Thriftism

Going out for pizza is a favorite pastime for couples, families, friends - pretty much everyone! It can get fairly expensive at times and may end up cutting into your budget. For a thrifty alternative, try a DIY pizza for your next gathering. We estimate that you can save at least 50% making your pizza at home over going out for pizza, even at the most affordable eateries. While saving money is great, it isn't the only reason to make your own pizza dough. This is also an easy way to custumize your pizza to fit every dietary need one's dietary needs/wants (half vegetarian, extra mushrooms on one piece, meat only, etc.) without spending extra or driving your server crazy. Lastly, it is a fun way to get everyone involved. Want to have a family night? Get the kids involved in adding toppings or kneading the dough. Some kids might even have fun watching the dough mix in the bread machine. It will turn dinner prep into a fun family-oriented activity. Another option that we...

As, promised, we are back checking in on our yearly goals to stay accountable. Here is our March Goals Report.  Financial Goals Gain Employment (Race) ☑ Accomplished in February.  Save 50% of our income At the end of March, we are at 65% if you include the mortgage or 35% if you don't include the mortgage. We have been counting the mortgage as we are trying to pay off the house to allow us greater financial flexibility and allow us to save more money in the future.  Increase passive dividend income by 25% Year over year for March, our dividend income has increased by 37.4%. This is a major increase compared to the first two months of the year, but still not the best indicator. Our goal is to increase dividend income for the entire year and thus a YOY analysis is not the best estimate. We have earned 22% of the total amount needed to hit our goal this year. This is almost on track for 1/4 of the year having passed. If we do not contribute an...

It's time for another monthly budget update!! We missed doing a YouTube video on this so far, but we made it happen this month. For a quick reminder, we run our budget solely on my income of $2,400/ month or $1,200 every other week. This would be a gross income of $31,200. We do not include health insurance costs on here as we are currently covered by our jobs, but we also don't include potential costs as if you were a married couple making $31,200/ year, you would qualify for free or nearly free health insurance. This budget also doesn't include most of our discretionary spending such as travel and home renovations, but does include all of our entertainment and eating out costs. It is our essentials budget that we could live on without any additional spending. The Budget Our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Numbers in red are spending, while black is income. The green background indicates under on within the budget. Red fil...

Falafel is a wonderful middle eastern recipe that offers bold flavors and class while providing a budget friendly alternative to meat. We combined our falafel in place of the chicken in our Halal Cart style Chicken and Rice. See Recipe here or watch the video below. We also switched out frying the falafel to cooking in the air fryer to cut out the greasiness and make the recipe even easier to make. Ingredients 2 Cup Chickpeas (Aldi) 2 Cup Onions (Aldi) 4 Cloves Garlic (Sams Club) 2 Tbsp Cilantro (Home Grown) 2 Tbsp Parsley (Aldi) 1 tsp Salt (Sams Club) 2 tsp Crushed Red Pepper 1 tsp Cumin 1 tsp Baking Powder 3 Tbsp Flour  CONNECT WITH US! FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thriftism/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Thriftism Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thriftism_lifestyle/ How to Make Begin by rinsing your dried chickpeas/garbanzo beans before combining with your onion in a food processor or blender. Process until finely chopped, but not puree...

As we mentioned at the beginning of January, we are going to post monthly budget updates- So here we are! For a quick reminder, we run our budget off of solely my income of $1200 every two weeks, however this is after insurance is taken out. If this was your total household income, you would gross around $34,000/year and be in the 15% tax bracket. If you were in this tax bracket as a married couple, you would likely qualify for free or nearly free insurance so we won't need to up our budget in that area at this point. This budget also does not include much of our discretionary spending such as travel and home renovations, but it is our essentials budget that we could live on without anything else. The Budget As you can see from the table above, our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Number in red are spending, while black is income. WINS ✔ If you compare this post to the one we did in January, you might notice we added two...

**Please excuse the formatting - blogger is not cooperating and for some reason will not let me use default colors for this post. This will be fixed for next month's goals post** Every year we set goals to improve ourselves, our situations, or to help those around us. While setting goals is the first step (as Tony Robbins said in the quote above), accountability is what holds us to these goals and pushes us to achieve them.  This is our February Goals Report. Financial Goals Gain employment (Race) 🗹 Race signed a job offer in mid January and had his first day of work January 31.  Save 50% of our income For the first two months of the year, we saved 72% of our income if you include the mortgage, but only 36% not including the mortgage. So either we are not quite there, or really overachieving depending on how you look at it. We have been counting the mortgage as saving since it is increasing our net worth, but will continue to provide both numbers. Our bu...