The Daily Hailey

Before I actually talk about what I’m going to talk about today, I have two quick little notes!

One is a merp merp for only getting FOUR guesses on baby Jim’s gender yesterday!! C’mon, more of you have to have a guess in there somewhere! Anyone else?? Of the four, we have one guess for a boy, and three for a girl. You’re on your own so far, Jerilee!

My second side note is that I fully neglected to say anything about my husbands birthday yesterday!!! Actually, both of our birthdays were yesterday! Not actually, but I hate that I’m older than him, so for those 2.5 months, I lie, and we magically age on the same day. We are now both officially 26! No big party for him, considering we had enough party last week, but we still celebrate and love our Brady very, very much.

The rest of this post will be about a savings plan we’ve implemented this year. I’m not sure what the official name for it is, but the idea behind it is that there are 52 weeks in a year, and to save some money each week. First week of the year, save one dollar. Twentieth week, save twenty. And so on. At first, I wasn’t pumped about this plan. Its supposed to yield roughly $1350 by the end of the year, and while thats great, its not like a HUGE number. You can’t upgrade your car for that much. You can’t pay off a big debt with that. Its not that impressive. Another “flaw” was that the biggest money weeks are right around Christmas. Don’t we all feel broke enough around Christmas anyway??

Boom. It hit me then that we could change the plan to make it work for us. So Brady and I decided to buckle down and consistently save money each week. We went backwards and started with the big weeks. We had a really lame financial time in the first few months of the year, but we diligently pulled cash out and saved it in our undisclosed location 😉 We planned ahead , and once the number reached $17 aka 17 weeks left in the year, we stayed with that number and have been putting in $17 (but actually $20) each Friday. That way, we will have completed the entire year of saving by the end of November. Just a couple more twenty dollar bills, and we are DONE! Best of all, we decided early on in the year that this money would be our Christmas/holiday money, which I plan to need sooner than later! That will include gifts, any seasonal treats like flavored coffees or candies, Christmas oranges, decor, events and outings, gas for any trips we’ll take, and the makings of a potential Christmas dinner we may or may not try to make! I sincerely hope we’ll come in under the amount of money we saved, but if anything unexpected comes up, we’ll be ready. I have to say, this one jar of saved money gives me a great feeling of financial security this year! I love that, even if work slows down, we will be able to have Christmas without too much stress over money.

Is it weird to talk about money? Maybe. Sorry if people feel weird :/ I just really love this plan, and I recommend that everyone does it! Who wants in for next year? I might actually make a reminder next year, every friday in the post, for people who want to do this. We are DEFINITELY doing it again!

** Pssst! Guess what our baby is, mmmkay?