Gather Little by Little

Proverbs 24:3-4 – Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms shall be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

Today is the last day of the month for July and as I do every month, I spent the morning updating my net worth. If you aren’t tracking and updating your net worth, I would highly recommend you do so. It’s a great way to monitor the overall progress of your finances. As Proverbs 23:3-4 says, through wisdom and understanding your rooms shall be filled. Tracking and managing your network will provide you with both wisdom and understanding to deal with your finances better.

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A fews weeks ago we decided to start keeping track of the prices for various staple items we purchase. Things like: pampers, dog food, paper towels, toilet paper, milk, bread, etc.

Prior to doing this, we would purchase them at the store we thought had the best price or we would just assume that the prices really weren’t much different. Turns out we were wrong. By recording the prices in a “price book” and keeping track of the item’s prices by store, we realized various items were definitely cheaper at certain places.

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Here’s some links to articles I enjoyed from other PF bloggers I read:

Bob over at ChristianPF.com talked about budgeting with an envelope system. This is something we are going to start doing with our grocery and eating out budget categories to help manage them better.

Golbguru at Money, Matter, and More Musings talks about life after chunking out a ton of cash for a car and also provides more tips on buying a used car, something I am a huge proponent of.

DR over at the The Dough Roller has a great post for you younger folks. He lists 10 Things He Knows at 40 He wished He Knew at 20

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Each morning I have to check my Google Statistics. How many page hits did I get yesterday? How many new RSS subscribers? How many unsubscribed to my RSS feed? I’ve tried not to worry about it. I try to keep myself from checking, but I just can’t help it. It’s exciting to see the page counts and number of subscribers grow. I really get a lot of satisfaction out of providing value to you the reader. That’s why I’m here and why I started this blog to begin with.

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Romans 8:28 – “…And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God”.

No, I didn’t make the mistake of buying a BMW M3. Some day maybe, but when I do it won’t be a mistake. Here’s 7 financial mistakes that I’ve made that hopefully others will benefit from and not make the same mistakes. Read on and you’ll see how the BMW plays in, but nothing like a shiny red car to get your attention huh?

1. Living On More Than I Made

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Leo Babauta of Zen Habits published a guest post over on Get Rich Slowly since J.D. is on vacation. Leo’s post is about eliminating debt using large bursts instead of paying off debt gradually. Now of course the best way is to do both. Leo’s article has some great ideas and is something everyone working on getting out of debt (or trying to save) should read.

One thing that I have started doing is making payments on my debt whenever I can. NCN over at the No Credit Needed blog got me started on this concept. He also recently posted about the topic as well.

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While Gather Little By Little is a new blog, I have been surprised by the success and support it has received from the blogging community and from you the readers. I have recently noticed that I am getting more and more hits from Google as my content is starting to be indexed. At this point, the number one search that results in people finding my humble little site is “How to get my wife to follow a budget”. Given there seems to be a significant interest in this topic, I decided to address it directly; however, I will address both husbands or wives, not just wives.

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Proverbs 27:12 – A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions.
The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.

This is part of the series How to Get Your Finances Under Control

Now that we have a budget in place, we need to start an emergency fund. Following a budget and having an emergency fund in place are the two most critical steps in getting your finances under control.

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Our daughter Emilee. Adopted from Guatemala in October 2006

Total investment to get her home: $30,000

Return on investment: Priceless

Had to share this beautiful picture the glblgal took today. Just a reminder that the most important investments in life have nothing to do with money.

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Here in North Carolina, it’s hot. This time of the year I am looking for any and everything I can do to help keep the house cool and keep my power bill down. Our house is 2200 square feet, and our bill last month was $150.00. Not bad really considered how much the A/C unit runs.

Here are a few suggestions for keeping your house cool:

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