Editor’s note: I’m Dee’s mentor in Bloggers Helping Bloggers, and one of the ways she can help grow her audience is by posting guest posts on other sites. Her website has recently undergone a gorgeous design makeover, and what better time than now to showcase a new blogger?
Hello Frugal Portland readers! Thanks so much to Kathleen for allowing me to do a guest post. I am a relatively new blogger, so in a way I am still finding my footing in the world of personal finance blogging, and it’s great to be making some wonderful new friends here!
My blog is called Color Me Frugal, and in a way this is the perfect name for me since frugality is something that did not always come naturally to me. When I was in college and grad school I sort of went by the mantra that I’ll be making money in the future so it doesn’t matter if I live it up now- I’ll be able to pay off the debt. Although I managed to avoid credit card debt for the most part, I really made very little attempt to live frugally while in school and unfortunately graduated with quite a large pile of student loan debt (for much of grad school I did not work and basically lived off my loans- bad!!) Cue graduation and entrance into the real world. When I began having to make payments on my student loans, the error of my ways really hit me!
Somewhere along the way I met my hubby, and we got married at the tail end of school. He also had student loan debt, but lucky for me he is just naturally a very frugal guy. After we graduated and started making money, I think my natural inclination was to let the lifestyle rise- I wanted to buy nice things for our home, etc. My hubby, however, is one of those people who just never thinks that he needs to spend money on himself or on “things” and over time I guess you could say that he began to rub off on me- thank goodness! Thus began my personal journey into frugal living, alongside my hubby.
Back when my hubby and I were first dating, we lived in a small town near a low mountain range. Oh how we loved that place. We rode mountain bikes and hiked in spring and summer, enjoyed beautiful foliage in the autumn, and rode snowmobiles in the winter. Over time those mountains became “our place.” We got engaged at a lodge in the mountains one snowy November day in 2004, and 9 months later we got married in the foothills.
Unfortunately we had to move for our jobs in 2006. Within a few years of moving away, we missed our special place, our mountains, and decided that our goal was to be able to move back there. Just one problem: money. Unfortunately there are not many job opportunities for our particular careers there (well, there would be some options for my hubby, but virtually nothing for me). Obviously we could take jobs outside of our fields, but that would almost certainly mean a big pay cut. Did this deter us from making it a goal? Definitely not! We just decided that we needed to create multiple income streams and get the streams flowing strongly so that one day it won’t matter if I never have a “real job” again or if hubby only works part time.
Great plan, right? That’s what we thought too. Life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into the best of plans, though. You see, along with our dream to move back to our mountains, we also dream of having children. And somewhere along the way it became apparent that dream was not happening. So for the last few years we have taken somewhat of a detour on our financial course as we have been trying hard to become parents, and spending lots of money to that end (it’s a really expensive problem to have, unfortunately). We are proud of the fact that we have not taken on any additional debt on our journey to become parents. At present time we are trying to adopt a child, and we hope that dream will become a reality soon. Until then- we have even more reason to live a frugal existence, since now we are trying to create multiple streams of income, get rid of our student loan debt, AND have children the expensive way. Are we crazy for trying to do it all? Probably! But this has given us even greater incentive to find ways to earn more, spend less, and be frugal citizens of the earth. Our life situation has kind of forced us to think outside the box, get creative, and work incredibly hard. Thus the genesis of my blog! Color me crazy. Color me humble. Color Me Frugal.
About the Author:
Dee is a personal finance enthusiast and blogger who is working hard to live a frugal lifestyle, ditch debt, and create multiple streams of income. She hopes to inspire others to achieve their financial goals by doing the same and writes about the journey on her blog, Color Me Frugal. Follow her on twitter @ColorMeFrugal, Like Color Me Frugal on Facebook, and be sure to check out her blog over at www.color-me-frugal.com.
