Turning my focus from investments to expenses/budgeting

[Honest Abe]

I've been a MMMer for some time now... been married over a year, and after a year or two of obsessing over investment strategies (probably to the point of being a bit unhealthy) I feel now is the time to turn my full attention to income/expenses.

We're fortunate to be in a 2 income household without kids (yet.) We never really run out of money and we certainly don't come out as a deficit. We just try to be careful with our money and it works itself out.

But we can do better. Little things here and there that could make a difference. I fixed up our Mint transactions for the last 2 months.... it really does take a little work to make Mint work for you. But I saw some ugly things. And this come year will be the year that we "create" more money by saving it wherever possible.

That's not to say we won't enjoy life, but I don't need to obsess over market moves any more.. I need to let that go out from my mind. We've got plenty of time left to save...I've gotten the Boglehead thing worked out at this point.. All the money is where it should be. I just need to put my head down and earn/save as much as possible.

This is my challenge for this year. Challenge accepted. :)

[ShortInSeattle]

That's not to say we won't enjoy life, but I don't need to obsess over market moves any more.. I need to let that go out from my mind. We've got plenty of time left to save...I've gotten to Boglehead thing worked out at this point.. All the money is where it should be. I just need to put my head down and earn/save as much as possible.

This is my challenge for this year. Challenge accepted. :)

We're in a similar place and it's kind of great and kind of hard.  At a certain point you just need to put your head down and slog through the savings to your finish line.  Everything is set up, you just need to roll with your plan.

We got our investment strategy all tidied up last year and we are already good savers.  Like you it's now down to cutting any excess fluff from our budget, finding "fun" and leisure activities that don't require a big outlay of cash, and being patient while we we squirrel everything away and let it grow.

I admit that patience isn't my strong suit.  :)  I'm filling the gap by working on my non-career hobbies and interests.  After all, when I finally can pull the plug I need to have something to retire TO, right? :)

SIS

[Kristin]

We are in similar situation and have the same goal for 2014.  We have been married for 1.5 years now and fortunately share the same philosophy when it comes to saving/budgeting.  The hard part is that I graduated with my Master's this year and have a brand new student loan to tackle.  My wife is still in nursing school and will graduate in May 2014 with no student debt.  She is currently only working part-time, so we are looking forward to her earning a full-time RN salary starting in mid-2014.  However, she also plans to go straight in grad school for her NP, which will take 2-3 years part-time, and we will have to fund at least half of that through student loans as well.
So while we feel like we're getting ahead in a sense with increasing salaries and trying to be as frugal as possible, we will still have sizable student loans to tackle for the next few years.

Here's to working on earning and saving money responsibly in 2014!