Gallery Walls and Savings Accounts

I haven't posted in awhile, so it seems like a good time for a 30x30 update.  Because, despite my lack of blogging, I promise that I have been working on my list!

Here are a few (not so) quick updates...

#4: Complete the gallery wall in my house.  We have a small front hallway in our house that desperately needs a little love.  But unfortunately, the space is really too small to build a mudroom or create a "drop off" entryway zone.  So I used Pinterest (of course) to explore other ideas.  That's when I discovered the gallery wall!  (Well, I technically discovered the gallery wall on the Young House Love blog.  If you haven't checked it out, you should because it's gorgeous!)  Then I found a couple of other inspiring gallery wall pictures, like this one and this one.  I was sold!  But like I said earlier, I knew I would have to do the project over time since I didn't have an extra 50-100 frames just lying around.  Anyway, I worked on this project the last two or three weekends and made great progress!  It's still not finished - I probably need at least another 20 or 30 frames for that - but I'm really pleased with how it's coming along.  I think I'll wait another week or two to share a full picture of the space, but here are some sneak peeks:

 

These are the frames that I am using in the hallway.  They are from the Canopy line at Wal-Mart and I love them because they look so much more high end than they cost!  (Plus, they look great with all of the dark wood in our house.)  The matting also really emphasizes the "gallery" look that I am trying to achieve.

 

For anyone who wants to create their own gallery wall, or just needs an easy way to hang a few pictures, here is some great tip: Take a newspaper or leftover wrapping paper and trace the shape of the frame on it.  Then cut it out, flip over the frame, and lay the paper over the back of the frame.  Mark the spot where the nail hole will go.  After that, you just have to tape the paper on the wall (I recommend using a level, especially if you are hanging multiple frames next to each other) and hammer the nail in the marked spot.  Tear off (or carefully remove to reuse) the paper and then hang the picture.  Easy-peasy!

 

#15: Have a certain amount of money in my retirement fund.  Well, I did it.  I finally transferred the money from my old retirement fund to my new one.  And I started contributing to my retirement again.  So while I probably don't have as much saved in my retirement as I should, I'll hit my 30x30 goal in just two more months!  I really could have done some more challenging math on that one, so maybe I'll rephrase my goal to "contribute a certain amount of money in my retirement fund," which won't count the amount that I transferred from another source.  Regardless, I'm pretty pleased about this goal!

 

#16: Have a certain amount of money in our savings account.  This objective will be a little more difficult to achieve, just because of where my husband and I are in life.  However, I believe that we have pretty good financial instincts, though neither of us have been through any kind of formal "training."  I have read some stuff by Dave Ramsey and realized that we already follow several of his recommendations, so that is reassuring, to say the least.  But in general, we follow a simple formula for managing our finances.  John Maxwell calls it the 10-10-80 plan.  So when we get paid (once a month on the same day), I first put 10% of our paychecks into our savings account.  Then I get out our checkbook and write a check for 10% of our paychecks and make it out to our church.  The last 80% of our paycheck is what we have to live on that month.  So it has to cover our mortgage, student loan payments, food bills, gas bills, utility bills, random expenses, etc.  This has worked really well for us and allowed us to not just build up our "don't touch" savings account, but also save up for fun items, like a new TV, anniversary cruise, etc.  To date, we are little over halfway to my 30x30 goal for our savings account.  Slowly but surely, I will hopefully reach this objective as well.

 

#19: Make extra payments on my husband's students loans.  Yikes.  Student loans suck, right?  Well, if you don't have them, consider yourself very lucky because they are no fun.  I won't go into many details about our student loans, but we have them and we want them gone as soon as possible.  Even making extra payments, we are still years away from getting these things out of our lives.  But, every little bit helps and that's why I've been following an extra payment plan since January.  Here's what I do: First, I take the amount of our monthly student loan payment and add $100 to it.  Then I divide that amount by two.  Then, every two weeks (instead of once a month), I pay the divided amount toward the loan.  So let's pretend that our monthly payment is $500.  That plus $100 is $600.  Divided by two, our biweekly payments would be $300.  So not only are we paying an extra $100 a month, but we also end up making a couple extra payments a year since most months have more than four weeks in them.  Yes, there are times that I am tempted to pocket that extra money and spend it now, but this plan will allow us to cut years off the life of our loan.  I don't even know how much interest that will save us, but it is a lot!  So while it definitely hurts a little bit now, I know it will be worth it in the long run.   

 

#20: Make extra payments on our mortgage.  Long story short, we basically do the same thing with our mortgage that we do with my husband's student loans (minus the extra $100 a month).  In fact, Taylor's uncle recommended the bi-weekly payment plan to us when we first bought out house, so we have been using it ever since the beginning of our home ownership days.  When we saw what a difference it made in paying down our interest and escrow amounts, we knew we wanted to use it to pay off his student loans as well.  Again, it's taken some self-control, but I know we will be glad we did it later.

 

#21: Participate in/practice "Meatless Mondays."  Yup!  I'm sticking to it and not eating meat on Mondays.  This means I had a bean burrito at Chipotle yesterday instead of my usual carnitas burrito.  And while I love their delicious pork burritos, I didn't miss the meat as much as I thought I would.  In fact, this seems to get easier every week.  I just hope that I can do it for another 49 weeks! 

 

#23: Read the entire Bible in one year.  I'm still going well with this goal too.  I've actually read 4% of the Bible so far, which means that I've made it through Genesis 42 in the Old Testament and have read the first 14 chapters of Romans in the New Testament.  I'm still loving the YouVersion Bible app and blended reading plan.  I definitely recommend it if you have a smart phone/iPad and a similar goal. 

 

I do have some more updates regarding 5K races, half marathon training, and teaching a Bible class at church, but I will have to save them for another day!