An early step on my journey

How to NOT BUY all the things!

Frugal AND delicious— a winning combination!

Getting ready for summer!

You’ll never believe how much our family of four spent on groceries last month.

Why I believe tithing is especially powerful for Christians in the FIRE community.

Thinking about what I actually “need.”

Can this mom go a whole month without buying meat and bread without causing a family revolt?

Mr. and Mrs. Sense finally let their hair down and go shopping.

That time I really messed up, and what I learned from it.

Take a peek at my Aldi receipt from last weekend!

Upon setting our sights on financial independence, Mr. Sense and I eagerly experimented with all sorts of tricks from FIRE bloggers, including attempting haircuts at home to save on trips to Hair Cuttery. We had first experimented with this during the early days of Covid shutdowns, with… subpar results. But over the last couple of years, we’ve refined our technique and even gotten the kids on board. My sister trimmed Kid’s long hair over the Christmas break, and Boy Sense recently consented to letting me cut his hair, which turned out very well to my immense relief.

When I was in elementary school, my dad packed my lunch everyday, so I rarely had the cafeteria food. I liked the homemade lunches, but I coveted the school food on Friday, when they always served pizza. When one of the other kids told me that the cafeteria had pizza on Fridays (always a choice of cheese or pepperoni) because Catholic kids couldn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent, I had no idea what she was talking about.

Can this suburban family of four possibly SURVIVE with just one car?

I decided to take an extended break from alcohol to focus on other things. Here’s how my experiment went, and my surprising choice at the end!

I bike commuted for a year straight, rain or shine. Here’s what I learned.

A kitchen appliance adventure story.

I watched several episodes of Ramit Sethi’s popular podcast… here’s my review!

Four feathered members of the Sense family— Portobella, Henata, BachBach, and Rei

The secular FIRE movement is focused around living frugally to accumulate wealth. The culmination point is reaching a predetermined amount of money in investments, often determined using the 4% rule. Saving enough money to retire years ahead of society’s schedule takes discipline, and many within the movement struggle to switch gears once they actually get to the number they were aiming for the whole time. It’s easy to fall for the siren song that you’ll really be able to rest easy after one more year on the job or one more hundred thousand dollars of savings.