Saving

Book Review: Bridesmaid on a Budget

May 17, 2012 in Saving,Thrifty Tips,Weddings

I’m a bridesmaid in two weddings this year. While I’m far from living out 27 Dresses in real life, being a bridesmaid is having a big impact on my budget. From selecting a gift for the engagement party to buying the dress you’ll walk down the aisle in, wedding-related expenses can really add up.

Sharon Naylor’s Bridesmaid on a Budget: How to Be a Brilliant Bridesmaid without Breaking the Bank is my new handbook for wedding season. Naylor is a wedding expert who offers practical advice to the bridesmaid who wants to cut costs without coming off like a cheapskate. She starts Bridesmaid on a Budget by listing some sobering stats about the cost of being a in a wedding party. Ladies, did you know that the average cost of being in a wedding is from $1,069 to $1,269?!

The book provides an overview of a bridesmaid’s many costs and responsibilities, so it would be the perfect read for someone who has never been in a wedding. As a frugally-minded, experienced bridesmaid I was aware of many of the suggestions for cutting costs, but I still found Naylor’s tips to be very helpful. I also love that the book provides advice about communicating with the bride and other bridesmaids about wedding related expenses. Talking about money can be awkward, but Bridesmaid on a Budget makes preparing for and having those conversations less awkward.

Along with a great list of resources, the appendices have helpful tools for tracking contact information, deadlines and expenses. Naylor understands that being a bridesmaid isn’t always easy and Bridesmaid on a Budget helps to ease the financial concerns that make being in a wedding stressful. With so many helpful tips, this book will have a place on my bookshelf for a long time to come.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book, but all opinions are my own.

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Living Alone and Loving It

May 10, 2012 in Dating,Saving,Singleness

There was a story in the AJC last week that said that Atlantans are more likely to live alone than people in any other major city in the U.S. About 44 percent of households in Atlanta have only one person and over 42,000 of those single dwellers are women.

I remember reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in college. She wrote that “… a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” These words resonated with me as a broke student with four roommates, and I couldn’t wait to get my own place as soon as I could afford it.

Financially speaking, it makes a lot of sense to get a roommate. Rent is my biggest expense each month and I could save about $300 to $400 a month if I lived with someone else. Saving an extra $4,500 a year sounds great, but I don’t think that I’ll be able to give up living alone anytime soon. Maybe it’s the only child in me, but I really enjoy having my own space and spending time by myself. There’s something about coming home to a quiet place and not dealing with someone else’s quirks (or dishes in the sink) that I really enjoy. A recent survey also found that 62 percent of singles prefer to date someone who lives alone.

I’ve come to realize that my plan for saving will probably never include getting a roommate (unless I get married…I don’t think I can get away with not living with my husband). What do you prefer: living alone or with roommates?

Photo: sxc.hu

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{Closed} One Day Only Giveaway: Make Saving Fun with ImpulseSave!

April 27, 2012

Let’s be honest, saving money isn’t always the most exciting thing in the world. It can be a lot more fun to spend than save, but an exclusive new site called ImpulseSave is making saving easy and fun. I set up a goal on ImpulseSave to save toward one of the things on my 30 [...]

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Surviving Wedding Season

April 16, 2012

Last week I put together a list of anticipated expenses for the weddings that I will be in or attending through July. I’ll be a bridesmaid in two weddings (one is a destination wedding) and a guest at two others. My conservative estimate of the costs associated with all of this matrimonial fun comes out [...]

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Mega Millions Morning After Regrets

March 31, 2012

Despite my lack of splurging this month, I was taken in by the Mega Millions $640 million jackpot hysteria and bought a ticket. This was basically like flushing a dollar bill down the toilet, but it’s a little fun to think that you have the chance to win an astronomical amount of money. I supported [...]

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Make It or Buy It: Cake Pops

March 20, 2012

I’m a big fan of Jennifer Reese’s cookbook, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. She does a great job of letting the reader know if an item is better to buy in a store or worth the time it takes to prepare it at home. It turns out that making things from scratch is often [...]

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Why I’m Glad That I Didn’t Finish Law School

March 18, 2012

Last week I was really inspired by the Forbes article about Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. Not only did she create a brand that I love, but the story of how she became a billionaire is pretty inspiring. The one thing that I found particularly motivating was that she found all of this success [...]

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Giving Up Small Splurges

March 8, 2012

I struggled with deciding what to give up for Lent when Ash Wednesday arrived a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think that giving up chocolate or soda as big sacrifices, so I try to commitment myself to things that are actually a challenge to me. Past examples include giving up complaining and making myself [...]