TwentyFrugal

Start investing with Acorns today! Get $5 when you use my invite link: https://acorns.com/invite/K5QSRE About two years ago, I was in the process of moving to Chicago to complete a Master’s degree. I was going from a steady paycheck back to being an unemployed student living in an expensive city.  The first thing I did was hit up the local goodwills and salvation army’s. They had things that my local thrift stores could only dream of. With Chicago being a huge sports city, I started buying up jerseys and selling them on eBay, Facebook, OfferUp, and LetGo. I made enough to make it a few months. I landed a remote job working for the company that I worked for before moving to Chicago. I was still only making around minimum wage. I was frustrated because I was basically putting my long term wealth on hold while living there. I found an app called Acorns that really made a huge difference for me. Acorns rounds up your purchases and invests the roundups in ETFs that you select based on r...

One of the most difficult things about getting in shape and staying in shape is accountability and consistency. This especially applies if you are trying to do it all yourself. I struggle with this personally. My wife and I have done this and absolutely loved using this tool to hold ourselves accountable. Here's how to use it! 1. Print out this chart and post it somewhere in your house that you have to pass every single day. Make sure you have three different colored markers or pens and a black pen sitting next to the location. (We posted it above our scale in our closet) 2. Pick 3 "completion goals" such as:  - Drink 1 gallon of water  - Work out once for the day  - Eat only whole foods today, etc. 3. Write these goals somewhere on the tracker and choose a color for each goal. 4. Each day, mark using the assigned color, which goals you completed the day of, or the day before (depending on when you fill it out). 5. Every other day, write down your weight for the day. (Thi...

The Cost of a Gym Membership in 2019 The average cost of a gym membership in the United States is as much as $600 a year. This is for your run of the mill average gym. Then if you get into the specialty gyms like CrossFit or PureBarre that you need a coach and classes for, your annual cost goes even higher. If you are a member of one of these gyms, I challenge you to make a working list of the equipment that you use at your gym and, in a separate column, whether that equipment is critical to your routine or if you could do without it.  Building a Home Gym After you have made this list of what is critical to you and what isn’t, you can start looking at the cost of this equipment. I recommend looking for secondhand equipment on resale sites like Facebook Marketplace, EBay, Craigslist, etc. I personally built my last home gym for only $250 solely on Facebook Marketplace. This was my breakdown: Bench press/leg press with about 300lbs of free weights: $100 Power Tower ...

I've been using these rules in the grocery store for about 3 years now. I've used them for bulking diets, cutting diets, and just all around healthy diets. 1. Pick your staples My staples are: Eggs Tortillas Salsa Spaghetti Chicken Milk Apples Brown Rice Assorted Steamfresh Veggies These are the things I can eat week after week without getting tired of them. If I am trying to stay on a tight budget, I will stick to just these staples, but if I can, I will usually try to spice things up. 2. Buy in bulk When I say buy in bulk, I mean buy your staples in bulk. If something is on sale, buy more of it and stock it up in your kitchen. You will be buying those staples regularly anyways. I try to stock up on meats when they go on sale and freeze them until I need them. 3. Meal Prep Buying meal prep containers and planning your meals for the week will help you be more intentional at the grocery store. It will also help you portion control which makes...

You just graduated college and you're trying to decide whether to buy a house or rent an apartment... There are many different factors that go into this decision. Do you have student loans? Do you have a giant car payment or credit card debt? How long will you live in that location? The list gets overwhelming. I am going to break down several factors in the simplest way possible to show you the options using estimated numbers. Let's say you have a monthly income of $2500 and you are fresh out of college with $65,000 in student loan debt with a 7% interest rate. You are trying to decide on buying a house or renting an apartment in the new city you are living in. The house you want to buy is $150,000 and a fixed mortgage rate of 3.33% with a 15 year mortgage. The alternative is renting an apartment in town for $650/month. Here is the breakdown: Option 1: Buy the house The monthly payment on the house:  $1060  for 15 years to pay off the grand total o...

These are 5 rules that I have set for myself that have helped me do more with what I have. Even with a low income, these rules can help you make the most of your income so that you have more to enjoy later. 1. Live below your means This is a virtue that my father hammered into my skull from day 1. In today's economic environment, it is easy to think that you can afford something that many of us actually can't.  For example: Statements like... "You can afford the monthly payment" "Take a little out of savings and replenish it next month" "You'll never get an opportunity to do this again" These statements may be true, but they are used to make you think you can afford something that you can't. The simplest way to look at it is that you want to have a personal net profit every month.  Net Profit = Revenue - Expenses Tracking your spending will help you find your monthly revenue and also see your monthly expenses. Cut out t...

I am 23 years old with a few months left of college and years of financial advice deep. My father is a financial advisor and hammered some key financial principles into my head as I got older. I grew up in a millennial generation with a financial goal of building wealth and establishing financial independence. This blog site will exhibit everything from my key principles, to my weaknesses, to referrals to the other key financial influences on my ideals.  Here is a road map that I have set for myself after years of research. This list comes from a mix of Dave Ramsey principles, modern financial advice, a bachelor's degree in business administration, and common sense. Start tracking your spending and create a budget In order to really get an understanding of where you are at, you need to start tracking your spending. There are many different ways to do this. Apps like Mint, Clarity, banking apps, and Every Dollar will actually link to your debit card and track your spending fo...