We’re weird. I’m okay with that. No, really, I mean it. I’m glad we’re weird. It is one of the big reasons you check us out every day. But why are we that way? Why do we choose to look at “normal” and go the other way? Why do we drive cars we can actually afford instead of having payments? Why do we do most of our own construction projects? In other words – why do we do things that “normal” people don’t do? Today, I’ll fill you in.
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About Barry
Relationships and Money: 5 Things Every Couple Needs to Know
A lot of you are new around here, so I’ve been spending some time recapping some of my favorite content written since Humorous Homemaking was born in May 2010. One of the ways I’m determining which content is best to share with you anew, I consider the most frequently asked questions I get via email, Facebook, etc. By far, the most common set of questions falls under the heading of relationships and money or marriage and money.
I get TONS of questions on how to get husbands and wives to agree on money. Why? Because I firmly believe when you said “I do” you made a commitment for life. Unfortunately, the reason that commitment is most commonly broken is due to money problems. When I started providing financial counsel, I quickly learned I often provided a lot of marriage counseling too.
[Read more…]How Can I Invest My Money Wisely When I’m in Debt?
A common question when someone is trying to get out of debt is how they should balance this goal with the idea of saving and investing for the future. They say something like, “Barry, I really want to be out of debt, but I also really want to be able to have a good retirement.” My response, even though it sounds a little sarcastic is this: who doesn’t want to be out of debt and who doesn’t want to have a good retirement!? So how do you balance those goals? You and I both know there is only so much money to go around each month.
[Read more…]Basic Overnight Oats
I’ve been making Overnight Oats for many years. At first, I started because it was a cool breakfast to eat in the summer months when it’s HOT as soon as your feet hit the floor and you just want to sit in the nude and eat cold food. What? Oh, that’s just me? Oh well.
And then, my kids fell in love with them so I found myself making them all the time.
[Read more…]Dealing with Conflict
I recently took some training at my day job on giving and receiving feedback, the psychology of high performance, and some HR and hiring issues. Over the course of that training, a few major things really stuck out to me, but one of the biggest was how terrible we are at dealing with conflict. My ears perked up when the instructor gave a simple model of dealing with conflict that actually makes sense. More on that shortly.
A part of our challenge with conflict is because we are so terrible at listening. We all took training to learn to communicate our thoughts and ideas – reading, writing, math, speech, etc. all are focused on helping us learn to formulate and share our thoughts – but how many of us took any training on listening? I know I didn’t, except for some on-the-job training when I worked at a call center years ago. The point is, we haven’t been taught how to listen, and we generally are pretty awful at it because our main goal is to get our point(s) across instead of understanding someone else’s.
[Read more…]Why Every Mom Fail Matters
As a dad of four young kids, I’m in awe of what it takes to be a mom. I’m definitely not capable of doing what most of you moms out there accomplish. I regularly tell people that Stacy is a superhero…and I mean it. But here’s the thing, ladies – you are way too hard on yourself. Every mom fail matters!
However, using someone’s cheery social media feed as your standard, you’ve decided that you can’t measure up and that you’re a complete disaster. In doing that, you’ve set an unrealistic expectation that you literally will never be able to live up to.
Here’s the thing: we need you to fail.
[Read more…]Foreclosures and Mortgage Debt: Don’t Live There
This is the official time of year for what I’ll call the “financial freak out.” Christmas is in the rear view mirror and the bills are showing up. That Christmas bonus at work (if you got one) is spent, and it will likely be March before you could hold out hope for a tax refund. Reality has set in. It’s time to face the music. The financial grim reaper is at the door. It’s time to pay the piper. With all that potential scariness in mind, I’ve decided that several posts I write are going to help you deal with the stress that comes with handling finances. Today, specifically, we’re going to talk about mortgage debt.
Last week I shared a HUGE list of tips for living debt free. In the coming weeks I’ve planned posts on scheduling your time more effectively, handling money with your spouse, plus an FAQ. I want your year to be the best one possible! Today we’re going to talk about the SERIOUS issue of overwhelming mortgage debt.
[Read more…]Simplifying Online Shopping (and Saving)
As you probably already know, our family loves to shop online. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know most of the benefits of shopping online already, but humor me for a bit because I may teach you a thing or two about simplifying your online shopping experience and save you some money along the way.
[Read more…]Budgeting the Easy Way
We all know we should eat healthy, get plenty of sleep at night, exercise, and be proactive with managing our finances. And yet we’re a society that hits the drive thru, stays up too late to get up early, sits on the couch Netflix binge watching and lives on credit cards. We want all the benefits without being disciplined enough to earn them. Wouldn’t it be nice if just one thing in our life could be easy?!
I’m at least 20 lbs. overweight, sleep and 4 small children don’t mix, and I only run if being chased…so don’t look for my expertise on the first three of those items above. However, we’ve done pretty well with our finances. In fact, we were able to become 100% debt free in 2011 (including our home) and have never looked back. That means one of two things: 1) we make a ton of money and can blow it all at will, or 2) we make a budget every month and stick to it. Trust me…it is #2. [Read more…]
Faith-Based Health Sharing Plans versus Traditional Health Insurance
Health insurance has become a hot topic of discussion around these parts lately. One of the things that has come up more and more for those fed up with traditional health insurance is the concept of health sharing plans in lieu of traditional health insurance. The idea isn’t new – faith-based “health sharing arrangements” have been around since the early 80’s as an alternative to standard health insurance plans.
The thing I’ve long hailed is that no matter what your lot in life, health insurance is a necessity. I believe you take too big a risk of sinking your financial ship if you do not carry at least basic major medical coverage of some sort, and I even dedicated a portion of my book to that very notion. [Read more…]
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