to Change
Read Valuable Finance Books (or Watch Videos)!
Recognize the Impact of Bad Money Decisions
Be Honest With Each Other
Set Financial Goals Together
Budget As a Team
Combine Finances
Open and OFTEN Communication
Love and Patience
The change process won’t be easy and might be painful at times.
I hope you can use these tips to build a stronger relationship and become better at saving, budgeting, and investing for your family’s future.
Last but not least, if you need help, ask for it! Don’t be ashamed. Whether it’s financial counseling or other counseling.
Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences, we’d love to hear from you!
Disclaimer:
We hope the information in this article provides valuable insights to every reader but we, the Biesingers, are not financial advisors. When making your personal finance decisions, research multiple sources and/or receive advice from a licensed professional. As always, we wish you the best in your pursuit of financial independence!
After first getting married to my sweetheart, both I and my wife are just college students and our net worth was way in the negative. A very large chunk came from student loans.
Through patience, continual learning, and persistence, we turned our net worth from a negative to a positive of $350,000. This happened during our 4 years and a half years of marriage.
This post may contain affiliate links; please see our disclaimer for details.
Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com – increase of net worth
Right now, my wife is 25 and I am 27 years old. We are completely debt-free except for our two real estate property loans.
We are excited to share with you today how we went from being in debt to having $350,000 net worth in 4 years during college.
Increasing one’s income is very important to getting out of debt and building one’s net worth. Making an extra $5000 is easier than trying to save $5000.
There are two main ways to increase your income.
First, find side hustles. Second, find a higher-paying job.
Side hustle experience
My wife and I love pets, and helping take care of others’ pets has been an excellent side hustle.
We would help friends or family out to watch their pets. My wife is from China, so many international students don’t have family here. We would help watch their pets while they go back to China.
For us, this was not a job at all, and we both enjoyed playing with each pet (by the way, we would only watch fully trained pets, so it wouldn’t be hard to take care of them).
We also enjoyed using the pet sitting site/app Rover; if interested, click HERE for more details.
We hope you can also find something you enjoy for a side hustle!
Find a higher-paying job
Making more money means you can save and invest more money!
In addition to doing side hustles, I have constantly worked on improving my skills in the workplace to be able to find higher-paying positions.
Back when going to school I would do both full-time school and full-time work.
Having full-time school and full-time work is no easy task. As many of you already know, it takes grit and perseverance, but don’t worry there is light at the end of the tunnel!
I moved up to a supervisor position when I first got married. Next, I was able to obtain an account manager position during the last year of my bachelor’s program. I then became a product development specialist after the first semester of my MBA.
In total, my salary increased by $30,000 (all while still going to school!).
The company I work at as a product development specialist is amazing. They even offered me $3000 each year of tuition reimbursement.
For my two years of studying for my MBA, I received a total of $6000 for tuition reimbursement.
2. Save and Budget
“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep…”
Robert Kiyosaki
Imagine two people, someone who makes $100,000 a year and spends all of it and someone who makes $50,000 a year, only spends $30,000 and invests $20,000.
Which one is on the path to financial freedom and building net worth?
High income does NOT equal wealth. Saving and investing wisely are skills of the truly wealthy.
One way to save money is by using an affordable phone plan.
Mint Mobile has helped us save tons of money, especially during college! We all know how phone plans can get pricy with long, frustrating contracts.
Our friends told us about Mint Mobile many years ago. For many reasons, we are still using them today!
Mint Mobile offers amazing plans at incredible prices, with plans as low as only $15 a month! My wife and I pay only $15 monthly for our phone plans. Check out how you can save money with them today!
3. Pay off all debt except the mortgage
“Debt is the slavery of the free.” – Publilius Syrus
A lot of debt is being accumulated by individuals across the world each year.
According to business insider, the average American has $52,940 worth of debt across mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, credit card debt, student loan debt, and other debts like personal loans.
Debt is the enemy of saving!
Debt steals from the money you could be saved and invested!… when you need to pay $500 in debt payments a month, you are actually losing $500 that could have been extra investment each month.
When it comes to how to pay off debt, we are big fans of the debt snowball method and used it to pay off our $56,000 worth of student debt and had one kid.
The journey is not easy but is worth it.
We are 100% debt-free except for the mortgage. Staying away from debt allows us to save (and INVEST) more of our income and reach financial freedom sooner.
4. Invest in tax-advantaged accounts
Whenever we hear or see the word tax-advantaged, we pay special attention to learn all we can about it.
My wife and I love tax advantage accounts because we don’t want to worry about tax at all when we retire. The thought of being a tax-free millionaire in the future is exciting.
When you invest your money wisely, you can earn interest and dividends! You will be making money even while sleeping!
Compound interest is an amazing thing that can really go to work for you.
We highly recommend investing early and starting now. The growth may seem slow at first but it grows like crazy over time!
Check out this example below –
The average monthly student debt payment in the USA is around $400 a month. If you instead invest $400 a month in a reliable fund (like the S&P 500) with average an average return of 12%, you will have around $92,000 in 10 years and ONE MILLION in 28 years!
A great way to start investing is by putting money into some tax advantage accounts like 401Ks, HSA, IRAs, etc. Tax-advantaged accounts can save you a lot of money in tax!
M1 Finance is a great investment opportunity with its robust yet simple app. There are ZERO commissions or account management fees.
Deposits $1,000 or more into your M1 Invest account within two weeks of signing up and get a cash bonus of $30-$500 to that account.
It is not just a trading stock brokerage account but also offers an IRA option that allows you to invest in your retirement.
We highly recommend using M1 Finance to open a brokerage or retirement account! M1 Finance can undoubtedly help you on your financial independence journey.
Real estate investing, even on a very small scale, remains a tried and true means of building an individual’s cash flow and wealth.
Robert Kiyosaki
Real estate is a very hot investment topic and an incredible tool to help achieve FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early).
Many think a lot of money is needed to start investing in real estate, but this is not always true.
You may have heard of people who have achieved great success in real estate investing. Our success may seem small to some but we would like to share our story.
In total, we have purchased three properties. We sold our our first property to help me graduate student debt-free.
At that time we were just regular college students. We did not have a lot of money and did not have high-paying jobs!
We started our real estate investment journey with only $20,000.
Now $20,000 has become $250,000 in 4 years while going to school.
So what was our real estate investment strategy?
Buy as owner-occupied (residential property).
Do some easy remodeling while living there.
Save up a downpayment for the next property.
Buy the next house and rent out the previous one.
The past few years have been a very good time to invest in real estate in Utah. We were able to buy a house when the price was still relatively cheap, and then watch it increase in value.
The value is still increasing and having rental income as passive income is an amazing thing!
We hope the information in this article provides valuable insights to every reader but we, the Biesingers, are not financial advisors. When making your personal finance decisions, research multiple sources and/or receive advice from a licensed professional. As always, we wish you the best in your pursuit of financial independence!
This post may contain affiliate links; please see our disclaimer for details.
Real estate is a very hot investment topic and an incredible tool to help achieve FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early).
“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.”
Andrew Carnegie
Many think a lot of money is needed to start investing in real estate, but this is wrong.
You may have heard of people who have achieved great success in real estate investing. Our success may seem small to some but we would like to share our story.
When we purchased our first real estate property, we were just college students at ages 21 and 23. We did not have a lot of money and did not have high-paying jobs!
We started our real estate investment journey with only $20,000.
Now $20,000 has become $250,000 in 4 years while going to school.
We have bought three properties total but sold our first one in order to graduate student-debt free!
We don’t have a lot of money, so there is no way we can afford to buy rental property directly like some people or spend a lot of money to hire professional contractors to do remodeling.
Our real estate investment strategy
Buy as owner-occupied (residential property).
Do some easy remodeling while living there.
Save up a downpayment for the next property.
Buy the next house and rent out the previous one.
Now I’d like to dive into our own investing experiences!
I hope our stories can provide you with knowledge and inspiration for your own investing journey.
First Real Estate Property–Townhome
Shortly after my wife and I were engaged, we started to discuss whether to rent or try and buy a place after we were married.
My in-laws owned real estate in China so my wife possessed a very great investment perspective – regardless of us just being college students.
Many people would tell me, “Just rent! most college couples rent then slowly build up to purchasing their first home”.
My wife would tell me she would not pay rent to a landlord. This will be our first property and not our forever home.
So we decided to buy a place to rent out in the future!
She also mentioned the location we were looking at was an excellent location – close to two colleges!
The townhome we found was $100,000. It was an older, cute townhome built-in 1970 with two bedrooms and 1.5 baths.
The previous owner had some nice remodeling done such as repainting and new flooring.
We were so happy when our offer was accepted!
In total, our downpayment was $20,000. Since the downpayment was 20% of the house price we did not have to pay mortgage insurance, woohoo!
Our monthly mortgage payment was around $850 with HOA, taxes, etc.
I still remember on closing day when the employee at the title company said, “wow! your monthly mortgage payment is even cheaper than couples who are renting!”.
After living at the townhome for a little over one year we bought our second property (condo) and rented out the townhome.
We did some simple remodeling on the townhome such as switching old appliances to new (most affordable) ones, repainting, fixing some damages, etc.
The enhancements and repairs were really just simple. The total expenses occurred from this were around $4,000.
Repainting First Property Front Door
We were happy to find a very nice newlywed couple as our first tenants! The rental income was $1000 a month which gave us $250 extra cash flow each month!
We had been renting it out for around two years then in order to graduate debt-free, we sold it for around $140,000 total.
The original price we bought it for was around $100,000.
Second Real Estate Property–Condo
Before buying our second property (condo) I had received a job offer as an account manager at a financial software company.
At that time I switched all of my college classes to online so my schedule could be more flexible.
Upon receiving the job offer we started looking for another property in Utah. We decided only to do a 5% down payment for a new property.
The reason we didn’t do more than 5% is that we did not have a lot saved and we wanted to purchase a place as soon as possible. The housing market at the time was quite hot.
We knew the sooner we could close the sooner we could start building equity.
Being our second property, we could only apply for a conventional loan with a minimum requirement of 5% down.
We also had to pay PMI (mortgage insurance) since the down payment did not reach 20% of the loan’s total amount.
We eventually found a cozy 3 bedroom/2 bath condo built-in in 2002. The previous owner had new painting and flooring done which made the property very attractive to a young couple like us.
The location was also very close to our college, our first property, and my new company.
On top of that, the condo was also only 3-5 minutes from Walmart, Costco, and other shopping districts! Talk about a great location!
The total price of the condo was $171,000. Our down payment + closing costs were $10,000 total.
The monthly payment with HOA and mortgage insurance included was just about $1,200.
When COVID-19 happened, the interest rates dropped significantly. We noticed these amazing interest rates and decided to refinance this condo!
After refinancing, our monthly mortgage payment went down to around $1,000 (with HOA fees), saving us $200 a month!
After living in the condo for around 2 years we rented it out for $1,300. This gave us around $300 a month in cash flow!
Similar to our first property, we did some simple remodeling before renting it out.
We painted all the old cabinets fresh white! Painting is the cheapest remodel method and only costs us $100.
The microwave broke when we lived there so we bought a new one which was under $200! It was a returned one at Best Buy but had no issues. They had a hard time selling it so the Manager gave us an extra discount 🙂
Currently, we are renting out this amazing condo.
We checked condos in the same community and found the value of our condo has increased by at least $100,000 since we purchased it.
We are so grateful for the equity being built in this cute condo.
Third Real Estate Property – Single Family Home
Originally, we were not planning to buy a third property anytime soon. The plan was to wait until I graduated first with my MBA.
We started to look around at different builders just for fun. One of the builder’s sales agents wrote down our contact information and within one week he told us new lots were being released soon.
Since the location was close to my parents’ house, we decided to check it out but still just for fun.
Two days later the agent told us there would be a price increase of $5,000 for any new homes built. Any contract signed within the next few days would keep the lower price.
We thought it through and decided to go under contract.
The prices had been steadily increasing and we felt it would be a good decision to lock in – especially since the house-building process takes many months.
The new home was under construction in July of 2020. The building process was very interesting and took ten months to finish.
We officially closed on the house / third property in May 2021!
The total price of our new single-family home was just around $340,000 (with upgrades included).
We only did a few upgrades and chose the cheapest home base model so we could have a very healthy cash flow.
The square footage of the home is 2,300 with a lot size of 0.12 acres. We put down a 5% down payment which cost us $20,000 total.
Our locked interest rate is 3% with mortgage insurance being about $35. In total, our mortgage payment each month is $1,600.
We finished our entire yard 2 months after we moved in to welcome our sweet Samoyed puppy named Tofu!
Now we are working on furnishing our 833 sqft basement before our daughter is born. It’s a lot of work, but I’m learning many valuable handyman skills! 🙂
The cost for finishing both our yard and basement will be approximately $20,000. A lot we did by ourselves but some parts were hired out.
We have checked the current prices for the same home (model) as ours in our community. Especially with the basement and yard finished, our third real estate property has increased at least $100,000 in value.
Conclusion
The story above is of our three real estate properties that we bought in the time period of 4 years while in college.
You can see that we didn’t spend a lot of money to renovate our first two real estate properties.
There are two reasons for this –
I did not have a lot of handyman skills back then.
As college students, we didn’t have money to hire contractors.
But still, we make some nice profits! Just try your best to start saving now for a down payment!
One more thing I want to say is that we are also been very fortunate.
The past few years have been a very good time to invest in real estate in Utah. We were able to buy a house when the price was still relatively cheap, and then watch it increase in value.
The value is still increasing and having rental income as passive income is an amazing thing!
We are so grateful we have been able to see our real estate investments jump from 20K to 250K in 4 years during college.
We do not place all of our investment eggs in real estate but it has been a powerful FIRE tool!
We’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to drop a comment or question below.
Disclaimer:
We hope the information in this article provides valuable insights to every reader but we, the Biesingers, are not financial advisors. When making your personal finance decisions, research multiple sources and/or receive advice from a licensed professional. As always, we wish you the best in your pursuit of financial independence!
There are so many reasons to spend money, especially when kids come into the picture. Many people may find it incredible or even unbelievable that we save56% of our income with one kid.
But we do it and so can you!
This post may contain affiliate links; please see our disclaimer for details.
“Among respondents, 20 percent said they aren’t saving anything or don’t have an income. Another 47 percent are saving 1 to 10 percent, and 27 percent are saving 11 percent of their income or more”.
See below for the main reasons people don’t save more money –
Saving Money Survey From Bankrate.com
Before sharing some must-see saving tips, you probably want to know how much we are currently making right?
My wife and I’s total pre-tax income is currently $100,000 including both of our salaries (basic salary + bonuses) and our extra rental income. After-taxes are we are looking at about $7,000 a month (net).
The 56% is calculated using our net income/after-tax income which equals us saving roughly $47,000 a year.
Now I hope you’re ready for our 12 useful tips – we can’t wait to share them with you!
If you’d like to watch our YouTube video instead, please see the video below.
1) Pay off all Debt Except for the Mortgage
A lot of debt is being accumulated by individuals all across the world each year.
According to business insider, the average American has $52,940 worth of debt across mortgage loans, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, credit card debt, student loan debt, and other debts like personal loans.
Debt is the enemy of saving!
Debt steals from the money you could be saving!… when you need to pay $500 in debt payments a month, you are actually losing $500 that could have been extra savings each month.
When it comes to how to pay off debt, we are big fans of the debt snowball method and used it to pay off our $56,000 worth of student debt and had one kid.
The journey is not easy but IS worth it.
Now we are 100% debt-free except for the mortgage. Staying away from debt allows us to save (and INVEST) more of our income and reach financial freedom sooner.
2) Avoid Becoming ‘House Poor’
Someone who is house poor has maxed out their mortgage payments so the majority of their income goes to the mortgage.
BTW, those who are house poor are not only includes homeowners but also renters.
We know many people who have maxed out their loans when buying a home. They all have a very high DTI (debt to income ratio) which ends up around 45%.
Ouch!
45% of your pre-tax income all going to debt?! – Big NO-NO for us.
Our largest expense is our monthly mortgage payments but we had a plan when buying a home.
When applying for our house loan our goal was to keep all house costs (mortgage+utilities+internet) under 30% of our net income.
We feel 30% with everything is a healthy percentage. We don’t want to max out our house loan debt because we’d rather not be house poor.
By keeping our mortgage payment as low as possible we are able to have extra cash to save and invest – woohoo!
3) Mint Mobile – Incredibly Priced Phone Plan
Phone plans can get super pricy with long contracts!
Our friends recommended Mint Mobile back in the day and we have been using them ever since.
Their plans have incredible prices with plans as low as only $15 a month!
My wife and I only pay $15 each for our phone plans (a month). Their service has been very reliable. To see these incredible deals, click HERE or on the image below.
4) Cancel Unnecessary Subscriptions
Subscriptions are eating most people’s money every month!
Control the urge to get lots of subscriptions, it’s important to recognize wants verse needs.
Right now our only subscription is with Amazon Prime. Well.. actually that and my Xbox live account. haha
We are fortunate to be able to use our parents’ or other family members’ subscriptions like Netflix, Disney+, and others. Big thanks to my family here!
Amazon Prime has been amazing though and has been worth it for us so we’d like to share some awesome things about it.
Here are 3 main benefits which made us buy and KEEP it.
First, we love the free 2-days shipping.
Second, we love that Amazon Prime offers unlimited photo storage space because we have tons of pictures! If you need to pay monthly for online photo storage, why not just get Amazon prime bundled with the other benefits that they offer?
The third is Amazon music. Their music has been great at increasing my productivity and boosting my mood.
5) Side Hustles
Making an extra $10K is easier than trying to save 10K. The sooner you understand that the sooner your life will improve.
We love pets! Finding a side hustle you enjoy is the best.
We would help friends or family out to watch their pets. My wife is from China so she knew a lot of international students who don’t have family here so we would help watch their pets while they go back to China.
For us, this was not a job at all and we both enjoy playing with each pet (by the way, we would only watch pets that were fully trained, so it wouldn’t be hard to take care of them).
We also enjoyed using the pet sitting site/app called Rover, if interested you can click HERE for more details.
Another side hustle I took up was donating plasma.
You can make around $400 a month, sometimes even more! Each donation took me around one hour total and up to two donations can be scheduled each week.
Donating plasma was easy and is also for a great cause. I still donate plasma sometimes when they have a good promotion going on.
We hope you can also find something you enjoy for a side hustle!
6) Find a Higher Paying Job
Making more money means you can save and invest more money!
In addition to doing side hustles, I have constantly worked on improving my skills in the workplace to be able to find higher-paying positions.
Back when going to school I would do both full-time school and full-time work. I was able to move up to a supervisor position when I first got married. Next, I was able to obtain an account manager position during the last year of my bachelor’s program. I then became a product development specialist after the first semester of my MBA.
I understand how difficult it can be to leave a position or company you are comfortable with, but I was able to increase my knowledge, capabilities, and income!
Each change in job position gave me about a $15,000 increase in salary.
In total, my salary increased by $30,000 during school! I quickly moved to another position once I became comfortable with my job responsibilities and looked for opportunities to expand my knowledge and skills.
7) Buy a Second-Hand Reliable Car with Cash
The average value of a new vehicle drops around 20% in the first year of ownership, and will drop up to 60% of its value within the first five years!
Buying a reliable car with cash can save you tons of money! Here is my story below –
Ever since I was a kid I loved the Land Rover Discovery model. During college, I decided to get a car loan for a second-hand Land Rover that had high mileage.
I did not realize what I had gotten myself into…
At first things I was living the dream… or so I thought! I would go off-roading with my buddies but then the nightmare arrived.
The vehicle started having many small issues which were VERY costly to repair. Being a Land Rover model, the repairs and basically everything is very pricy.
The cost to fill up on gas was very high and the gas mileage was terrible. Then my tire blew out when off-roading with friends. The cost to replace all tires cost me almost a thousand dollars! I had no savings left over each month and needed to get rid of it.
I was able to sell the vehicle (after a long time) and used the money to pay off my car loan completely.
That was a relief! No more car debt.
I then purchased a second-hand Toyota Corolla from my brother-in-law at a really good price. My brother-in-law has his own car shop and Toyota is his number one favorite brand due to its reliability.
I was very happy with my Toyota Corolla as it had no issues. The gas mileage was also so much better compared to the gas guzzler I previously had.
See HERE for more on my luxury car nightmare story.
8) 48-Hour Cooldown Rule
We all have ‘wants’ that sometimes just feel like needs! lol
It doesn’t help if the thing we want is also something a friend or family member just purchased and is pressuring us to do the same.
My wife and I have set a 48-hour calm time to prevent misspending of our money. Usually, we calm down after a night’s sleep but extending it to 48 hours has worked well for us.
It’s important to distinguish between what you want and what you need – try finding someone else who can support you in the 48-hour cooldown.
If there is still something I really want I will donate plasma as extra money. For example, I really want the brand-new released x-box and I did not cool down haha. So I donated plasma and bought it.
9) Live More Frugal – Buy Second-Hand and Discounted Items
We buy a lot of things second-hand, and found it’s usually not worth it to buy brand new!
We like using the Facebook marketplace and have found items like our baby’s toys, stroller, pack-n-play, and more!
We also look for sales. Before going to Smith’s or Costco, we always check what’s on sale first.
Essentially everything we buy from Costco is on sale, no kidding!
If you have a baby, we highly recommend buying the Target store brand up&up for diapers and wipes.
Here are 4 reasons we recommended using Target –
First, they are one of the cheapest brands out there with good quality. We used Walmart store brand Parents’ Choice which is around the same price, but it doesn’t compare in quality.
Second, Target often offers “buy $100 get $30 off” promotions so I always buy a bunch during those promotions. I think with the promotions, the Target store brand up&up has the cheapest diapers and wipes. At least we haven’t found anything cheaper than that.
Third, Target also offers Target RedCard. You don’t need to open a credit card, just open a debit card! The debit card they have offered 5% cashback when you shop in Target!
Last but not least, Target also has a Target Circle Rewards program. Target Circle is a loyalty program where you can earn 1% in Target Circle earning rewards every time you shop!
The above four reasons can really help parents with babies like us to save A LOT of money. That’s why we are using Target store brand up&up for our babies.
10) Shop Around for Insurance
After we first got insurance we would talk about finding cheaper insurance or bundling but we didn’t do anything for a long time. Thinking back on it now we both regret not taking action to find cheaper insurance faster.
The insurance we currently have is for the car, house, and rental (landlord) insurance.
We switched to an insurance company recommended by our real estate agency. The insurance for our car, home insurance, and landlord insurance are combined/bundled.
Having your car and house insurance together with the same insurance company is usually cheaper. The new insurance company we chose gave us a plan that is cheaper than our old plan by about $100 per month.
Saving an additional $100 a month means you can save $1,200 a year! Making the switch may be well worth it.
11) Minimalize
We started watching minimalism videos and were very intrigued by the idea of simplifying our lives and removing things that do not add value.
This also gave us more motivation to not spend money on things we didn’t need. Having a minimalist mindset helps us know what we really need, we ask ourselves, “does this item really add value to my life?”.
We also don’t want to have too much clutter in our home so we will ask ourselves questions when shopping like “do we need this?”, “is it necessary?”, or “how long/much will I use this item?”.
We are not full-blown minimalists, but the idea teaches us valuable lessons on what matters most and how to save our income.
12) Invest Your Money
When you invest your money wisely, you can earn interest and dividends! You will be making money even while sleeping!
Compound interest is an amazing thing that can really go to work for you.
We highly recommend investing early and starting now. The growth may seem slow at first but it grows like crazy over time!
Check out this example below –
The average monthly student debt payment in the USA is around $400 a month. If you instead invest $400 a month in a reliable fund (like the S&P 500) with average an average return of 12%, you will have around $92,000 in 10 years and ONE MILLION in 28 years!
A great way to start investing is by putting money into some tax advantage accounts like an HSA or an IRA. Tax-advantaged accounts can save you a lot of money in tax!
F1 Finance is a great place to get started with their super easy-to-use app. There are NO commission and account management fees.
It is not just a trading stock brokerage account but also offers an IRA option that allows you to invest in your retirement.
We highly recommend using F1 Finance if you would like to open a brokerage account or a retirement account! For more details on how you can start investing with M1 Finance click HERE or on the image below.
Conclusion
The most important thing to saving your income is to cut down on expenses and increase your income! That’s how we are able to save 56% of our income!
I hope the 12 tips shared can give you a good idea of how to start saving half of your income.
Here is a quick summary of all 12 tips:
Pay Off Debt Except for the Mortgage
Avoid Becoming ‘House Poor”
Mint Mobile, $15 Phone Plan
Cancel Unnecessary Subscriptions
Side Hustles
Find a Higher Paying Job
Buy a Second-Hand Reliable Car
48 Hour Cooldown Rule
Live More Frugal – Buy Second-Hand and Discounted Items
Shop Around for Insurance
Minimalize
Invest Your Money
What other things are you doing to help you save more each month? Be sure to comment below and share with us!
Disclaimer:
We hope the information in this article provides valuable insights to every reader but we, the Biesingers, are not financial advisors. When making your personal finance decisions, research multiple sources and/or receive advice from a licensed professional. As always, we wish you the best in your pursuit of financial independence!
Greetings from the Biesingers! Welcome to our financial independence retire early (FIRE) blog! We are so excited you are here and to share valuable financial freedom and health content with you. For more information about us, click HERE.
