Tackling Personal Finance Goals

Last month I started tracking my finances. It might not sound like a big step, but I wanted to get a better look about where all my money went each month. I won’t go too deep into details, but I thought it might be interesting to veer off the path of my usual food and beauty posts and do a quick personal finance article instead.

While I love lifestyle blogs (like The Londoner, for example), I’m also a huge, huge fan of personal finance sites. As someone with lots of student debt, I find it fascinating to read about how others tackled similar problems. Some of my favorites include The Financial Diet and posts on Lifehacker.

One of the things these blogs always advocate for is to track your spending. And for the longest time, I thought I was doing just that. Sure, I wasn’t writing down every little thing I spent money on, but I checked my online banking daily, and had a budget in place. That was good enough, right?

Wrong.

A Crash Course in Southern Charm

Hello all! I’m back after a quick trip to South Carolina.

My youngest sister attends Coastal Carolina University, and my mom wanted to make a quick trip down there this weekend. She doesn’t like flying all that much, and asked if I wanted to go with.

The answer was a no-brainer: Of course.

What’s in the Box: April Glossybox Review

Hello all! Another month, another Glossybox. This month’s box was pretty great — it had a nice mix of products that are particularly well suited for the warmer weather that’s approaching.

In case you aren’t familiar, Glossybox is a subscription box that cost $21 a month and delivers 5 deluxe sample or full-size products. I’ve had the subscription for well over a year now, and it’s rare that I don’t like the boxes.

With that refresher in mind, let’s take a look at April’s box:

The Perfect Sunday

The weather outside this weekend was just gorgeous. I hope you got a chance to bask in the sunshine and take advantage of the early spring day.

I know I did.

How to Survive Jury Duty in Philadelphia

Sorry I’ve been absent the past few days. I had jury duty.

I wasn’t picked to actually be on a trial, but it was for federal district court, which meant I had to travel down to Philadelphia for a few days.

Since I’ve had a ton of people ask me what it’s like, and I know I hit up Google looking for stories before I went, I thought I’d share my experience.

Next Week’s Meal Plan

In an effort to reduce the grocery budget, while also eating healthy, I wanted to make a meal plan for next week that incorporates ingredients I currently have on hand (so I can start emptying out my darn freezer) and uses excess ingredients that normally would get thrown away. I usually shop on Saturdays, and therefore make my plans from Sunday-Saturday.

It’s a work in progress, but here are the bare bones of it.

Review:Tresemme Reverse Wash System

After recently chopping off my hair, I knew I had to switch up my products routine. This weekend I went and bought some new Bumble & Bumble goodies (which will be reviewed once I try them out for a few days), but I also have switched to a new shampoo and conditioning system that I’ve fallen in love with.

The Tresemme Reverse Wash system is different than your standard drugstore hair care lines. Instead of showering under the traditional routine — i.e. shampoo hair then smother it in conditioner and wait around for a few minutes — it reverses the process in the hopes of getting more volume.

With my move to short hair, I knew I needed something that wasn’t quite as heavy as my former products. After using the new system for about 2 weeks, I can safely say that it’s pretty great.

Time for a Haircut?

‘Ello all.

I’m just getting over a bought of pneumonia (though I still have a pesky cough), which has meant a total lack of motivation to do anything — including blog posts. Sorry!

One thing I did manage to do while I was sick was to go get a haircut. I’ve been growing out my hair for the past year or two, and it had become a long, bleached, dead mess.

I was ready for something a little more grown-up and a whole lot easier to style. Enter the lob.

Friday Favorites

Hey all! It’s Friday. Thank God. I don’t know if it was the moving in the beginning of the week or what, but this week just felt super long and super tiring.

Because of that, I thought I’d share a quick post with some of the coolest stuff I found online this week. From a fun recipe for your SuperBowl party to an awesome money-saving app, here are a few Friday reads:

The Anti-Diet Diet: A Weight Watchers Review

When you think Weight Watchers, do you think of some old-fashioned concept where groups of moms gather around, obsessively counting points in the hopes of losing a few pounds?

Well, my friend, things have changed. As someone who’s struggling to drop some added poundage over the last year or so, I’ve recently jumped on the Weight Watchers bus. And so far, it’s pretty great.