In a word, no.

But what a great experience! I always believe that you should shoot for the heavens because when you miss you will still fall among the stars—and the stars are a beautiful place to be. Here is a great example of this in action: in 2010 we had a personal savings rate (to permanent savings) of 29%…and this year we added an extra 9% to that, making our total 2011 PSR 38%! If we had not set this goal in the first place, we probably would not have made as much of a conscious effort to save a large percentage of our income.

A Few Large Purchases Held Us Back

Ultimately what happened is, well…life! We had several large purchases that we made with cash that would have gone to our savings account. These include a foundation repair, a second (beater) vehicle after ours broke down, and pre-paying the cruise portion of our Alaska trip for 2012 earlier than expected (due to my Mom finding a sale a week ago on the cruise liner we were going to use anyway for a savings of over $600!).

The great news about all of this is that we were able to preserve most of our savings by paying cash for these items. So while we did not meet our goal, being able to preserve and add to savings despite large expenses is a big accomplishment to me.  In fact, if we added in the large purchases we had, our PSR would have been 46.9%.

How We Put 38% of Our Income into Permanent Savings

While I cannot declare a victory, a 38% savings rate to permanent savings accounts (retirement/pension, long-term investment account, and a savings account we use as a last resort) is nothing to sneeze at. I’d like to mention a few ways we were able to achieve this.

You might feel the need to bop yourself on the forehead with a “duh” while reading these, but sometimes the truth is boring. If I can just one person meet their financial goals while boring a few others, I will have done my job. So here goes:

• We set the goal. I cannot stress enough how important it is to give your money a purpose, and setting a goal is a great way to do this. Dave Ramsey has been stressing for years that if you don’t give your dollars a purpose they will leave you.
• Once setting the goal, we worked backwards to achieve it. This meant that we calculated what 50% of our take home would look like, divided it by 12, and figured out how much we needed to save each month to meet this goal. Then we worked out a spending budget from what was left over. Finally, we set up automatic payments to our savings and retirement accounts based on the pre-planned amount. This meant that if we needed extra money in a month, we would have to go through the painful act of withdrawing it from savings and putting it back into checking—a feeling of defeat that made us resort to this only if we had no other options and only if the expense was necessary.
• We did not purchase a home that we could “afford” according to a bank’s pre-approved loan amount. We purchased one well below that, and within our comfort zone. Our home mortgage, insurance, association fee and property taxes are 17% of our overall income and not the 30% that many financial experts and institutions advise.
• We paid off all of our non-mortgage debt in September 2010. This amounted to an extra $950 a month in cash flow for us.

Our Financial Goals for 2012

Paul and I discussed what we would like to accomplish financially in 2012. We both agree that we want a second go at achieving a 50% PSR to long-term savings/investments. On top of this, we want to continue with our donations to the causes we have chosen.

Did you meet your financial goals in 2011? Have you set any for yourself and your family in 2012? How do you plan on achieving this goal? 

Have a wonderful New Year’s Holiday!!!

Part of Yakezie Carnival at Broke Professionals, Festival of Frugality at Magical Penny, Carnival of Wealth at Control Your Cash, Carnival of Financial Planning at Skilled Investor Blog, and Carnival of Retirement at Passive Income to Retire.

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

I am honored to announce that Frugal Confessions has been voted to the Finalists for Best Frugality Blog in the Plutus Awards! Winners will be announced at the Financial Blogger’s Conference in Chicago, where I will be traveling on October 1-2nd.

If you enjoy my writing, have learned from my writing and wish to help me succeed, I would love it if you could take the time to vote for me (please note, there are many categories during voting, but you do not need to vote in categories where you are unfamiliar with the blog finalists).

If you wish to vote, just click on the link below.

Thank you to all of my readers, and check back Wednesday for a new article!

One of the most profound messages I have ever heard was on a beer commercial. Written across the screen was something like this, “If you wait to live on the weekends, then you are missing out on 2/3 of your life.” This was powerful beyond the marketers’ attempt to sell us beer on weeknights. It reminds us that while we may wish time away when we are in the middle of something that makes us uncomfortable, or when we long to be somewhere else, time is constantly ticking and we must enjoy every moment we are given.

 I blinked around February, and now here we are almost halfway through 2011. I thought I would take a moment to breathe (first and foremost), as well as to check in on the progress made for goals—financial and otherwise—we had set at the beginning of this year.

1. Save 50% of our Take-Home Income: Our personal savings rate for 2010 was 42.9% in both short and long-term savings vehicles. However, only 29.8% of our income was set aside for ‘permanent’ savings (excluding things like vacation savings and large expense savings) that was untouched and will (hopefully) remain untouched. Based off of this, I set a goal of 50% savings rate to permanent savings vehicles for 2011. Of our take-home pay received through the end of June, we have successfully saved 48%. Here is the breakdown: 17% of our income has gone to general savings, 14% has gone to our retirement accounts (not including pension/401(K) as these amounts are subtracted from our paychecks before we receive them), 13% to investments, 2% to our vacation savings, and 2% to our large expense savings account. For permanent savings, we have managed to stash away 44% of income received in the last six months. Not bad! It should be interesting to see if we can continue doing so in the next six months, as well as make up the 6% we are short of our goal.
2. Renovate the Garage: We are just about finished this one! We began this renovation over Christmas break and only have the floor left to do (fill in a few holes in the cement and then paint a blue/grey coat of epoxy paint). It looks great…except for all of the debris from Number 3 on this list.
3. Renovate the Master Bathroom: We are right in the middle of this one! Once we got up the courage to start, we decided we might as well do the other downstairs bathroom at the same time. Thus far we have tiled the floors, sanded/spackled, and painted in both bathrooms, and completed the following in the master bathroom: modernized the closets, put a new toilet in, installed new vanities and hung mirrors.
4. Give More to Charity: We adopted a child through ChildFund International and continue to donate to the Goodwill. However, I want to work more on this. Paul and I sat down once this year to discuss what charities we are both interested in, but we need to talk some more.
5. Own a Flourishing Backyard Garden: Oh boy. Once again I have high ideals about a beautiful, bountiful garden…and the reality is so different. I blame the soil; up in PA the soil is dying to take seeds and produce something great. Here, the soil is like clay. I started a compost bin behind our garage about six months ago and hope to be able to incorporate that soil for the next growing season. Right now we have three stunted tomato plants, two basil plants (one of which looks promising), one cucumber plant, one carrot plant, one onion plant, and two green pepper plants. Let’s see if we can get a salad going from the harvest (there is sarcasm in that statement). If it can feed two people I will be surprised.
6. Experiment with Curry in the Kitchen: I made a pot of curry last year and it was quite yummy. After purchasing a curry recipe book I decided that I wanted to incorporate more of this type of food and flavors into our diet. Unfortunately I have not taken the time to make another batch yet.

What are some of the goals you set for yourself this year, and how is your progress?  

Sponsored by: Dividend Stocks

Hello Everyone!

Well, we are back in the U.S. What a refreshing time off, and a great honeymoon in a gorgeous location. Some of the highlights of our trip include: a trip into the Bavarian Alps (we were right down from Eagle’s Nest, a home built for Hitler…eerie), weiner schnitzel and apple streudel, walks and coffeehouses, The Sound of Music Tour (think singing off key through the Alps and a beautiful snow), and the Christmas Markets. Ahhhhhhh.

Onto the Roundup:

I’d like to share a hodge podge of some great articles I’ve read in the last week or so.

Passive Family Income asks Is it Frugal, Stealing, or Just Plain Cheap? Some of these are quite interesting.

Squirrelers asks Is Tipping Getting out of Control? Over the weekend we went to Pete’s Piano Dualing Bar (neat place!), and the person taking cover charge (that’s right, taking $8 from each of us) had a tip jar! I couldn’t believe it. Why would I tip him?

MoneyCrush is doing an incredible $6,000 donation match between now and December 11th. Send her your receipts after you donate to wherever you donate to normally (or to a new place), and she will add it to the match! Way to go!

MoneyBeagle discusses their transition to LED Christmas Lights. That will cut down on electricity costs this season without cutting out any Christmas cheer.

Finally, Andreas guest post at the Budgeting in the Fun Stuff blog with the Top 5 Songs About Personal Finance. I’ll give you a taste: Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems made it:).

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

I am pleased to announce that I was featured on Channel 13 news in a segment based on my article on the Cheapest Store to Buy Your Thanksgiving Meal.

As always, thank you all for your continued readership, support, and comments!

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

I am proud to have been accepted as a member of one of the Top Personal Finance Sites, Yakezie.com. My guest post is scheduled to appear on Monday (October 25th) went live today, and it is mainly an introduction of myself to the group of Yakezie Personal Finance Bloggers. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about why I started blogging, please go ahead and check it out.
Also, many of you know that I am a staff writer at the My Dollar Plan blog. I have several new articles that you might find interesting:

3 Membership Programs You Want to Subscribe to
10 Frugal Tips from the Tightwad Gazette
Uncovering Rewards Programs for Every Purchase You Make

Enjoy your day and this gorgeous weather!

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

I am using a plugin on my website to recycle some of my older posts because I have so many new readers that did not get to read them the first time around. However…today’s was about the move into our new home. Whoops (thanks for pointing that our Derek)! We are still living in the home we purchased a year ago, and loving it. I took down that post, and sorry for the confusion!

Have a great weekend!

Does it seem like it’s been a long time since we started our laundry room renovation, promising to publish the results? Well…it seems like forever to us since we began in December 2009 on one of the smallest rooms in our home. Here we are on reveal day, 9 months later, and I have much to report.

Why We Chose the Laundry Room

Several friends and family members, and perhaps readers, have wondered why on earth we chose one of the smallest room in our home that we only inhabit once a week on the designated laundry day (Friday mornings) to renovate. In fact, I believe in a fit of frustration, Paul also questioned this out loud. There are several reasons: it sits directly off of the kitchen for all to see, and also has a door right off to the back patio; we wanted to start small and stretch our renovation muscles on a room we wouldn’t mind if it didn’t turn out completely perfect; there is almost nothing better than a spacious, practical, sunny laundry room; the laundry room was heinous (the photos below truly do not show this…take my word for it).

Snags Along the Way

Rest assured that any project that takes me longer than 3 months means that there were several snags…this one no less. The major one was that there were many learning curves for both Paul and I. We had to learn how to refinish a wooden cabinet, tile the new vanity (thanks Matt!), set-up plumbing, measure accurately, etc. When we removed the old 1970s vanity, we were excited about getting a wooden utility room-looking cabinet open on the bottom for our gorgeous cast iron sink (a find off of Craigslist). Unfortunately, the tile throughout the kitchen and laundry room is original to the home and after stopping at 20+ stores and asking the previous owners where to purchase this at, it became clear that we would need to put a new wall-to-wall cabinet in that fit exactly where the old cabinet used to. Thus we had someone build us a custom cabinet. Taking the 8+ layers of paint off of the old wooden cabinet was a nightmare as well and took several months; we started with solutions but they were largely ineffective (and we tried three separate kinds). Then we turned to sanding, and trekked our project all throughout the house. Yuck!

How we Saved Money

We diligently saved money everywhere we could. We were fortunate to have several gift cards from guests at our wedding (thank you all so much!) that helped in purchasing materials. We diligently returned products back to the Lowe’s if they did not work or fit for a full refund. Finding a cast iron sink—something Paul and I were in agreement with from day one—on Craigslist for $80 versus the $500+ they typically cost was miraculous. We also had a family member of a family member build us a custom oak cabinet instead of hiring someone else to do so (who had quoted us $1200). We used tile leftover from the previous owners to tile the top of the new cabinet, and now it brings more consistency into our home because the tile is used elsewhere. Several family members and friends helped us out, which was immensely helpful (thank you all so much!). Finally, instead of purchasing our new closet system from the Container Store, Paul came up with the idea to find the supplies at Lowe’s (great thinking sweety!).

Final Costs

All in all, we spent $730. I can’t really gauge this against anything because we didn’t set a budget for the project (me…not set a budget? That’s right; your ears are not clogged). This price includes all that you see in the next photos, including the closet, the cast iron sink, the new sink fixture, the cabinet, paint, the decorations and refinishing the old cabinet (the washer and dryer were, thankfully, left by the previous owners).   

The Big Reveal

Here are the before and after photos:

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

Some exciting things going on that I want to update everyone with. I have updated the Debt Reduction button on my website…and can finally declare that Paul and I are non-mortgage DEBT-FREE!!!! Be sure to read all about it.

Frugal Confessions is on abc news (Channel 13, KTRK) discussing how to make your produce last longer for people who want to grocery shop every other week.

Finally, I would like to announce the winners of Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s Debt-Free Book Giveaway. Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, and Johanna O, as chosen by Random.org. Please email me your address at frugalconfessions [at] hotmail.com so that I can forward them onto the publisher.

As always, thank you everyone for reading, commenting, and engaging! Have a great Labor Day Weekend.

Hello Frugal Confessions Readers!

Just wanted to give you all the heads up that (you may have noticed) I am making a few changes to my blog. Nothing drastic, but I think they will enhance the experience.

Please note that the buttons up top are not functional yet–they do go to a page, but the page says “Under Construction“. I am working on filling these out as we speak, and they should be a great resource for everyone!

Also, I am playing with the ads (hey, a girl’s gotta eat:)). So please have patience and we’ll see where things go!

Once again, thank you all for reading, enjoying, and leaving comments. You guys are great!