Want to reach financial freedom? Want to finally be free from debt and free from work you don’t actually want to do? None of these habits are flashy, and most of them happen quietly, behind closed doors, with nobody clapping for you. That’s exactly why they work. Trying these frugal habits will help you quietly build wealth and move closer to financial freedom.   Learn To Cook If you don’t know how to cook yet, it’s worth learning. Being able to feed yourself well is one of the quietest wealth-building habits there is. Eating out daily can cost a fortune over a year. Recipe blogs and YouTube videos can teach you decent meals fast, and with a little practice, you can even recreate your favorite restaurant dishes at home for a fraction of the cost.   Buy Used First Before buying something new, check thrift stores, yard sales, or ask around. Appliances, decor, and furniture all tend to hold up just as well the second time around, and family members often have things they’d happily pass along. Getting in the habit of sourcing used before new is a small shift that quietly adds up over years.   Track Every Dollar Knowing where your money actually goes is what lets you make informed choices instead of guessing. An app like Mint, Quicken, or a simple spreadsheet makes this easy. Categorize everything: rent, food, entertainment, and whatever else shows up regularly. Once you can see it clearly, building a real budget gets a lot simpler.   Want a head start? Grab my free monthly budget planner. Get it here   Stop Keeping Up With Everyone Else Comparing your spending to what friends, coworkers, or neighbors seem to have is one of the most expensive habits out there. It rarely reflects the full picture, and buying things just to keep pace with someone else’s life is a quiet way to end up in debt. Staying grounded in your own goals, even when it’s not the popular choice, protects your wealth long-term.   Build an Emergency Fund An emergency fund is your contingency plan for when things go sideways, and something eventually will. Starting to save now, even a little, puts you ahead of most people financially. Car repairs, appliance breakdowns, and unexpected bills are a matter of when, not if. Save for it before it’s an emergency instead of scrambling once it already is one.   Cut Back on Delivery Services Delivery apps are convenient, but they’re also a quiet money pit. What feels like a few small charges here and there can turn into hundreds of dollars a month without anyone really noticing until the statement shows up. Getting back into the habit of picking up your own food or running your own errands keeps that money in your pocket.   Invest Consistently Investing early makes a real difference over time. Setting aside a percentage of what you earn, even a modest one, and putting it into something with long-term growth potential

Planning meals around versatile staples, store brands, sale items and foods already at home can stretch a grocery budget without making dinner repetitive. Smart substitutions and creative leftovers can add both savings and variety. (Pexels). Keeping a grocery budget under control can feel like a choice between spending more or eating the same inexpensive dinners every week. Fortunately, saving money does not require seven straight nights of beans and rice. A smarter approach is to […]

I’m excited to share that I’ve joined one of the fastest-growing, most forward-thinking independent financial planning firms in Upstate NY. Not just as an advisor, but as a partner, as an owner.  I’m happy to share that I’ve joined Rialto Wealth. I’m incredibly excited about the change. Rialto’s philosophy aligns perfectly with what I share with you every week. A focus on detailed, long-term retirement planning. Keeping investing simple and low-cost. Fiduciary and fee-only. Not only serving our clients, but educating them.  …but I’m anxious about the change, too. With two girls under two years old at home, this isn’t the simple path, per se. I’m making this big change, in large part, because my wife Kelly believes in me. She is not a mere “rockstar” or “hero,” but much more than that. Thank you, Kell!   Our elder daughter loving on Sadie. Why the Change?! Why the change, though? I have a few important reasons. Clients need to trust their advisor. Staying independent is important to me. Especially since that’s the commitment I’ve made to my clients for many years. Rialto Wealth has no shareholders, no private equity ownership. We are 100% employee-owned. There’s no incentive to push proprietary products, no far-away owners pressuring us on quotas. Financial planners can bring a lot of expertise to their clients – but that comes after a deliberate choice: putting service above sales. Complex investments sound sexy, I know. But did cigarettes (at least, for many decades). Not coincidentally, both have similar results: higher long-term costs and worse long-term outcomes. While some advisors push fancy, complex products on unsuspecting clients, the fact remains that simplicity beats complexity. I’d much rather follow Jason Zweig’s second way of making a living: “Tell the truth to those who want the truth.” (I’ll let you look up the first way.) I’m excited to keep my client count smaller, to focus more energy on each client. While working with hundreds of clients might increase profit margins, I’m fine with sacrificing some profit margin to better serve clients.  Rialto’s philosophy emphasizes our clients and our employees. Good things will follow. Who Makes a “Good” Client? Rialto isn’t a perfect fit for every potential client. Our ideal clients see their world this way: Retirement is the big, audacious goal. It might mean you’re retired. It might mean you hope to retire in 2 or 5 or 10 years. But retirement is the big goal you’re planning for. Investing and planning – both are vital. Retirement brings many interesting conversations about withdrawal strategies, income and tax planning, Social Security, healthcare and Medicare, IRMAA, and RMDs. If you have these questions, we’re a good fit. Our clients want an ongoing, year-over-year relationship. They are not looking for a one-time thought partner.  Our ideal clients buy into a low-cost, academically rigorous investment philosophy. If you want your advisor to beat the

Frugal living isn’t just something that happens at the store or when you’re crunching the budget numbers. It really is a way of life. Rather than getting uptight or frustrated I like to look at our frugal adventures as just that– an adventure! There are wins, bumps, and funny things that happen along the way. That’s what this “Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies” series is all about– the adventures and misadventures of living the frugal […]

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law last July, brought some notable changes to the fine print of … Read more

I want to be really intentional with our grocery budget in September. We have a lot going on financially, so I want to keep our grocery spending to a minimum this month. Planning out a menu is a great way to minimize spending because you can control the cost of the meals you choose, you can prioritize meals that use ingredients that you already have, and you don’t waste food. All of that is easier […]

It may still be warm outside and Christmas might feel a long way off, but if you want to make the holidays a little easier on your budget, now is actually the perfect time to start. And I’m not talking about buying Christmas gifts in the summer or putting yourself on a strict no-spend challenge. I’m talking about taking a good look at the things to stop buying before the holidays so you can free up some […]

Whenever someone asks how much it costs to homeschool, I never quite know how to answer. Because technically? You could homeschool for very little. There are free resources online, libraries full of books, used curriculum sales, hand-me-down materials, and approximately 47 pencils hiding somewhere in my house at any given moment. For years, we’ve used the free curriculum from The Good and The Beautiful (highly recommend it). But that’s not really how I think about […]