Pre-Approved!

We have been pre-approved for up to $350,000! yowza! Be that as it may, we have advised our real estate agent to look only in the $300K or under range and up to $330K IF the place has a suited basement with as separate entrance for rental income. There are four properties just under $300 that Jordan and I found and were interested in.  He's going to set up viewings for them on Wednesday as...

DIY - Wedding Invitations

I have discovered my new favorite website! While brainstorming the best way to develop our wedding invitations, I came across a website that lets you design your own and then pay to receive a high resolution pdf and .jpeg version - so that you can get them printed anywhere (or at home as the website promotes). It's called Purple Trail and I highly recommend it! I've found that...

Mortgage Help

Our mortgage broker sent us a couple of different finance options via e-mail and it was pretty hard to follow, so I dumped everything into an excel spreadsheet so I could understand it and share it with you. She sent us the breakdown of monthly/bi-weekly payments based on both 25 year and 30 year amortizations...

Shopping for a Home

After a lot of deliberation, Jordan and I have decided not to wait for home ownership by waiting for my aunt to be ready to sell us her home.  It’s been a year and a half now, and she’s still not 100% sure.  So, instead of continuing – we’re going to get pre-approved and start house hunting! Hopefully in a couple of years, we can still by her home as an investment property, but for now we...

Switch to Thrive

Yesteday I mentioned that Jordan and I were thinking about changing banks - well, we stopped thinking about it and just did it!  This is where we're at so far.... I transfered $1,500 from our house fund into our new joint Thrive account in case some of the auto-payments go through before our pay...

Update

I feel like I've been going at 160kph for the last few weeks! Since Christmas we've kicked wedding planning into high gear and while we set out to spend little to nothing this month, we adopted a dog and realized that when you're not eating out - you spend a lot more on groceries! I still think that we're in pretty good shape, but we did spend more then we intended to.  We went out a couple...

I said yes to the dress!

Last weekend my best friend A and I went, what we thought, we be a trial wedding shopping event. I wasn’t looking forward to it (I really don’t like shopping for clothes) and thought it would be similar to shopping for a bathing suit (really, who likes that?!). The plan was to come back at a later date with my mom and my other brides maid to make the final decision about what looked best. We met...

Friends & Finances

As you know, Jordan and I have been trying our best to get back on track this month and not spend more than we 'need' to.  There's always room for improvements, but I think we're doing pretty well.  As we made the decision to eliminate our allowances (just for the month) I'm struggling a bit when friends ask to go out to do something. My best friend wanted to go out dancing this coming Friday...

We Adopted a Dog!

meet aries Jordan and I have wanted a dog for a very long time, we have finally found the right one for us.  One of my cousins friends was going  to take her to the pound, and we didn't want to see her put down - so we took her instead.  We met her when she was just a pup this past summer,...

Engagement Photo's

Out of the 91 engagement photo's that were taken, we had to choose our favorite 10!  I was able to get it down to 30 fairly easily but I didn't think I could get it down any further.  I got in touch with our photographer and told her just that, and she gave Jordan and I one of our best Christmas...

Favorite PF Blogs

I recently went through my blog list and found that quite a few that I used to follow have dropped off or decided to 'take a break' from blogging.  My favorite blogs are typically those that are personal finance blogs - that aren't 100% 'how to' or 'ten steps to becoming debt free' style.  I like reading about real people and their real experiences with money management. If you...

2010 Utilities in Review

Below is a graph of our utility expenses for the 2010 year.  I thought it might be interesting to share this and to see if anyone else does a similar blog post.  Our average monthly bill decreased from $267.45 (2009) to $252.73 (2010), which is stellar.  Hopefully next year we can see...

December Spending Summary

It's time to share our Monthly Spending Summary again.  The month over month image is a bit small, but if you click on it you can view it in detail.  I've highlighted in green December, which is the month we're currently looking at, as well as added an average column. We had spent nothing...

New Page - Book List

Check it out!  I've started a new page.  One of my goals for 2011 is to keep track of all of the great (and even not so great) books that I read every year.  I'll include a few coments and links to the author's website in case you're interested in checking it o...

$100 Diet

Like so many others, Jordan and I overspent over the holidays.  We had an amazing Christmas and New Years and don't regret a dime that was spent.  That said, we do need to get back on track.  With this month being our roommates last, things are even tighter then they would have been (as...

Happy New Years!

I happily pilfered this image from this websi...