The Frugal Siblings

Some of the links in this article are referral links. These do not increase your price but possibly provide me (and sometimes you) some kind of kick back. My Phones Cell phones are something that seem to have quickly gone from a “want” to a “need”. To add insult to injury if you have a child it is considered child abuse (by them) to not have their own phone by the age of 6. I unfortunately have taken this to to the next level. I have 5 cell phone numbers just for me. Yes you read that right if you wanted to get ahold of me you could try 5 different numbers.* I am not going to try to convince you to get multiple cell phone numbers but I can pass on what I have learned from my cell phone gluttony. Google Voice or Google Hangouts (free): Google makes a great online phone service. With google you can get a phone number from them to use. Once you have a number you can text or call using the internet. This works on smartphones and computers. This service is especially nice becau...

Financial independence is a weird concept for most people to wrap their head around, including me. The Think Save Retire Blog defines it as “financial independence is simple: it means that you are not beholden to a job to provide for your livelihood. Instead, your wealth supports your lifestyle.” This to me means you are not dependent on a job for income that pays the cost of daily living. The author at ESI blog defines it simply as “having wealth to cover expenses indefinitely” This is simple and to the point. It means you have enough money indefinitely to live on without having to work. The amount of that money depends of what kind of lifestyle you want. Bro breaks down his three levels of FI in his previous post. His three levels were Basic FI, Full FI and Baller FI. Basic FI is being able to cover necessities of daily life. Enough to put food on the table and a roof over your head. This level would be hard to maintain lifelong in my opinion. This does not budget money for...

Financial independence is not an all or nothing thing. If you are willing to live under a bridge it is quite possible to be financially independent for only a few thousand dollars. The problem is that is not the type of retirement most people want to live. I sure don't want to live like that. On the other hand it is also possible to spend your whole life saving and saving to try to hit a FI level where you can live in Monte Carlo. You may hit that level of FI but by then you might be 99 years old. For me there are three reasonable levels of FI to aim for. The first level is Basic FI. This level would produce enough money that we could pay our bills. There would really not be much money left over for anything else but we would be able to live. The second level is Full FI. This level would supply enough money that we could pay our bills and live a little beyond that. That might translate to some higher quality groceries, a road trip, or even a very rare flight to somewhere fun. The...

My brother recently sent me a link to a blog post. I would like to respond to this post at this time. I respect all authors and think blogs are an amazing outlet for authors The blog post is:   My Problem With the Success Narrative by Table for One The blog starts off by the author stating she has an issue with the FIRE community “universally ignore(ing) the role of privilege” . This author states that privilege can be something like race, gender to growing up in a stable community. I feel that these are characteristics that describes a person. Yes, some of these traits lead to advantages in life but they are just that, traits. It is up to the individual self to determine the effects of these traits. For example, I am a female. In the financial world females aren't traditionally as educated as their male counterparts. I made the conscious choice to educate myself. It was up to me solely to put in the time and effort, this was not determined by gender. I grew up in a priv...