The Frugal Siblings

The purpose of an emergency fund is to have some cash available in case something unexpected happens. Something unexpected could be losing a job, having a car break, or losing your phone. An emergency fund should not be touched for things that are not emergencies. Things that are not emergencies are christmas, routine auto maintenance, or any other bill that can be anticipated. With this in mind we can now think about how much we need for our emergency fund. When measuring the size of an emergency fund instead of thinking in dollars needed, I think about how many months of expenses I need. For example if I need $3,000 a month to keep the lights on and pay the mortgage (if you have one) then 6 months of emergency savings would equal $18,000. The best way to approach the idea of an emergency fund is to honestly think about what emergencies are likely to come up, how hard they will hit you in the wallet, and how likely can you just pay for it out of your day to day cash flow. Losing ...

Listen, I don’t do numbers. As you may have read by now, my brother and I are a good balance, like yin and yang. I like colors and flowers. He likes numbers and metrics.  So when it  comes to tools to help benchmark your journey to FI, I don’t tend to get them fully. But what keeps me motivated on my journey? There has to be little wins because the road can be long and it is very easy to fall off the bandwagon of freedom. My husband and I opened a Vanguard account a few months ago. We sold our first home and had a lump sum of money we were not sure what to do with. This is when I asked my brother his suggestions and the rest is history. They say to pretend you don’t have the money in the account and to just “forget” about it. I am not good at forgetting. I like to look at the account every few days and watch it grow. It’s like raising a child and its name is Van. Van is small at first and needs lots of attention, but does not contribute a whole lot. You research scho...

   The Journey to FI is a very long one. Depending on your savings rate it could take many many years. My target savings rate is 40-50%. At that savings rate I have about 17-22 years until I am FI according to the math. With that in mind the goal of being FI is to have your money work instead of you. Instead of just stumbling along I have a trick to try and encourage myself to save. I call it the 2080 method.    The origin of 2080  starts at a work day of 8 hours, a work week of 5 days, and a work year  of 52 weeks. If you do the math it works out to 2080 work hours a year. Multiplying your hourly wage by 2080 will give you approximately your yearly wage or if you take your annual salary and divide it by 2080 you get your approximate hourly wage. For example if you make $15 an hour working full time your yearly wage is about $31,200 (2080*15). If your salary is $40,000 per year then your hourly wage is about $19.23 per hour ($40,000/2080). ...

Like all good children I was taught to sit down and shut up. I stayed in line at school and followed rules to a fault. I have not changed much from this upbringing. I still try to keep my head down, not upset anyone, and follow the rules. The thing that has changed as I get older is I have learned that sometimes you have to push yourself to grow. One of the earliest memories of learning I have to push is when I was about 10 years old. One of my friend’s dad insisted that he had given me some baseball tickets and I had then lost them. I insisted up and down that I did not have them to my mother, but she did not believe me. After arguing with my mother, and a week of searching for the tickets I did not have, the friend’s dad called to inform us that he had misplaced the tickets and found them. I still remember the feeling of shock when it dawned on me that an ADULT could be wrong. To this day I still get joy when I remind my mom of the time I was right and she was wrong. In my ...

Disclaimer- We are all on the same journey here. My goal is to always be humble and kind but sometimes we all need to grow up a little. I can’t even start to think of all the times people have stepped all over me because I was “shy” or wanted to be politically correct. That’s enough ladies and gentlemen! The time to be correct is over. The win of the week goes to my brothers wife! Here is what happened. The bagger at the grocery store (we will just blame that poor unnamed underpaid person) forgot a whole bag of groceries. I mean, we are talking sesame oil,  fancy cheese and more. It was the most expensive bag BY far. So like most Americans, I said whatever, too much energy , donate it to the man. WRONG. Here comes my brother to the rescue. He said, they work for you! Remember, stores know that your business is their very livelihood. They should be treating you like you are royalty. So what does brother bird say to do- call. Mind blowing suggestion to me. So...