Welcome to Our Financial Coaching Blog!

I recently learned about a magical place in the public library called the Library of Things. Apparently, public libraries have drastically upgraded from allowing you to just check out books and movies to now allowing you to check out all kinds of amazing things for FREE. If I haven’t blown your mind yet, just wait until I tell you the items you could check out with a Richland County Public Library Card. Read on to learn more about my top 10 favorite finds. I hope this helps you save some of your hard-earned cash!

Confession time… I’ve been with my job for over 10 years, and this year is the first time I actually did research on all of the insurance coverage options my employer offers. I had a vague sense of what my coverage consisted of, and I felt like I had what I needed. I hadn’t done an insurance checkup in several years. So, let me encourage you… if you’re in this boat, take some time to take a look at your current coverage and all of your other options to make sure you still have the best coverage for you. Here are some things to look for:

I know this one is a sensitive subject. Many people consider their dog or cat a part of their family and like a child. I have a dog and a cat and no children, so I totally get it. But let’s drop our defenses and be honest for a moment: pets cost a lot of money and live a long time. When you adopt a pet, you are not only signing up for (hopefully) 10+ years of love, fun, and companionship, you are also signing up for 10+ years of financial responsibility. So, it is important to take time to consider all of the costs to make sure it is an expense you can (and should) take on.

There are two ways to make more room in your budget for paying off debt and building wealth- spending less and making more. If you have already shaved off everything you can shave off your budget and you still don’t have enough breathing room to make progress on your goals, it might be time to look at your income. This may look like working for a promotion or a different line or work that may pay a bit better, but these are both longer term plays. In the short term, consider a side hustle. And don’t worry, if you don’t know where you would even start to think about this- I got you covered!

I’ll admit it. I thought that I had beaten the credit card system and found the perfect hack that would make me rich by using credit cards. I thought that since I purchased everything with a credit card that earned me cash back rewards, and since I paid off my credit cards at the end of every month, I was winning. But then I read a book by George Kamel called Breaking Free from Broke and here’s what I learned….

A home is the most expensive purchase that most people will make. The median sale price of a home in the United States last quarter was $412,300.  But this is just the sale price of the home. Let’s talk about the hidden costs of home ownership and how you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home purchase

Everyone has a slightly different relationship with leftovers. There are the folks who never take a to-go plate no matter how much food they still have left on their plate at a restaurant, and the folks who get a to-go plate knowing it will sit in the refrigerator for two weeks and then make its way to the trash. And then there is the other side of the spectrum… the people who never waste any food under any circumstances.

Last week my AC went out. It has been on its last leg for over a year and was already over 28 years old, so it wasn’t all that surprising to me, but it was still super stressful. I tried to get it to last just a little bit longer (summer is almost over! Hold on!!) by doing some of the things Google said to do like switch out the air filters and clean the coils. When it turned back on, it worked for a few hours and went back out again. That’s when I knew it… I would need to buy a new one.

A no-spend month is a month where you completely cut out certain line items from your budget. It could be your daily Starbucks run, Door Dash, clothes shopping, or literally anything. It is completely up to you what you want to focus on. A friend and I decided to cut out restaurants and shopping for “wants” (needs still allowed) for the month of July. This was my first time trying out a no spend month and it was definitely a learning experience. Here are my no spend July key takeaways: 

If you are just getting started, a budget is the best first step. Almost no one has unlimited income, so you want every dollar of your income to work for you. A budget can show you what is most important to you. Is paying off debt most important? Or saving up for a down payment for a house? If so, you may have to cut back on things like eating out or shopping in order to put that money towards the goals you have set. You get to tell the budget what to do!