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Yakezie Blog Swap: My Big Fat Fancy Wedding

May 4, 2012 by Jana 10 Comments

Today I “occupy” Jana’s blog as part of a Yakezie blog swap organized by Jacob at My Personal Finance Journey. It’s my first blog swap so I’m super psyched that I got paired with Jana, one of my favorite bloggers, principally because of her relevant and very honest posts, but also because she’s really accessible (Jana’s note: I think I’m flattered by this. Jury’s still out). Anyhow, enough about Jana 🙂 If you’re wondering who I am, my name is Nick (Jana’s note: Nick is, incidentally, one of my favorite bloggers. And not just because he thinks I’m awesome). I’m a father of two (and, relevant to this post, a husband of one…) and I babble incessantly over at Step Away from the Mall, a blog about my views on life and money. This post is about how my wife and I (two very cheap people) spent a ton of money on our wedding…

It’s admittedly a bit different than other posts about weddings in that it’s not a checklist of “things you can do” to save money on weddings (but some of you can find things “not to do” from it because it ended up costing a lot of money…). But I’m the one occupying Jana’s blog today and when I occupy, I do it my way… 🙂

Later this month “Wifey McGee” and I will celebrate our fourth anniversary. I don’t remember exactly how much our wedding cost (suppressed) but let’s just say I’m pretty sure it was at least twice the national average… We had a huge guest list, and I’m not sure what the average wedding “size” is, but we spent a lot… In fact, we spent money on a lot of things we either didn’t even notice or didn’t care about on our special day. We definitely could have cut some from our flowers and DJ (we now use a DJ who charges 25% of what we spent on our wedding, for example).

But we did a few things right… First of all we had an incredible wedding. My wife was a star! I was appropriately in the background… From what I understand, everyone had fun. We even had wedding crashers who said it was the “best wedding they ever crashed…” Second, we had everyone we wanted there. Third, we negotiated and received discounts on everything we got. But two “big issues” stick out from that lovely day that smacked us in the wallet…

The Issue: Too many people to invite.

One “Big Fat Greek family” on my side and two “Big Fat Extended Families” on my wife’s side. Collectively we have 8 full, half- or step-siblings and about 20 first cousins alone… So just inviting a “first-tier” of family would be big! We anticipated about 450 people if we invited “everyone” from our families and work with necessary “plus ones.” This was unacceptable (to her mostly…).

The Solution: Reduce “categories” and make it inconvenient…

We did not invite “kids.” I wanted to because I felt bad for parents who had to get babysitters. But my wife was against it, wanting an adult-only celebration with drinking and partying. So we “compromised.” (Whenever you see “compromised” in quotes that means McGee thinks we compromised but she actually won completely…).

Result: No kids. We ended up inviting between 350 and 400 people. Amount saved: We estimated at least $2,000 (we have a lot of kids in the family – note I now agree with her and am happy we nixed the kiddos.).

Second, we booked it on Sunday of a long weekend. This cut about 150 people from the guest list for sure. And not 150 of the close ones… 150 of the “cousins of cousins” and “bosses” or “if we invite him we have to invite hers.” The people we really wanted there didn’t care when it was (or where). They were coming.

Result: We had a little less than 250 show up – and each person who came was very, very important to us! It was really awesome. Amount saved: We estimated about $6,000.

The Issue: Having a “nice” wedding!

Definitions! Wifey McGee wanted a “nice, small” wedding. I wanted a “big, but casual” wedding. McGee’s definition of “nice” is the same as mine for “fancy”… haha. And her definition of “small” apparently meant immediate family and grandparents only! My definition of “big, but casual” meant a tent in my parents’ yard and barbecue for 500 people (this includes the kids that lost their invites…).

The Solution: Budgets and written priority lists!

We went the first month of planning without a budget. We figured we had a lot of money to spend and were cheap people so we didn’t need a budget even though we budgeted in our daily spending… Big mistake. Things started to get out of control. So we sat down and listed everything we wanted and an amount we were willing to spend. Once we had everything listed on the page we put priority numbers 1-25 and a budget for each. If something had to be cut, it was the lower-priority ones. Once we were done, we could spend up to the budget for each item and we didn’t freak out. She had all of the “nice” things she wanted and, while I didn’t “understand,” I was comfortable because we had control. Once we got to the bottom of our budget we didn’t spend more unless we cut somewhere else. If there was money left over we either kept it or added some of the lower priority items.

Result: Things like upgraded napkins and seat covers never made the cut in favor of things like open bar for everyone all night. (We had a food and beverage minimum, so we focused on adding to food and beverage items at the expense of other things that didn’t count towards the minimum.).

Bottom Line:

We spent way more than necessary for our wedding, which would have been amazing even if it weren’t somewhat fancy. But we did a couple of things right. We had a budget and stuck to it, cutting unnecessary categories of “invites” and “things.” We saved up and were ready to spend some of our money and our parents gave us some money they “demanded” we spent on the wedding (long story…). Spending without guilt was one of the rewards of saving carefully over a long time for something we “wanted.”

One thing we probably could do differently if we were doing it all again, which would have saved a lot of money would be the “location, location, location.” My family is north of Boston. Her family is south of Boston. So we picked a place in Boston to meet in the middle. At the time, I didn’t want to make my family travel too far. Reasonable for sure, but we could have moved it slightly south of Boston and saved at least 20%. The real important stuff happens inside the hall. What’s on the outside of the hall is really not worth “paying up” for, if you ask me. We also likely would have had less of a food and beverage minimum at a place outside of Boston. Finally, we could have saved money on flowers and lights, which were very nice, but I don’t think contributed that much over basic flowers and lighting (we splurged a couple hundred bucks for mood lighting at the last minute…).

And, if you’re wondering, that’s an actual pic from our wedding: The last time two cheap people spent like royalty….

How to Raise Your Children to be Financial Disasters

April 20, 2012 by Jana 34 Comments

This is a guest post from Andrea, a 29 year-old Licensed Clinical Social Worker, full-time freelancer and single mom paying off over $60,000 in debt. Visit So Over Debt to follow her journey out of financial chaos.

Like any parent, I work hard every day to make sure my son is growing up with the tools he needs to become successful. I make sure his basic needs are met, along with some of his wants, and that he learns to treat others with kindness and respect. I help him with homework and try to make sure his diet is balanced (which is difficult, since he’s the pickiest eater on the planet). One of my constant worries, though, is that I will fail to prepare him to deal with money responsibly.

My concern for my son’s financial future has roots in my own childhood. I grew up lower middle class, with a father who worked a blue collar job (and always had at least one business on the side) and a mother who stayed at home with my sister and me. Looking back, I see all the ways that my parents’ financial choices affected how I would view money as an adult. Despite the fact that my mom and dad were excellent savers and frugal spenders, I ended up with an addiction to shopping and spending that will take many years to overcome.

Wait a minute, you may be thinking. If your parents did such great things with their money, how did you turn out to be so irresponsible? That’s a good question, and one I have spent a LOT of time pondering myself. While I don’t blame my parents for my choices, I do recognize the opportunities they missed to prepare me for survival in the world of first, last, and security.

Here are the top 3 ways my parents raised me to be a financial disaster:

[Read more…]

What to do when you just do not have enough income?

April 18, 2012 by Jana 7 Comments

The following is a guest post from Kylie Ofiu who shares real ways to make and save money on her blog. She also discusses her journey and goal to become a millionaire by 30 (which is 2015), while being an at home mom in Australia. She is the author of 365 Ways To Make Money, a freelance writer, owner of various blogs and an international public speaker.

We went through almost a year of no permanent work. My husband was signed up with a couple of agencies who got him work here and there and he was looking for a job. We had a little bit of savings and some money in our mortgage we were able to redraw but it took 12 months for him to get a full time, permanent job which is not something we expected.

We had 2 daughters to provide for and needed to cover all our expenses such as the mortgage, food, petrol, water, electricity, insurance, land rates and so on. Sometimes, even with an emergency fund, you do not have enough money.

So what do you do?

There were a few things we did. Firstly we looked at ways we could cut back.

FOOD: I sourced as much food as possible for free by learning where wild foods grew in my area that were safe to eat, joining a food co-op, letting friends and family know about our situation (we had a few friends who had friends who got large amounts of free food to share out to people who needed it, and we needed it.) I already menu planned, but I did it more carefully and truly watched what we bought and ate.

I made lots of our food from scratch and stretched things as far as I could. We don’t have coupons where I live, so instead I looked for reduced items when I had to buy food.

MORTGAGE: Once we were close to exhausting our funds I contacted our bank and discussed out situation with them. They gave us 5 months of no payments. Of course the interest would still accrue, but we didn’t have to worry about paying. If we happened to have extra cash we could pay to reduce the interest, which we did, but the pressure was off for a while. This is obviously a short term solution, but the bank was happy to help us since we spoke to them before we missed a payment.

BILLS: I called our electricity, gas and water providers to negotiate. We were now classed as low income which meant we would be entitled to a discount so I made sure we were getting it. I also researched everything on ways to save money on these bills such as uplugging things not in use, shorter showers etc.

We also dropped all unnecessary expenses, I entered a lot of competitions and giveaways so we cold use any winnings for gifts and we kept our eyes peeled for free entertainment in our area. We learned to barter a lot and do many things ourselves.

Reducing expenses will only take you so far though. We needed to find ways to increase our income. We were both looking for work, but nothing was forthcoming, so we had to think outside the box and find ways to make money.

Ways to make money

I needed ways to make money from home that were flexible because a couple of the casual jobs my husband had (and I mean very casual, as in no work some weeks) had the potential to go permanent so we didn’t want to say no when they called him for work.

Garage sale: This was one of our first moves. We went through everything we owned and looked at what we could sell. I listed things online and we had a garage sale at our house. It took a bit of work but was worth it.
Resell things: I looked for items to buy and resell. At second hand shops and garage sales I kept my eye out for books I know sell well here, Tupperware, brand name clothing and other things which were small, easy to post and I could purchase cheaply.
Writing: I was already blogging, which during this time saw me go from a small blogger to the owner of a couple of sites, an author, freelance writer and public speaker. Most of this happened about 8 months after my husband ceased permanent work and none of it was reliable, but it was something I could do which brought in a little extra money. The more I did, the more confident I became which lead to me seeking out more work.
Haircuts: I am a hairdresser and beautician by trade so was able to fall back on this a little and do friends and family. It is not something I enjoy, but it is a skill I have. Look at the skills you have and how you can make money with them.
Mending, ironing, lawn mowing, cleaning, baby sitting, paper deliveries, pizza delivery and other services were all things we considered doing as well. Actually the more we looked the more opportunities like that we found which were flexible and many able to be done from home.

It is not easy when your expenses outweigh your income but by being positive, keeping your mind and eyes open to possibilities and letting people know you are looking for work, happy to barter and so on you can relieve some of the pressure and get back on your feet.

The Unexpected Budget Buster: Medical Expenses

April 12, 2012 by Jana 1 Comment

The following is a guest post from my friend, Suzanne Cramer. Suzanne is a certified credit counselor and a Social Media Specialist for CareOne Debt Relief Services. Suzanne writes for Divorce, Debt and Finances and A Straight Talk on Debt. Follow Suzanne on Twitter @SuzanneCramer1 and @AskCareOne where she shares her insights on divorce and managing your finances. And, while we’re on the subject of guest posts, head on over to Mom’s Plans where I have a guest post today.

Medical expenses are one of those budget busters that many of us fail to plan for. Case in point, my time came last year in May when my son was diagnosed as a Type 1 Diabetic. After getting over the shock of how this would affect our lives forever, I progressed to sticker shock from all of the medical bills we were racking up.

No one expects to face a medical emergency or a life changing illness, but it’s important to plan for them. Since I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been I will be facing the consequences for quite some time. Even the initial bills from my son’s diagnoses wreaked havoc on my finances and taught me a valuable lesson: plan for the worse!

If you are on your way to becoming debt free don’t let a medical emergency set you back. Here are three must do’s to prepare your family for the unexpected.

Make Sure You Are Covered

While expensive in many cases, health insurance is one of the best ways to protect you and your family from mounting medical bills. If you need to visit the doctor or the emergency room your insurance helps to cover incurred expenses. Without the coverage insurance provides, you could be left with hefty bills to pay.

Employee sponsored insurance. Most employers offer partially paid insurance for full or part time employees. If you are eligible it is in your best interest to enroll in one of these plans.
Unemployed or self-employed. If you aren’t able to buy an inexpensive group plan from an employer, call around and ask different insurance providers for quotes on individual or family coverage. Many websites, such as eHealthInsurance.com, offer quotes from a number of different providers, so you can one-stop shop. You could also call an insurance broker for help.
High deductible plans. High deductible plans offer low premiums and work well for relatively healthy families that don’t have recurring medical expenses, like frequent doctor visits, or expensive medications. Just remember they have a high deductible; typically anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 that must be met before any bills are paid. To help you save for the deductible you may want to consider obtaining an HSA account.

Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

An HSA is like an emergency fund for healthcare costs. These accounts are held at financial institutions, and they allow you to save a portion of your pretax income in a special account that’s used to pay medical bills. When you incur an unexpected medical expense, you can use the funds in the account to pay your bills.

There are several things to consider with HSA’s:

You must be enrolled in a qualified health insurance plan that has a deductible of at least $1,200 ($2,400 for a family).
Money in an HSA can be rolled over from year to year, so if you don’t use it, it continues to grow tax-free.
Excellent for your golden years HSA’s can be built up to pay for the increased expenses you may face in your retirement years.

Many employers are also beginning to offer HSA’s as a benefit to their employees, opting to put money in the account for you just for participating in the high deductible plan (which ultimately costs them less).

Government Assistance

Government assistance came through for me after my son’s type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Because of his condition I learned that he qualified for Medicaid in our state (Pennsylvania) as he was now considered a special needs child. Assistance programs vary from state to state but are definitely worth looking into.

For more information on what’s available visit healthcare.gov.
Several states also offer programs that provide health insurance to eligible children who are under age 18. To find more information on plans in your area, visit insurekidsnow.gov or call 1-877-Kids-Now (1-877-543-7669).

If you are unprepared and have to face unexpected medical bills that land you in debt there are reputable debt relief providers, that can help you explore your options for getting out of medical debt, including negotiating settlements or setting up a manageable monthly payment plan.

One of the best ways to combat rising healthcare costs is to be prepared. By researching your health insurance options, health savings plans, and government assistance programs you can keep medical expenses at bay and prevent medical related debt.

Have you ever been unprepared for a medical emergency and ended up with medical debt?

Money Tune Tuesday: Riptide

April 3, 2012 by Jana 3 Comments

Money Tune Tuesday took a little vacation in order to bring you my posts about Southland. Now, for it’s triumphant return, I bring you a guest post from my awesome friend and musical twin, Travis.

I’ve been a fan of Jana’s Money Tune Tuesday since….well pretty much since she started this blog. Jana and I have similar taste in music, so I always look forward to see what song she’s going to pick next. Like Jana, I often find motivation and meaning in music. The songs I enjoy the most are those that I identify with and can apply my interpretation of the lyrics to my own life.

For readers who are not familiar with my story, my wife and I are enrolled in a Debt Management Program (DMP) and are a little over half way through a 5 year program to eliminate our credit card debt. Over the course of the 33 months that we’ve been in the program, I have explained countless times what a DMP is, defended it against people who claim programs “like that” are scams, and discussed several times why in my situation it was the right choice over declaring bankruptcy.

Recently, I was switching up the play list on my iPod, reloading it with songs I hadn’t listened to for awhile. One of the songs that I loaded was “Riptide” by Sick Puppies (Jana’s note: Another Sick Puppies song, “Maybe”, essentially changed my life. More on that next week).

When I first heard this song about a year ago, it really hit home. Due to some of the discussions I had been having, doubt had begun to form as to whether we had chosen the best option to effectively get back on our feet financially. This song gave me the strength to re-assess our choice, and have confidence in the educated decision my wife and I had made. The people that were questioning our choice are not living in my house, looking at my bills, or supporting my kids. No matter what things may look like from the outside, or what other people may say, they don’t know the specifics of my every day life. I know best what is right for my family financially, and I am confident that we chose the correct path to eliminate our credit card debt.

“Riptide” is a hard rock song, however I found this awesome unplugged version that I would like to share instead. Check out the video, and take a moment to think about any decisions you’ve made recently that you may be doubting due to the opinions of people that just aren’t informed.

Travis is a contributing writer to the My Journey Out of Debt blog in the CareOne Community, and can also be found every other Thursday at Enemy of Debt as well as his own blog, Our Journey To Zero. He shares his family’s experiences, struggles and successes as they fight their way out of debt. As a father and husband he provides a unique perspective on balancing debt, finances, and family.