21 Frugal-ish Christmas Gifts for the Littles

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Christmas Time Is Here!

Ms. DebtFree here to confess that I LOVE Christmas.  It was the biggest holiday in my home and I have many fond memories of making peanut brittle and English toffee with my dad, helping my mom decorate the house and arrange our Christmas village, and going to dinners at the homes of our closest friends

We never went overboard with gifts -in fact, we often filled tins with a variety of homemade goodies for our friends.  As a child, I remember carefully crafting my wishlist to include the perfect balance of cheap and pricier items.  My strategy was to give my parents and siblings plenty of options while ensuring I would get that one big ticket item I had been eyeing for months.

Passive Income Streams November 2017

It's my favorite time of the month again, time for another passive income update!  Our passive income streams saw healthy growth in November 2017.  While total investment passive income continued to rise, the main culprit for our increasing stream is the incredible growth of our cryptocurrency mining operation.  Let's break it down:

You can get out of debt and save money, I promise

I remember when I graduated from college 4.5 years ago.  I had just enough money saved up to move from Montana to the Pacific Northwest and rent a house close to my work.  After the first and last month's payments and security deposit I looked at my bank account and realized I had absolutely nothing left.  At the time I was worth about -$13,000 dollars.

Thankful on Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  We wanted to take a quick break from spreadsheets and number crunching to deliver a feel-good post to you all.  Mr. DebtFree and I are currently hiding out at home thanks to a nasty virus that wiped us out this week.  I had to call out sick from work and miss my first opportunity for time-and-a-half pay and left me feeling quite guilty over losing the pay.  After a brief period of feeling sorry for myself, I realized it's much better for me to hide at home and feel miserable than get everyone seriously sick (extra big no-no in the oncology unit!).

Last week I read an excellent post from The Minimalist Files and it inspired me to take another look at my "I need this" attitude.  With the season of thanks upon us, both Mr. DebtFree and I decided to work on our ungratefulness and realized we spend a ridiculous amount of time comparing our situation with our friends.  "Look, they just bought a brand new __" -insert car, house, phone, boat, etc.  With social media becoming a "happy moments only" filter on our lives, it's easy to get caught up in feelings of inadequacy -especially if debt is delaying things you want in life like travel, having some space from neighbors, or having more than fur-babies.

We realized our attitudes have been circling the drain for sometime and decided to join the masses in making a list of things we are most thankful for:

Portfolio Update: November 2017 pt. 2

It's time for the second and final November update to my financial independence portfolio.  This paycheck Mr. DebtFree made purchases of the following:

8 VDC @ 140.49 Yay for vanguard consumer staples.  I consider this a more defensive investment than other ETFs.  Recently it has seen a downturn due to poor performance by Walgreens and CVS.

10 VDE @ 92.03  Oil has been and still is in the gutter, I like to buy a sector when it under-performs.

1 VTI @ 132.99  My go to benchmark ETF fund.  This one contains all the good stuff with a low expense ratio.

4 VNQ @ 84.43  I keep this in my Roth IRA, this real estate ETF is so much easier to own than physical property.  I love collecting these dividends tax free.

For a total invested amount of $2514.93

This brings the total portfolio value up to $159,047.  

$2,000 of this money was my own investment after my paycheck and $514.93 came from dividends that were sitting idle in accounts waiting to be deployed.  This is why I love stock market investing so much.  These stocks are working overtime, shedding money into my accounts.  Not once have they called me in the middle of the night with a broken toilet.  I don't have to go through a lengthy eviction process when they fail to perform, just 30 seconds and a few clicks of a mouse and they are out of my life.  

According to my spreadsheet this new investment sets my time to financial independence at 7.29 years, just 2661 days left to go!

This post shows you how to calculate your time to financial independence and provides you with a free calculator to use.

Check out our previous November update!

Our Portfolio page has been updated accordingly.  Check it out to see previous portfolio updates and track Mr. DebtFree's progress to FI.

I sincerely hope you have found financial success this month.  Thank you so much for reading.

Goals: December 2017

Just a quick post today with an infographic for our December 2017 goals.  As each task is completed I will color in the black graphic to track our progress.  Each money bag represents $1,000 for our last goal.  I had a ton of fun making this one and I hope it keeps us honest and on track next month.  Thank you so much for tuning in!

What are some of your goals for December?

Frugal Trip 2017

Beach Life

Alrighty folks, you've got both of us here to tell you all about our super fun and super frugal vacation we took at the start of November.

For those of you asking yourselves, "Isn't November a cold time of year to be vacationing in the Pacific Northwest?" we can now confirm it was a very cold time of year for our trip!  Nevertheless, we had an amazing opportunity to spend two nights at the Pacific Ocean for a grand total of $22.  That's right, $11 per night!