Hey everyone! Happy Monday. This past weekend was a very relaxing one, but I did get a good amount of work done. The weather was also fantastic. It was almost a little too cold for windows to be open at night!
The picture to the left is from yesterday when we went for a long drive. We live in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and drove around in Illinois along the river. There were tons of boats out yesterday! Perfect weather for it. Definitely makes us want a sailboat.
I have been thinking about travel a lot lately. I am thinking about a road trip to the Pacific Northwest.
There are a lot of outdoorsy activities that I want to do there. I also want to go to Colorado in the winter time, go to Chicago to visit family, and hopefully go somewhere warm with a nice beach and good drinks.
An Alaskan cruise has been on my mind also. Can you tell that my mind is just all over the place? 🙂
This is what will be great about self-employment, the freedom to do things that I want. However, until I know how self-employment will be for at least a little while, travel will wait until I am certain that some long-term travel won’t kill our budget and savings.
Spending
Spending has been fairly low the past couple of weeks. I can’t really think of too many things that we have bought lately. I did go to a thrift store the other day and found some aviator Ray Bans for only $35 (yes, they are real), and I had to get those immediately as I was thinking about buying a pair, but at $150 I am not interested.
We did find out that we need to buy new tires for the Camaro already. AH! The car only has 8,000 miles on it which hurts even more, but oh well.
Food spending has been lower than ever, and we are doing great with eating in more often. It does help that we have been too lazy to go to restaurants and prefer the comfort of eating in our own home. We are wanting to start our own garden as well. Does anyone know of any good intro to gardening blogs?
Extra Income (does not include income from our main jobs)
Extra income was good in the past two weeks. September seems like it will turn out to be a strong month. I’m hoping that it will be better than August.
If anyone needs any help, check out my Hire Me page and let me know what services you are interested in. Lately, a few other website owners have asked me to help run their website while they are gone for just a month or two, so this is a new service that I am also offering. If you are starting a new job, about to have a baby, want to do some long-term travel or something else, please let me know.
I do need to start ramping up my side hustles, as lately I haven’t been trying to get myself out there as much and contact potential new clients. I’m really just focusing on providing high quality work to my current clients. However, soon I will have plenty more time and I want to fill up these time slots with other work of course.
I have started making some major steps towards my self-employment switch date. I will be making an announcement once everything is said and done so that I can protect myself. Stay tuned… 🙂
Being healthy
This section has been a complete fail lately. I must be doing something right because my wedding dress was a little too big when I picked it up, and I need to get it taken in (I ordered it to perfectly match me). I have been doing well with eating a little more healthy, and I have been going on a couple of long walks every week.
I have been thinking about joining that Diet Bet thing that everyone is talking about. You put something like $30 into a group pot and if you lose a certain amount of weight then you get to split the pot. Sounds interesting to me. I know that the dollar amount isn’t something that would kill me to lose, but I definitely do think that it would be a good motivator to be more healthy.
Have any of you done this Diet Bet program? Tell me about it!
Wedding Planning
My wedding dress arrived last week! I picked it up on Saturday, and all of my dress regret is gone. I am so in love with it. Some of you are probably thinking that I’m overreacting, but I tried the dress on in pink (they didn’t have it in white), so I was afraid that when it arrived in white that I wouldn’t like it anymore.
I still have not decided on wedding colors. I’m stuck between cream, blush and peach. All very similar but still hard for me to decide. We also need to send out our save the dates soon. And find a caterer. And a DJ. And find a tent, chair, and table rental company. The other things can wait a little bit longer.
I do have a post about how I’m churning credit cards to help pay for my bachelorette party in Vegas. Should be live either Tuesday or Wednesday. I know, I know, some people think that it’s tacky that I am helping plan my own bachelorette party, but I really do not care. I always plan our girls’ vacations, so why would this be any different? I also don’t want my girls to spend a lot of money on the trip, so I’m working on racking up points to help pay for the trip.
Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?
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I think the goal of being healthy is a good one, but I’m not sure that weight is really the best measure of success. Who’s really to say that a specific weight is “healthy” for you specifically? I would focus more on developing healthy habits and letting your weight fall wherever it does naturally. If anything, focusing too much on weight leads to more unhealthy habits than healthy ones.
On another note, I would love to go to the Pacific Northwest as well. One of my best friends moved up to Seattle a few years ago and absolutely loves it. Hopefully I can go visit him in the near future.
Yup, that’s why I’m not focusing on numbers. I’m focusing on how things fit and feeling better about myself 🙂 And don’t worry, I’m definitely not obsessively being healthy.
You are killing it with the extra income! I can’t wait to hear more about your self employment plans!
Being healthy has been a big struggle for me too! I find it so difficult to motivate myself to workout!
Thank you Connie!
That is something that I will have to think about. I really want to start being more active once I work at home.
Great job so far this month, Michelle! Can’t wait to hear the final word about the switch!
Thank you 🙂
Michelle, so happy you love the dress in white and that all your plans are coming together nicely. I know you definitely should not look to our blog for gardening tips as I tried to grow two tomato plants last year and ended up with two golf ball-sized tomatoes. CJ said I could eat both…
It was almost 16 years ago, but we saved on a photographer for our wedding by contacting a local college. One of their students, who had only previously done yearbook gigs, charged a very low rate and captured some very beautiful shots I don’t think a “fancy photographer” would have. He captured guests in relaxing poses, my two (now deceased) grandmothers talking in the pew, and a candle burning in one of the windows. Really beautiful and he was very inexpensive.
I like how you also wrote about what you are doing for side hustles, so we can keep you posted if we hear anything.
Haha I am afraid that we will kill our garden as well.
We already paid for our photographer, and she was a great deal. She has been super popular in the area lately so I’m glad we were able to book her beforehand because her rates have increased!
As always, I’m really inspired by your extra income Michelle! Your wedding planning sounds so exciting, all of those colours are lovely whichever you decide. Thanks for sharing some great reads, I’ve read a couple and will check out the other ones!
Thank you so much!
That post from Frugal Beautiful really interests me. Thanks for sharing that one! 🙂
Welcome 🙂
Michelle, wow! Congrats on all the extra side income. I always love to see how well you’re doing with the side income and I’m happy that you LOVE your wedding dress. I completely understand how you felt about still liking it when you get it. It’s so important to love the dress, good luck on the rest of the wedding plans!
Thank you Monica! 🙂
ahhh so happy that you love your dress – so important! (and i just bought mine yesterday, so hopefully i’ll still love it when it comes in in a few months.) i’d love to transition jobs as well so i’m looking into saving money too and am going to start looking into some side hustles too!
Thank you! And I’m sure you will 🙂
I will say go for the Alaska cruise. It is amazing. I highly recommend it. I would do one every year if it was cost-effective enough!
I really want to do it. Sounds amazing!
Great job in the extra income department! I’m sure that when you leave your full time job and have more time, you will start earning even more! How exciting about the dress and your bachelorette party in Vegas.
Thank you Eva!
Thank you Anna 🙂
Thank you! When do you think you’ll stay looking for yours? 🙂
Thank you!
Congrats again on the pending wedding. Exciting and busy times are ahead! And nice work on the income. My blog had a KILLER August, then a slump this month. But I haven’t spent much time on it, so it makes sense (of cents….HAHA, I CRACK ME UP! GET IT?!).
And definitely make s trip up to the Northwest. Absolutely stunning out here in the fall 🙂
Thanks Jacob! That’s funny that August was good for you because I thought it was bad for everyone! And haaha like your joke 🙂