Evolution of a 30-something

Hey Y'all! Now you know I'm a sports fan and basketball was my first love. If you've ever seen me play, you know defense is not my specialty. Defensively, I was usually in the right spots and manipulated my lack of athleticism into knowing footwork and angles that allowed me to not look silly when defending opponents. My specialty was offense, shooting and passing, and adding value to our team that way. Offense is important and way more fun, but, you gotta play some defense. I didn't expend all my energy on defense, but played enough for my coaches to keep me on the floor. But let's be honest, I'm not expecting anyone to continue reading if this blog was actually about my abilities as a defensive player on the basketball court. Teaching our daughter to love basketball at an early age! If you have read any of the previous blogs, you know my life and our family has changed a lot over the last five years. I started dating Megan, grew up a lot, had a lot of a...

Hey Y'all! It's official! We did it! Megan and I have been working towards our goal of paying cash for a new (used) car and we finally pulled the trigger. We were ready to move up in car after I spent 10 years in my Pontiac G6. We purchased a 2017 Toyota RAV4 after watching the market for the last few months. This will be our new 'family' car that we use on weekends and primarily the car I drive taking Laney to daycare each day. We're working towards replacing Megan's car in the next year or so and will continue to be intentional about that being our next goal. First photo with the new (to us) car. Photo credit to our salesman, Edwin. I had said three to four years ago that I would never have another car payment in my life. While I believed it, there was still maybe a 10 percent feeling that made me think I would because of how normal and common car payments are. It would have been easy to have a car on payments or dip into our emergency fund to justify ...

Hey Y'all! I'm working on the consistency of the blog and I've been putting some ideas in place in terms of content. When thinking of where to start again, I thought it was important to get back to the beginning, the whole reason I started this blog. It was because I believed that I had discovered something life changing that I wanted to share with family, friends, and really anyone who would read it. The purpose was that I care about others and want them get more from life. This was all based on financial freedom. I honestly feel like we have the formula for living a much less stressful life and future in terms of finances, and I want to share it with  all of you . When I use the term 'financial freedom,' I use it as a term to describe the ability to not be chained by banks, loans, debt, and other items society tells us is necessary that really restricts our ability to have freedom. Megan introduced me to  Dave Ramsey  when we started working together and I didn...

Hey Y'all! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from me (Megan and Laney). ! It's been a while between blogs, but I had to get this one out before 2020 hits! I'm posting this blog to make myself more accountable. A few weeks back I sat down to put together some goals and I wanted to share those with you, and hopefully get you to create some goals for yourself. Megan and I also created some 'couple goals' mostly around finance and what we want to accomplish together, along with timelines for when we should be hitting those goals. Before I get into what my goals are, I wanted to share a little bit about this specific blog's title and why it mentions being intentional. We, as humans, are capable of incredible things, especially when put our focus and attention to them. Think about how many things you have accomplished in life. Some are easy and some more difficult. Then life gets harder with school and college, jobs, and kids. Any time you have ever wanted som...

Hey Y'all! I'm writing this blog to defy the odds. I'm here to explain how we aren't crazy, but that we also don't have car payments. The reason I'm sharing this and supplying relevancy is that we are currently saving up to pay CASH for a vehicle. By now, most of you know that Megan and I follow the Dave Ramsey "Baby Step" plan. Looking at those "Baby Steps," we are in steps 4/5/6 all at the same time. Steps 1, 2, and 3 are done one at a time, but 4-6 are done together. This means we are (step 4) saving 15% of our income towards retirement, (step 5) saving towards our kids college (skip if you don't have kids), and (step 6) paying our house off earlier than our 15-year mortgage would require. (The 'Baby Steps' laid out per Chris Hogan's (Ramsey personality) Instagram account.) In all of the 'Baby Steps,' Ramsey preaches paying cash for items and not taking on debt. This means even large items like vehicles ge...

Hey Y'all. This blog shares the biggest news of our lives! Megan and I had our first baby, Delaney May Phalin on Monday, August 26th at 2:26 pm. She weighed 7 pounds and 11 ounces and was 20 inches long. She's concentrating on growing and gaining weight every day. Before Delaney joined us, Megan and I took one last photo of us as a family of two. From the male perspective, I thought labor would be tough, exhausting, painful and difficult. Those were all correct assumptions, but each of these traits peaked in their abilities. Megan is stronger than I ever imagined. Labor was not easy and progressed very slowly. She delivered after about 30 hours of labor, with each hour being different. Some involved awful sleep, while others involved unavoidable pain. Megan is an absolute trooper and brought the most beautiful baby girl into this world and changed our lives forever. After arriving Sunday morning at 7:30 am, we were still having slow progress that crept into Mon...