Winning Williams budget has certainly evolved over the last few years. Evolution like humans morphing from caveman with limited cognitive ability to the humans of today with complex thinking and rather strange behavioral patterns. But before we go down THAT rabbit hole, we wanted to present a simplified version of our budget for you the reader to download, copy, and make your own.
We’ve referenced why we think a budget is important here. Most importantly, nobody will care for your money like YOU. Maintaining a budget is taking ownership of your financial life. Analyzing the numbers makes it blatantly clear your strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities for improvement and optimization. We all want transparency from our employers, loved ones, and government leaders (good one, right?), a budget will give you clarity into your financial world of operations.
Many on the path to financial independence often talk about a big moment where they decided to give up their spendy ways forever and start saving for an early retirement. Our story has no such moment, sorry folks. Saving was never an issue for either of us. But, there was a time before we discovered the FI community when we blindly saved without early retirement or a specific goal in mind
So how did this all happen? When we met (and fell in love, and held hands, and made googly-eyes at each other), we were both already big money nerds. We both had spreadsheets, although Mr. WW’s spreadsheet was pretty sick.
We had prioritized debt repayment and with that out of the picture, we had a surplus every month without any direction to funnel it into. We looked over our budget and asked some questions: “should we put all this extra money into trips?” “could we try to retire early?” “nah, we don’t have that much money.”
So, we did what any typical American couple would do… we spent it. But, not in a “jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash” kind of way. We did the monthly dinner at a local restaurant with our church group. I bought a few groupons to get my nails done, had my hair done regularly, and started getting a monthly Birchbox. Mr. WW got two fancy SPF shirts. In all, our additional spending didn’t really make a drop in the bucket.
Somewhere during this time, we got engaged (YAYAYAY!) and we had direction for our extra money now. (No!) We knew that we wanted to be true to ourselves when planning the wedding, so while it wasn’t free, it was nowhere near the national average cost. A few months before the wedding, Mr. WW stumbled on a website called “Early Retirement Extreme.” This got us thinking, and sometime in 2013 we took the 21 day challenge.
While we didn’t buy into many of the changes (we wanted more than roman noodles, lentils, and beans), it opened us up to challenging common thinking and eventually led us to many other blogs (including MMM, Frugalwoods, and most recently Our Next Life). This all took place about six months before we got married in 2014. A great time to have these financial conversations, but too late to back out of our dream wedding so we still enjoyed that big expensive party!
In 2013, the master spreadsheet was born and financial tracking began. This has taken a life form of its own. We primarily started tracking all of our spending by category, Net Worth by quarter, and savings rate. We made progress detailing each line item and asking ourselves if that expense aligned with our priorities and values. It has now morphed into a 20+ tab spreadsheet highlighting different financial aspects (tax planning, asset allocation, FI planning, etc.)
The reason we are now striving for FI is to live life completely on our terms and without the day to day necessity of a job. By removing the chains, we can travel freely (and perhaps cheaply via slow travel), spend more time with family, and enjoy what this world has to offer. By living this frugal lifestyle, we know we can handle what life may throw at us (layoffs, downturns, other challenges) and with less stress.
So how does any of this personal information help you? If you are like us and want something more out of life, then check out the vast library of information available in the F.I. community. If you read through the blogs and think “wow, that’s great for them, but my story just isn’t that exciting,” well guess what ours isn’t either. We were big savers and now we are big savers with a purpose. It doesn’t matter how big of a change you made to get you to FI it just matters that you get there on your own terms.
Yes, the lull in posts from your favorite frugal couple wasn’t just something that you imagined. We spent most of the spring and summer handling the sale of the house and this article surmises a rundown on why we sold it, how we sold it, and why we probably won’t be purchasing another one in the near future:
Why We Sold
A few key items to remember about our housing situation: the house that we owned, which Mr. Winning Williams bought near the height of the housing bubble in 2007 (and fully paid off by 2012), was being rented out. In January 2015, we moved into a condo (that we rented) that was walking distance to work for Mrs. Winning Williams. Between the Florida housing market still trying to recover to previous levels, the idea of obtaining a source of cash flow from rental property, and a bit of sentimental attachment to the house, we rented it out. Caught up? Good!
The day that we left for our trip we found out that our tenants weren’t getting along. That’s actually a pretty tame description, but during the entire trip we were fielding calls from the tenants, their respective lawyers, and trying to think out a possible scenario in which we didn’t have to go to court and/or evict one or possibly both tenants. It was not fun at all. What had been our stress-free means of supplemental income had become a nightmare. In the end both tenants moved out with only minimal repairs required to the home.
We knew that taking on the responsibility (and liability) of becoming a landlord would be a new challenge, but we definitely underestimated the mental effort required. The level of stress that we both experienced and the amount of time spent worrying over and working out this situation helped us to both realize that we wanted to sell. As we have been embracing a more minimalist lifestyle we knew that the mental clutter of managing a rental property would be a great source of stress to eliminate.
Whether or not we are headed for another bubble, we took advantage of the higher prices because: $$$$$$
It also helped that the housing market in our area was on a tear this summer. However, we thoroughly vetted the financial implications, including cash flow analysis, return, etc. and the numbers definitely supported our decision to sell. We’ll follow-up with a post on this soon. We would definitely consider owning rental properties in the future, but for now it didn’t make sense.
How We Sold
After our tenants vacated near the end of May 2016, we went to work getting the house cleaned up. We spent all of Memorial Day Weekend cleaning and repairing and getting the house to look great for a meeting with a realtor. We thought the house looked amazing, even better than it did when we first showed it to prospective tenants in January of 2015. We were so excited and ready to sell.
Then we met with the realtor and quickly realized that what would work for us, would not work for the many prospective home-buyers on the market whose minds had been brainwashed by endless hours of HouseHunters and Love It or List It.
Cue mega eye-roll in 3..2..1..
All of the items that we had discussed upgrading but never got around to when we lived in the house, became must-do items for preparing the house for sale. We spent every single weekend working away at applying new paint, refinishing the wood cabinets, and scrubbing the baseboards. (Our 1800+ square foot home had a LOT of baseboards.) We slept on an air mattress in the living room of our empty home and had one last summer to say goodbye to the house where we fell in love, hosted our post-wedding reception party, and spent a good amount of time together.
The joys of power-washing sidewalks include all kinds of crud spraying back onto you. (Check out those clean baseboards though!!)
When the house was finally ready to go onto the market we waited, very impatiently, for the offers to start rolling in. As the summer was drawing to a close and families were starting to settle in for the school year we started to think of back-up plans. If we couldn’t sell within the first two months or if the listing price dropped below a certain price we would take it off the market and look at renting it again. But this was a last resort.
Fortunately, it never came to that. We had a cash offer from a company that purchased homes to rent in our area. Their inspection was beyond thorough and we had to pay for a few more items, but the house was sold. We got our big fat wire transfer and began working on our plan to invest the profits to help us get to F.I.R.E that much sooner.
A Future Free of Homeownership (for now…)
One of the questions that we have been asked many, many times this summer and fall is “so, where are you buying your next home?” To some it isn’t even a question that after selling our house that we would immediately purchase another one. (The same assumption also includes that this house would naturally be much bigger than our previous one with more tricked out appliances and fancy architectural features that make no sense).
To answer everyone all at one: WE ARE RENTING, FOR NOW.
While we know the advantages of homeownership, we also know the hefty cost. Not only do homes need to be insured and maintained, but they tie up a lot of our savings for new roofs, new air conditioners, and all of the myriad problems that can, and will, arise.
Since our current location is still ideal in the sense that we are saving A LOT on transportation costs is we don’t see a reason to move just for the sake of moving. We also save significant time and stress from reduce commutes. And until we are sure that we want to be in one specific place for a long time (like 20 year – the rest of our lives) we don’t think that the costs of purchasing a new home will be justified.
Our modest but completely necessary post-sale celebration!
Let’s add the sale of the home into the “WIN” column for us WinningWilliams and look out for more in depth articles on the cost of home-ownership. If you have specific questions that you would like us to answer directly or address in an upcoming post, please let us know in the “comments” section.
Yes, the WinningWilliams have been awfully quiet this summer. Have we given up our thrifty ways for a lifestyle of shallow extravagance? Heck no! But we did give up something really big – our house!
We’ll be doing some posts about our decision to sell, the financial pros and cons of home ownership, and what we are planning to do with the proceeds. Cue this post.
Like others, we wondered what we would do with the large surplus of cash from the sale of the house. Maybe you’ve had a situation where you suddenly have extra money: a birthday present, a winning lottery ticket, a visit from the tooth fairy after a game of amateur ice hockey. No matter how you acquired that extra money, it now needs to be put to good use. Below are some factors to consider when weighing the options for how to spend that cash.
Taxes
This is the least exciting option for everyone involved except Uncle Sam. He’s a greedy jerk, but you have to pay him. Depending on the type of windfall and the means by which you acquired it, you will likely have to deal with taxes. Be sure to look up the tax rules related to your windfall. Examples would include capital gains, inheritance, and/or income.
Debt
If getting out of debt is your number one priority, then this extra money could certainly help with that goal. Depending on what debt you have outstanding, you may be able to pay something off, or at least significantly decrease that burden. Factors to consider:
The interest rate on each separate line item of debt. At what interest rate is it better to pay-off debt or invest your cash balance? As of writing this article, we are in a super low interest rate environment with savings rate yielding next to nothing (online savings rates might get you close to 1%).
Say you have an outstanding loan with an interest rate of 4%, when you pay down or pay off that loan you are guaranteeing a return of 4% on those dollars because you have locked in that payment. Future you will save on making future interest payments. However, long-term stock market returns on average yield much higher than this and thus would provide a better long-term value (with a potential rocky ride). WinningWilliams Rule: if the rate of your debt is less than 4%, then invest, between 4%-6%, your choice, and any debt with a rate above 6%, pay that off immediately.
Investing
This is our favorite option because of the ability to turn some money into a lot more money over time. After weighing the options, that is the way we are planning to channel our windfall. Factors to consider:
In addition, you should have a high-level idea of what investments to make based on your asset allocation. Your asset allocation depends a number of factors, but most importantly, your risk tolerance and time-frame to invest. WinningWilliams is sticking to a roughly 75% Stock/ 20% Bond/ 5% REIT Allocation. We might give up some return over the long-run with 20% Bonds, but it gives us the comfort to sleep at night. All of our investments are in broad / diversified index style funds with low expense ratios (as J.L. Collins and many other FI gurus recommend).
Savings
If you want to keep some liquidity you can put this extra money into savings. Maybe you don’t have a large purchase coming up immediately, but you anticipate a high-ticket item in the next few months. Keeping some in your rainy-day fund or a specific savings account may help. If possible, use an online savings account over a standard savings account. The online savings account interest rates are still pretty low, but these are better than the significantly lower rate at traditional banks.
Donate it
Have you made a million excuses for why you can’t give to a worthy charity? Well, now you have fewer excuses. Your money can make some good in the world if you give it a chance. Research the charity of your choice to see how your donation will be used or put a stipulation on your donation to earmark it for a specific fund.
Spend it!
Okay, we know. We have been preaching saving and thriftiness as much as we can. However, sometimes it makes sense to have a little fun. You have worked hard at saving and you may feel that you’ve earned a lunch out with coworkers or a day out with friends. We plan on going out to a nice dinner with some of our extra cash, but let’s be real we are way under on our dining-out budget for the last few months 😉
Mr. J.C. – some might call him and the Lord and Savior of the investing world… No, not really. But J.L. Collins did write a fantastic book that has been taking the investing community by storm. Mr. Collins took the success from his online blog, which centered on a well-known and well-referenced stock series, and turned it into a decently written, well-informed book on the practices of investing. The book was reviewed by many of the well-known financial bloggers, including the famous Mr. Money Mustache, who provided a forward on the book. Most of these reviews were positive, pushing the need for any investor, novice to experienced, to read this book. Well, they were probably given a free copy of the book and were already connected with Mr. Collins. Our review on his book will be from the point of well, yes, of a free copy (only because we checked it out from the library), and with no personal connection to Mr. Collins.
Financial advisors stress the complexity of investing. The media inform us that the world is about to collapse. Your friends, family, and coworkers all have individual takes and perspectives on spending/saving/investing. With so much input, decision paralysis can easily take hold when we should be taking action to secure our future, AKA saving a large percentage of our income and investing the rest. If you don’t take care of your own future, NOBODY ELSE WILL.
That is what this book accomplishes. It directly gives you the answers on how to secure your future by making investments in the stock market, bond market, etc. Not only does it give you the answers to the most important questions, but it puts in perspective with analogies, examples, and real life stories. The point of the book is to make you comfortable enough to make the decisions on your own and with pure confidence. In doing so, you are given the simple guideline to avoid expensive financial advisors (do you really know how much they cost and are they really smarter than the market?), make decisions on how much you split between stocks, bonds, cash (your asset allocation), and how to do such things as you move through your different life stages.
Basically, it will give you the answers to solve a majority of your financial needs. Not all. But enough that if you follow his basic guidelines, will provide you with a very safe and secure financial future.
Drawbacks. The book is repetitive. VERY repetitive at times. However, this was to ensure the main principles were driven home. This is probably good for a novice investor to read, but if you are well read on the subject, you too will likely concur with the repetition. (We read A LOT on this topic, so we tend to sense the repetition in most books of this type)
I would have also liked to have seen some additional information around some a bit more advanced topics such as tax loss harvesting. He did discuss types of accounts and where your assets should be placed for maximum tax efficiency, but the next step would be how to effectively tax loss harvest, which can provide additional tax benefits. Also, how to plan against catastrophic health issues, perhaps the need to move into a nursing home for a long period of time? It seems this is an often glanced over issue that advisers and specifically the early-retirement community overlooks. But this is definitely a concern.
Nonetheless, read the book, especially if you can get it for free. If not, spend time and read over his stock series at: Stock Series.
A frequent debate on the financial blogs is whether a budget is an essential requisite to succeed in your financial progression. On one hand, if you are appropriately managing your expenses and save a good chunk of your income (over 25% towards investments and retirement if you want accolades from the WinningWilliams duo), then my initial thought was that maybe you didn’t need to create one.
Not true. False. Incorrect.
I’m now on board with the idea that every individual, unique in his or her desires, quirks, and personality, can drastically improve their financial outlook via taking a look at the tangible numbers behind their spending, saving, and net worth. Accurate and discrete analysis of these items will assist in your development as a person and thus potentially improve your happiness.
Budgeting = Direction = Happiness
And this is true no matter what stage along the financial health spectrum you fall.
Stage 1: In Debt
At this stage, looking at a budget might feel depressing. Depressing does not equate to happiness and is therefore something you easily would then want to avoid! You might have more liabilities/debt than assets and a negative net worth. How would showing that in a budget make you happy? You create a budget that will give you direction. You realize that today you become accountable for your actions. Today will be the turning point to getting yourself out of debt.
Open Excel, or if your old school: paper, pen, and calculator. Anybody still doing that?
List all your income coming in and all of your expenses going out. This will let you know how much money you have left to paydown your debt. We’ve detailed several posts on reducing your expenses.
Note: Every dollar in expenses that you reduce can be used to paydown debt. Bonus benefit: not only do you get the benefit of permanently lowering your debt balance, you are lowering the amount of future interest you owe. This is your first step in getting money to work for you and not against you. Think of the difficulty of running up a hill, the greater your debt burden, the greater the incline. But think of what happens when you get to the top of the hill and have your debt repaid. It’s a beautiful view from the top and it gets much easier with having money work for you on the way down via investments! Therefore it is vital to identify what are your essential expenses and eliminate as much of the non-essentials as possible. Be honest.
That incline is your debt, but as you get closer to the top of the hill you can look forward to the decline (which in this extended metaphor is saving!)
The next part is listing each of your debt balances by source. Listing the interest rate could help you identify your higher cost of debt to tackle first.
There are generally two schools of thought for paying down your debt: 1) focus on your highest interest rate debt first or 2) take the Dave Ramsey snowball strategy, paying off the lowest balance debt first and then rolling that into the next debt and paying that off, and so on.
In any case, start paying it down today.
The driving force for these actions is to create a visual depiction of your progress. Create an Excel chart that shows your debt balance going down each month. How BEAUTIFUL is that? How motivating is that to see the progress based on the actions you took today? And that my friends, is why you must start a budget, even if you are in debt. After a few months of seeing that progress, you can ensure some of your “essential expenses” will be further reduced. You have learned the power of your action and the impact you can make. Both seeing your actions reduce your debt and subsequent elimination of all debt will certainly provide a feeling of pleasure.
Stage 2: Wealth Building
At this stage, you likely have no debt outside perhaps a mortgage. You have control over your finances, have a rainy day / emergency fund in place, and are saving toward retirement / financial independence.
You still need a budget.
And again, it all comes down to the visual depiction of your progress to stay on track. In our consumeristic world, hedonic adaptation reigns. The Joneses just bought a second house, added a pool, TV, car, boat, jet-ski, 50 yard-line season tickets, are traveling internationally, and purchased a miniature horse for their kids, who of course go to the most expensive private school since that how else can they grow up in this mean and crazy society? Buy hey, you are doing well, have so much more saved that your peers, why not splurge?
OK, OK! This lil guy is pretty darn cute!
Because splurging and unconscious spending won’t make you happy.
The graph below takes a look at WinningWilliams invested accounts (only brokerage and retirement accounts). We’re heading down the hill and are picking up steam. You’ll just have to guess at the scale and actual numbers since you’re not getting that J This is just one representation of how we look at our numbers. But the visual representation goes to show that we are succeeding in our efforts and our “delayed gratification” will give us significant opportunities such as early retirement, freedom from financial stress, and giving back to others. Items that studies have proven to make you happy.
We still have a little ways to go to reach FIRE, but we can see our progress every quarter!
So maintaining a budget in Stage 2 is integral to making sure your actions align with your beliefs and interests. By continuing to track your expenses, you are holding yourself accountable. Is your spending in line with your values? After all, isn’t where we spend our time and our money one of the best indicators of what we value the most? Continue to track your expenses, continue to track your net worth, and align it properly with your values.
So, for our stage 2 readers, you basically replace the debt sequence with your goals and ambitions. Perhaps saving for a large down payment for a house, a special vacation experience, etc. etc. It still provides that visual cue that you are making progress.
The view from the top looks great!
At WinningWilliams, we take pride in living a lifestyle that conforms to our beliefs. We check our expenses to make sure we haven’t unconsciously picked up habits that don’t harmonize. We don’t mind if our expenses increase, as long as they are adding to our happiness.
WinningWilliams challenges you to take control today. We have to fight some inherent flaws of human nature to gain a true and long-term happiness, especially with marketing gurus telling us how inferior we are. A budget is a tool to systematically “check-in”. It doesn’t need to be an elaborate or intricate model. If you don’t understand Excel, then this is the time to learn it. Maybe you’ll turn into nerds like WinningWilliams, getting hours of satisfaction from budget review time with your significant other. Oh and that’s free too. Challenge one another or even a friend to meet your goals. Nonetheless, what you did yesterday is in the past and doesn’t matter, but what you do today does.
A few months ago we sat down to calculate how much of our budget was allocated to food. The magic number came down to a $4.42 cost per day. This was amazing for us to realize as we focus on keeping our costs low, but we always want to eat healthful meals that will provide nourishment.
Given the recent trend of delivery-service businesses, it appears that meals are now available on delivery. And not just pizza or fast food, there are several businesses popping up that will deliver perfectly portioned meals with fruits, veggies, and organic ingredients to your doorstep. They all promise to include wonderfully delicious recipes and each ingredient is given to you in the exact amount that you need to cook with. Sounds great, right?
Well, we tried it out for ourselves. We can usually spot something that is too good to be true when we see it, but we decided to give it a shot. A friend sent us a free-trial to Blue Apron so we decided to test it out. We naturally set the automatic payment to engage the free trial and then cancelled it before our card was charged for the next shipment.
What we did receive:
The box that arrived was huge and contained lots of food, a portion of meats that were packed in ice in a styrofoam containers, and lots of veggies. The recipes that we received were indeed delicious.
Our thoughts:
Positive:
The recipes got us out of our food routine and prompted us to sit down and enjoy a more romantic dinner than we usually would on a weeknight.
Negative:
We love our meal prep on Sundays. Especially when we are in-training for a race, those hours on weeknights become very valuable and spending time each night cooking was an extra strain on our time.
Lots and lots of packaging. Each ingredient was individually packaged. While this took the guesswork out of the recipe and we didn’t have to get out our measuring cups, it was a lot of extra waste. While we aren’t living a 0-trash lifestyle, we do try to be conscientious of our impact.
The cost was laughable compared to what we usually eat on. The plan that we tried for free was the 2 person plan and would have cost $59.99 per week had we continued. The Blue Apron website estimates $9.99 per serving. That is more than double our daily food cost for one serving. It just doesn’t add up for us.
While this may be a good option for those looking to start making their meals in a more healthy way, we are already in that routine. If you can afford the added cost, don’t mind the cooking time, and want to try something new and healthy, by all means give this service a try. For those looking to save money to pay down their debt, stick with Aldi.
We saved over $1500 (or 40% of the overall cost) on our latest trip. Here’s how:
Points redeemed for flights
Points redeemed for some hotels
Rental car price reduction
Staying domestic
While we love to save and tend to be naturally very frugal, we love to travel. Ever since we met back in 2010 we have been planning for and taking trips together. We blew it out of the water last year with our trip to Italy. (We tried our best to save, and the Euro being down helped, but it was still costly.)
This year we took our Great American road trip to the many National Parks in Arizona and Utah. If you want to stay on track with your savings while still enjoying all the the world has to offer, try some of these techniques for your next trip:
Points Redeemed for Flights
As we mentioned several months ago, Mr. Winning Williams took an online course in “Travel Hacking.” The course exposed him to many new ways to save for travel. After completing the course we took action and started churning to earn more travel points. (We recommend this FREE course and if you want to take it go to TravelMiles101).
Through the process of churning we were able to generate a hefty amount of points relatively quickly. When we booked our flights through Southwest we redeemed a portion of our points so that our tickets, originally $668, cost only $22 in fees. BAM: Savings!
We did quite a bit of research before spending these points though. We knew that we wanted to see the Grand Canyon and the Mighty 5 Parks in Utah. Originally we planned to fly into Salt Lake City, head south through the Utah Parks, and end in the Grand Canyon. We looked at the flights into Salt Lake City and out of Vegas, and then again out of Phoenix. And then we flipped the entire trip and looked at flights arriving into Phoenix and leaving from Salt Lake City. Finally we decided on a Friday evening flight into Phoenix and a flight out of Denver 16 days later. This was the best option to maximize these points AND our time. We utilized two important tactics for realizing inexpensive travel: 1) being flexible and 2) doing our research.
Points Redeemed for Hotels
We didn’t save as much here as we wanted; however, we still utilized some points. We saved $287 on hotels using our points through Hyatt for our first and last nights of the trip. We ended up spending $1367 on lodging for the trip which works out to $85 per day.
As you might imagine some of the stops on our trip didn’t have a lot of options for hotels. While there were chains hotels, we didn’t have points with each of them. Cashing in our Chase Ultimate Rewards for each hotel along the way didn’t make sense given the points to dollars ratio. We decided to save those points for a later trip and saw that it made sense to spend on some of the small hotels. Fortunately, some were local non-chain establishments so we could feel better about supporting the community we stayed in.
Our best value was the Best Western that we stayed in during our visit to Page, AZ. We paid less than $70 that night and were upgraded to a Deluxe King Suite because it was our anniversary and we were Rewards Members. We didn’t really need to additional space, but it was nice to feel like we got the royal treatment. Bonus tip: become award members at each of the chains (hotels, airlines, etc). Sometimes surprise upgrades result.
Our first fancy hotel room. We spent $0 for this first stay thanks to our Hyatt points!
Rental Car Reduction
As you might imagine, we had to put a little bit of effort into saving $1500 on our trip. The biggest savings by-far were on the rental car. We knew that we would need a vehicle so that we could drive from Phoenix, AZ through all of the parks and then out to Denver, CO for our flight home.
After we researched and did a price comparison on all the major rental car services we landed on Enterprise. They had a decent rate, allowed for unlimited mileage, and offered a slight discount through USAA. We knew not to book our pick-up at the airport. Instead we booked our pick-up at an Enterprise local not even 2 miles from the Hyatt that we stayed at for the first night of our trip. The complimentary hotel shuttle dropped us off right as the branch was opening.
Our original rate was $678. UGHHH, but it worked out to less than $48/day so it wasn’t too horrible (we picked up the car on Day 2 of the trip).
Because Mr. Winning Williams took the course on Travel Hacking he knew to subscribe to AutoSlash. We received emails on several different occasions letting us know that Enterprise was offering a lower rate. Each time we verified the lower rate on the Enterprise website and contacted their customer service team directly to adjust our booking.
The final cost of the rental car was just $130. That’s less than $9/day and savings of nearly $550! We were able to drop off out of state, kept the unlimited mileage, and also upgraded from a Basic to Full Size rental which helped when Mr. Winning Williams was navigating snow-covered roads. BAM: Savings!
Staying Domestic
While traveling abroad has many benefits, we were happy to spend our anniversary trip this year in the comfort of our own beautiful country. We knew the road signs, we knew the language, and we knew what to expect at the grocery store.
Food
On previous trips we relied on local cafes and restaurants for meals.
Of the 16 mornings for our trip, only 4 were without a provided breakfast.
We also made our first stop on our Great American roadtrip : Walmart! We stocked up on tortillas, avocados, tuna packets, trail mix, jerky, and other food items so that we could prepare our lunches and dinners on the road.
We bought just enough to last for the first few days, then restocked the next time we found a Walmart.
We ate most of our dinners in. We enjoyed dinner out 4 times on our trip
Burger King- we had coupons so we both ate a very unhealthy feast for only $7.77
Grand Canyon- we had hiked over ten miles that morning in Flagstaff, AZ. When we arrived at the Grand Canyon we were exhausted and HUNGRY! We ordered a meal thinking that the portions would be tiny and expensive. What we found was that the portions were more than we could eat. We packed up the left overs and enjoyed those another night.
Anniversary- We enjoyed a wonderful meal in Page, AZ. The food was great, the chips and salsa were impeccable, and again the portions were enormous. We had another night of leftovers.
Moab- About three years ago Mr. Winning Williams was gifted a ridiculous amount of money to spend through Restaurant.com. We have exhausted the Tampa/St. Petersburg market so we make a point to check for opportunities when we travel. One restaurant in Moab seemed to fit our price range and preferences. We redeemed our $10 off of $20 voucher and, you guess it, had left overs the following night.
We anticipated all of these leftovers and had cross referenced all of our hotels to confirm that we would have access to a refrigerator at each stop and a microwave at all but one stop. Again, a little preparation and research goes a long way in stretching your budget (and saving your waistline in this case).
One of our meals, artfully crafted by Mrs. Winning Williams.
Activities
Most typical American vacation spots (New York, Las Vegas, Disney) are wrought with overpriced attractions and touristy gimmicks. However, we avoided that on this trip. For a one-time fee of $85 we received the America the Beautiful Annual Pass. This gets us (or at least our vehicle) into any of the National Parks and Recreational Lands for 1 calendar year. And it feels great to support these beautiful lands.
We paid for one additional tour on our trip and that was Ken’s Tours of Lower Antelope Canyon. The rate was more than fair for the value and we got to spend the morning walking through some of the most magnificent structures we’ve ever witnessed. ($40 total for both of us and $16 for the permit to enter the Navajo Reservation). This was the only way to visit this unique site and was well worth it.
Other than that we did our research and planned our hikes carefully. We didn’t do any Jeep tours or anything of that nature. We enjoyed just setting out from the trail heads and walking to beautiful vistas that included Angel’s Landing, Hickman Bridge, Ooh-Aah Point of the South Kaibab Trail, Delicate Arch, Sunset Crater, and Upheaval Dome. Each view was breathtaking and totally worth the couple of hours that we spend looking through the National Park Service website to figure out what to do on the trip.
Q: How can you save 40% on your next trip?
A: PLAN AHEAD!
Sure, a spontaneous trip can be very fun and romantic. But a well planned trip will save you much more 🙂
What Mr. Winning Williams and I often talk about are our goals. We don’t always look at them in a cut-and-dry manner, but we sure do look forward to a good quarterly budget review (7 days away, oh yeah!) After years of setting, and achieving, enormous goals, you would think that we would always have an air of dogged confidence about reaching these goals.
Successful corporate careers- BAM and BAM! Owned it!
Each of these tasks were unthinkable and far off when we first set them, but we took them on and now have our sights on new goals. While we should be propelled by our past success to continue knocking down bigger and bigger goals, we often gawk at them ourselves. In the middle of discussing the idea of traveling the world for years on end after we reach financial independence and retire early, we find ourselves saying, “well, that won’t happen. We have it good now, we don’t need to leave.” We cling to the security of the life that we do know because change is scary!
We have made reference to our Great Downsizing of 2015 when we moved from a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home into a 1-bedroom, 1 -bath apartment. YIKES! This was also a good 30 minutes from where we had been living and where Mr. Winning Williams had lived for his whole life. DOUBLE YIKES! And it was because I was starting a new job, which was exciting but always comes with a bit of apprehension. We questioned ourselves routinely during the move, did everything really fall into place, or were we just making a hasty decision? After my vehicle was sold it was clear that there was no going back. We had crossed the line from “we have a goal to live more deliberately, to downsize our living space, and reduce our reliance on our vehicles” to “that crazy couple who actually moved out of the cushy home and now only has a decade-old Camry to get around in.” What we had once talked about as “a crazy idea,” that was “not gonna happen” because we had been happy with our current jobs, turned into the opportunity that we had been looking for overnight.
The point of this post isn’t to brag about how great we are at reaching our goals. (We’re the Winning Williams, it’s sort of implied in the name.) The point is to encourage you to stop second-guessing your own big and scary goals. If your goals don’t challenge you, or scare you a little bit, then they won’t bring about the life that you want to live.
Is it your goal to be 100% out of debt, even though you currently owe over 6-figures? What a great goal! It might seem difficult or even impossible now, but when you are standing on the other side and have the perspective you will see that it was pretty easy to accomplish.
Is it your goal to retire in your mid-thirties with a specific amount of savings, even though you have no way to predict what financial disruptions the future might hold? (That is our super-scary goal right now!)
Which of your financial goals terrify you? Which of your financial goals is motivating you to take action right now? What can you do today to take that first step towards the scariest goal you can imagine setting for yourself?
People have called us frugal and cheap to our faces, probably adding some snarky comments behind our backs. We’ve been told that we’re missing out (on life?), need to replace our furniture, etc. etc. If there was a frugal flag to fly, you better believe we would wave that flag proud and loud for all to see and perhaps we would even lead the frugality parade. I bet you there would be a pretty badass picnic after the parade with delicious sandwiches, cheese, and wine.
We realize that spending less than 50% of our income is “abnormal”, but our spending is not dictated by our income. It is driven by conscious realization of a) what we need and b) what makes us happy. Marketing messages, friend’s recommendations, and social media’s driven urges bypass us without effort. Even if we see a large increase in income, our consumption and spending will remain unchanged. This is the millionaire next door mindset. Media has portrayed success synonymously with lifestyle inflation, including large extravagant houses, new cars, and the latest technologies. By foregoing these items we risk the impression from friends and family that we are not successful, taking a hit to our self-worth, even as these material possessions add no true value to our lives.
The quicker you realize you shouldn’t make purchasing decisions to influence the impression of others, the sooner you can exercise control of your desires and start to discover your passions in your life. With life being a continual work in progress, why not have the option to change course at any point in time?Financial independence gives you this option.
The ability to live life with as little stress as possible, being free to learn, explore, grow as an individual and together, and to give back. This is why, as the WinningWilliams, we are on our own path, walking to work, with our 1 bedroom apartment, shopping at Aldi, and ultimately saving (and investing) a high percentage of our income.
A few things that have helped WinningWilliams on our journey:
Money Mustache – simple ideas, genius with communication/writing style (he has a cult-like following for a reason).
Our Parents – instilled strong core values, both with spending and saving, but also general life principles (although they have recently gone overboard on Christmas decorations!).
TV – or lack thereof! Our TV broke several months ago… and we haven’t fixed or replaced it. This has provided more time to focus on each other, reading, projects, and without the negative influence of commercials and those annoying political ads!!!
Excel – there are some avid users of YNAB, but for us, we have slowly modified in Excel our “budget”. It helps us visualize where we are on our journey, reinforcing how our conscious efforts are reaping awards on our path to financial independence. You can check out the details of our budget.
Communication – this is a fundamental key, keeping each other inspired and understood
There is no question in the value of making conscious decisions independent of the opinion of others. There is no question in the value of realizing your material possessions do not impact on the value of you as a human being. In doing so, you remove yourself from the nasty world of consumption for perception sake.
I recently had a discussion with a close friend about why we desire financial independence. There was quite a bit of push-back: you’re going to dislike not working, you’ll be bored out of your mind, there are so many things that will happen to throw off your independence, it’ll be difficult to re-enter the workforce, and so on.
There is truth to much of that. I really DO enjoy the challenges my workplace brings, some interesting social interaction, and a few pretty darn cool perks (free mini-cruises from time to time!). I do have a nice setup NOW, but you never know how things will change. New management? Financial downturn and layoffs? New policies?
We may absolutely continue to work at our LEISURE after reaching financial independence. But we will continue to strive to reach independence at an early age, all the while traveling the world on our vacation breaks and making the most out of each and every day. Our current goal is to be financially independent somewhere by the time Mr. WW reaches 40 years of young age. Nonetheless, the benefits of our “frugal living” and saving such a high percentage of our income is clear:
How would you feel if you lost your job? What if you and your significant other BOTH lost their job? We’d feel disappointed that our financial plan was set back, but we know that we have significant cushion because of the lifestyle we have lived. Not to mention, could this be a catalyst to make radical changes to our life? Take a sabbatical and live inexpensively in a low cost of living country? Move to another part of the country? Maybe. But we wouldn’t worry about taking the first job that came to us. We wouldn’t worry about where our rent money would come from.
Ability to change jobs at OUR discretion. This is commonly referred to as f-you money. After reaching financial independence, you have the power to make demands at your workplace. Don’t like the hours? Don’t like the commute? Don’t like the new boss? You have the power to make demands for the job to fit YOUR description and if they don’t oblige, see ya!
The ability to give back and truly discover our passions. When you are fully enveloped in the consumeristic mindset, you NEED your job to pay your mortgage, to pay your car bill, to pay for the fancy restaurant, the technologies, etc. If you don’t pay your bills, everything is lost. You have no option but to continue to drag yourself to the job to support this lifestyle. If you are financially independent, you have the ability to get away and give back. If you don’t know what your passion might be from a time-giving perspective, you can continue to work and give lavishly to your charity of choice. I’d much rather have decades to discover and give back then retiring in my 60’s, with potentially limited physical ability, and an unknown amount of time left.
Combining the sabbatical and age consideration, it would be nice to have time to slow travel the world in your late 30’s or early 40’s when you have greater capacity to explore, and handle both physical and mental demands of this type of travel.
Take your pick: slow traveling the world at your leisure, discovering different cultures, and gaining life experiences, or waking up a 7-am to fight rush hour traffic sit in a cube/office, deal with office politics, and return again the next day. Change the mindset, stop caring about what others think, and start dictating your life on your terms.
winningwilliams 
