Your Journey to Financial Freedom Starts here

Hello and welcome to my little piece of the internet. I am Dee. I started this blog in order to document our frugal debt-free adventure in downsizing our life.

I write from my own experiences, struggles and opinions. Many times on this blog, I refer to my life partner as Mr. CD and may write about his views (with his permission, of course). Since this is our family’s frugal journey, I may also share our joint opinions and represent them as “we”.

Now that I sorted this out, let me share a brief story about me and my family.

Hi, I’m Dee. I write the articles here on this blog and make useful printables for you. In my early 30s, I married a hard-working and born minimalist, who is the main force behind our simple frugal lifestyle. 

Long before this whole F.I.R.E (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement started, we both followed the Frugal  Lifestyle that is so popular at this time. Now you will ask me what is F.I.R.E movement?

Contrary to what you hear in the news, it is not just about extreme frugality, being cheap, clipping coupons, or depriving yourself of fun.

It is not about constantly working on side hustles to quit a 9-to-5 job, living in a tiny home, pinching pennies, and cutting corners a.k.a cutting the cable ( seriously, I wonder how many folks still have the cable?).

It is about being mindful of and aware of the basics of Finances that govern the most important areas of your life.

We are not a typical frugal family. 

We live in a smaller and older house but drive a new and bigger car. And we do not fret over the mortgage (as we paid them off well before time) for both of these necessities of life.

We do not mind living with used furniture but spend way more on continuing education than any family’s average education budget.

With the help of in-demand skills, we want to create more passive income streams. We create digital products and sell them in our stores on ETSY, a commercial use store, and also on Gumroad.

We do not pinch pennies and use coupons excessively but still manage to keep our monthly grocery bill consistently below $150-$180 a month.

We do not use cash envelopes (always) but use credit cards ( as debit cards) only for our needs and wants. Note- Cash envelopes are still part of our life for discretionary spending ( like planners, craft supplies, and books- Credit cards wouldn’t cut it for this category) Read more about it here.

We rarely shop sales but get amazing satisfaction from the annual best deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday once a year. Read about our Black Friday Cyber Monday Wishlist here.

We do not cook once a month and freeze food to eat over the whole month. But we believe in keeping our pantry stocked with frugal whole food essentials to stretch our dollars and prepare for any emergencies. We shop for fresh local food and cook fresh food daily at home. Both of us love cooking, not the cleaning part. I am a proud lazy housewife.

Occasionally, we love to splurge on eating out without guilt. This is possible because we keep our budgeting very simple and practical.

Most importantly, we try to be on the same page when it comes to money decisions. You will not see us nagging each other about breaking the bank with senseless spending.

We still have some critical discussions on where to invest the money but for the most part, we know each other’s risk appetite and work around it to learn about various financial markets as much as possible to keep the risk down and maximize hedging.

We are not extreme minimalists in any sense as we own a decent amount of clothes and accessories ( I definitely own more than I will ever need- Since 2021, I have switched to Capsule Wardrobe and got rid away of 90% of accessories). In fact, the kitchen is one place where minimalism is strictly prohibited.

We own way too many digital gadgets including computer monitors, hard disks, etc. It is a real struggle for us. But we are committed to further de-cluttering this year.  Ditto for books!

E-books are good space-saving options. I do own them but I just can not part away from my hardcover books. Hence bookshelf is on our wish list for Black Friday deals.

So, in a sense, we are just enough frugal to fall into the definition of F.I.R.E lifestyle. 

We enjoy our life with available resources at our disposal but at the same time, we don’t necessarily fall into extreme frugality to limit our chances to gain life’s rich experiences.

We both spent a major part of our 20s in traditional universities gaining degrees in the fields that we still use today.

We both graduated without paying a single penny for student loans, thanks to our amazingly talented and frugal parents.

We are both dreamers with an equal passion and even more determination to work on our dream to retire early. And by early, we are thinking of our 50s. ( Nah! the early 40s).

We are also big believers of green, sustainable, and God-centered living.  One day, we are sure to live on fully productive and rich farmland totally debt-free.  We have not figured out how it will happen and what we must or must not do. But we will try to be more conscious of making an honest living from our skills. Because more skills are more money. This blog is our honest attempt to document this journey.

So far, we have learned a great deal about sustainable debt-free living from our family, friends, and other amazing bloggers. Their personal finance stories give us motivation, inspiration, and a good nudge to keep our life in order. So many times in the past, we got saved from making expensive mistakes. We also learned from some of our own mistakes. In the last few years, we managed to cultivate a few frugal ninja habits that have kept us afar from unnecessary consumer debt. These habits do not make us feel deprived of anything we don’t need.

Now, it is our chance to give back to others who are struggling with a chaos-driven, consumption-oriented, debt-haunted fast lifestyle or those who are already on the road to reducing consumption and seeking a slower-paced life with financial independence.

Here on this blog, we will share our ups, downs, challenges, and frugal accomplishments.

This year we are working on saving $10,000 to grow our Emergency Fund. We intend to make this journey fun, filled with the flexibility to choose our own financial freedom and rich family experiences. We hope you join us in this family and share a conscious debt-free life forever!

Don’t forget to browse around and get more money-saving tips on this blog.

It is good to have you. Thank you for stopping by!