DIY Valentine’s Door Hanger

I can’t lie to you, Lovely Saver. I love me a good craft project. And I love to get inspiration from Pinterest, of course. But when I saw this door hanger on an HGTV Facebook video, I took a screen shot right away!

I said to myself (as I always do) “I could make that, and I could probably make it cheaper” (which I sometimes do). This time, I definitely did! I don’t know about you, but I hate those videos that have “Dollar Store” whatever craft, but then the materials they use for the project have literally never been at a “Dollar Store”. Like, where are these fancy “Dollar Stores” and how do I find them?

I knew I couldn’t replicate the video exactly, and because I wanted to make something you could ACTUALLY find items for at a “Dollar Store”, mine is slightly different than the original. I also knew I wanted to use some materials I had on hand, and some higher-end materials from Michael’s but I will also provide substitutions that you could definitely use.

First things first, this bad boy is what we are trying to make:

I told ya, it was a quick screenshot. But you get the idea.

Here is what you will need:

Hot Glue Gun (can also use craft glue but it’ll take a heck of a lot longer to set/dry)
Something to use the hot glue on, I used a paper bag to make sure my table was protected.
Wide Ribbon (Dollar Store $1.00)
Wooden Letters (I got mine from Michael’s the x’s for $2.99/each and o’s for $1.99/each but you could easily use cardboard or poster board which is $0.50 at the Dollar Store)
Fake Flowers (Dollar Store $1.00/bundle, I bought 4 for 4 different colors)
Fake Moss (I already had this on hand from our wedding, but I did look up the price and it would be around $8.99 for WAY more than you actually need. If I didn’t already have it, I might have also used dark green felt, which is $0.50 at any craft store.)
A vacuum. Trust me.

Altogether I spent around $15.00, but you could do it for anywhere between $6-$30 depending on how fancy you are looking to get.

First step is to make a loop with your ribbon. I did not cut the ribbon yet, I will do that at a later step when I lay everything out the way I want it.

Secure the loop with hot glue but make sure you don’t touch the area you added glue to, it’ll go right through those threads and burn you.

Then I started on my O’s. I pulled off all the flower heads and cut the extra stem part so that they would sit flat on the O’s.

Then I hot glued them one by one! Some of them I needed to hold in place for a second before moving on, but this is the best part of using hot glue, for the most part it sets quickly and you can keep going.

For the record, I do not recommend this project, or any project using hot glue, when you have two naughty cats and new puppy.

No animals were harmed in the making of this door hanger.

The X’s I was most worried about. They were definitely going to be the messiest part of this project, and I had bought the moss for our wedding but didn’t actually use it, so I wasn’t sure how well it would go. I traced the X’s out on the back of the peel and stick moss (I didn’t want to use loose moss and hot glue like the video because that sounded like WAY more of a hassle and WAY more of a mess and I don’t want Handsome Man to divorce me).

I then used regular scissors to cut them out, which worked just fine but you could use a craft knife too if you wanted. You don’t have to worry about them being too precise because the moss is meant to look a little messy anyway, it’s natural.

The peel and stick worked great, the adhesive was stronger than I would have thought and I ended up being really happy with them!

Then I laid out the ribbon, placed the X’s and O’s where I wanted them, and cut the end of the ribbon. I hot glued them into place and let them set up for a bit before hanging up the final project!

I call that a win!

It ended up so cute! And looks great with our door, which we painted a few summers ago- you can read more about that here. Valentine’s is really one of the only Holidays I don’t have decor for, so adding a new pop of festivity to the door gives the space a fresh feeling without pink and red hearts everywhere.

Don’t forget to read all about other ways you can save money while still celebrating Valentine’s Day, I have a whole list here.

As always, thank you so much for all of your support, Lovely Savers! I love sharing my tips and tricks for money and how to deal with everything in between. Please follow me on Instagram and join the Facebook Group: Sugar and Savings- Budgets and Saving Money to be a part of our community of other lovely savers. We share our thoughts, and plans with money, and we celebrate each other’s wins!

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

The $1,000 Emergency Fund

Commonly referred to as “Baby Step One”, the $1,000 emergency fund and why you need it!

In the Dave Ramsey “Baby Steps” of getting out of debt, the very first step is to save up a $1,000 emergency savings fund. This is before you start the “debt- snowball method” which is where you list all of your debts from least to greatest and pay them off in that direction. But whether or not you are a Dave Ramsey fan or follower, here is why I suggest that ANYONE have at LEAST a $1,000 emergency fund.

For some, only having a $1,000 emergency savings seems really low. I know when I first started out I was very unsure that $1,000 would be enough to feel comfortable! But the emergency fund is there to protect you from going further into debt if an emergency situation arose, like a car repair, medical bill, pet surgery, etc. It doesn’t have to be your only savings if you do not want it to be, it is just earmarked for specific cases.

If your car, the only way for your to get to and from work in this hypothetical situation, suddenly broke down and you needed to spend $1,200 on the repair- you have to, right? If it is your only option, it has to be done, and if you DON’T have that $1,000 set aside what are you going to do? Most people would probably say “pull out that credit card”, but we are trying to AVOID debt here.

When you have that $1,000 set aside, you can pay most of the bill with those funds and now you only have $200 to worry about. And I think anyone would agree that when something unexpected comes up you would rather need to figure out a $200 payment over a $1,200 one.

Some people get really intimidated by the idea of actually saving $1,000. I get comments on my different savings plans all the time “well what do you do if you literally don’t have any money left over to save?”. Which is a very real struggle a lot of people face, it isn’t always easy to set aside that money!

The first thing I suggest to do, when starting to save your $1,000 Emergency Fund, is to stop any extra payments you have going to bills and only pay the minimums due until you can some money saved up. This won’t account for the full $1,000 but it is a good place to start to at least get yourself some traction. The interest you’ll be charged for only making the minimum payments will be negligible, as after you have the $1,000 you can either start your debt- snowball or go back to your original payments.

The next thing I offer to clients is to evaluate their previous month’s spending and see where the budget can be cut. You can follow the Rachel Cruze “14-Day Money Finder” challenge, which I did a blog about here. Where it looks at your current situation and makes you take a good look at where your money is really going.

Finally, automate your savings! Set up automatic transfers out of your checking account to a savings account, or set it up with your direct deposit to put some of your paycheck away each pay period. When you treat your savings like it is a bill you have to pay, you are less likely to put it off.

It might sound like a lot at first, but once you have it set aside you won’t believe the peace of mind you will have. Emergencies feel less like emergencies when you are prepared. And as I always remind my clients, this sacrifice is temporary! If you have to cut your budget a little to get to that $1,000, it doesn’t mean that is how it is going to be for the rest of your life. Besides, you can do hard things.

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

Kitchen Update on a Budget

Hello Lovely Savers!

I have been meaning to write this article for so long, but now that we are officially done with our budget friendly kitchen update, I figured it was time!

As a little back story- we bought our house two years ago and have been updating it little by little, doing the work ourselves to save money (and also because it’s fun!). The house was built in 1946 and had really not been touched since, save for the horrible beige paint job. This was particularly true in the one and only bathroom that Handsome Man COMPLETELY overhauled, and it was also true for our small kitchen.

If we’re being honest we still have much bigger plans for our kitchen, including adding a dishwasher, new appliances, and new countertops. However we are currently in the process of planning our wedding and figured those bigger projects could wait, but it would still be nice to spruce the kitchen up in the meantime. (Also, #quarantine…. so what else did we have to do?)

The very first update to the kitchen was giving our ugly laminate countertops a makeover. This took a little convincing, Handsome Man was NOT sold on the idea when I showed him the contact paper I planned to use as essentially a STICKER on the counters.

And truth be told, it didn’t turn out that great. It was WAY harder to do than the YouTube videos suggested. And though we haven’t tried to remove it, it theoretically can be, just pulling it up to readjust what I was doing was SO DIFFICULT that I am not positive it was as “removable” as advertised.

My other annoyances are that it didn’t want to stick to the underside of the lip and the seams are more visible than I had hoped. BUT for a total of $36 it really did brighten up the kitchen and in the end it is usually covered by all of our crap. I got all the marble contact paper I needed on Amazon.

Running total: $36

The Walls! As I have mentioned many other times, the older woman who lived here before us must have LOVED the color beige. To modernize our kitchen with a quick and inexpensive project, we decided to paint. With “Kitchen and Bath” paint (a little bit glossy for easy cleaning) we did the first color as a light grey that we actually have in other rooms in the house. Unfortunately, because I don’t think they mixed it right, it turned out more of a light purple that blended into the marble contact paper. It wasn’t enough of a contrast for our taste, and we gave it a few months but in the end we went back over with a darker grey that we adore.

It looks a little green in this picture, but it is a warm grey, I swear.

At $25/gallon, and our change of color, our walls ran us around $50.

Running total: $86

My FAVORITE project we did- my cabinets! Our cabinets are incredibly dated, but they are also unique and high quality! I scoured Pinterest to help me decide what I might want to do to those old cedar doors.

Eventually I settled on a two-tone look, white on top and dark grey on bottom. Another of my ideas that involved convincing Handsome Man. To compromise, I let him pick the hardware. I would have gone for matte black, but polished nickel it is.

To save time and money (I had thought) I bought Milk Paint as my research told me I would not need to sand or prime. This was a lie. Again, those cabinets had not been touched since 1946, and after the first coats of the white Milk Paint the yellow tannins of the cedar wood were showing through! It looked like we had giant water stains all over.

I spent extra money on that Milk Paint specifically to avoid extra work, but it was not as I had planned. While I am still happy with the finish of the Milk Paint, we had to buy primer and take way more time- so with the $25 of primer in addition to the 4 pints of Milk Paint at $30 each, the paint was $155 and the hardware was around $50 all together. You can probably get all of these things at your local hardware store, but the Milk Paint is only sold at certain retailers so you just want to check before making a run to the store.

Running total: $291

Handsome Man was very intent on changing out the light fixture as well, he looked EVERYWHERE before choosing the winner.

He says he thinks he got it on Wayfair but he can’t remember anymore. I had luck with other lighting fixtures we have in our home at Cost World Market online as well.

Running total: $441

The final project in this current phase of kitchen renovation was adding our kitchen hutch. To get one we really liked, one that would add storage and counter space, we did spend a little more during a sale Target was having. It’s worth mentioning that while looking we did find more cost effective ones at places like Wayfair, but we had saved so much on the project overall that we decided to splurge. We got our hutch with a stainless steel countertop and glass doors for $625.

Kitchen Update Total: $1,066

We LOVE our “new” kitchen and it feels so much more welcoming than it did before. If you are looking for a quick and budget friendly update, a new coat of paint is always a good idea- and if you are looking for more kitchen projects I hope our small ones have inspired you! Learn from my mistakes and you’ll save yourself some time with the money you are saving.

If you are looking for MORE home projects on a budget visit my post about curb appeal here!

Thank you so much for all of your support, lovely savers, I love sharing my tips and tricks for money and how to deal with everything in between. Please join the Facebook Group: Sugar and Savings- Budgets and Saving Money to be a part of our community of other lovely savers. We share our thoughts, and plans with money, and we celebrate each other’s wins! And each month I go live to answer YOUR questions about personal finance!

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings!

Money in the Time of Coronavirus

Money in the time of Covid19

I’m sure that you are all sick of hearing about it, sick of talking about it, it is impossible to avoid and incredibly stressful.

That being said I would feel as though I had not been there for you and your families if I didn’t comment or if I didn’t give small pieces of advice about how to handle your money at this time.

Some of you might be out of work, some (I hope no one) might be sick and can’t work, some don’t qualify for unemployment even though this has also caused you to have to stop working. There are a lot of questions and people don’t always make the best choices when we’re scared and stressed, and being worried about money just amplifies that 100%

Here are my tips for how to handle your money during the Coronavirus Crisis.

First– Your highest priority should be to make sure you have enough money to pay the mortgage or rent and feed your family. If you are having a hard time and making any payments towards debt, cut those back to minimum payments. Call up your utility companies and see if they are offering any relief packages, and talk to your lenders about suspending payments- most banks are offering this now.

Second– Your investments. The market looks pretty bad, super bad, but it DOES come back around. The worst thing you could do for your future self right now- is to cash out any investments you have while they are down. Working in the finance industry I’ve seen more people than you’d think cashing out portfolios, portfolios that were worth 120k 4 months ago and are now only worth 80k. Now 80k is still a lot of money don’t get me wrong, but if they had left it alone, it would have gone back up to 120k. And NOW if they try to reinvest that 80k when this all clears, it will take them so much time to recoup their losses if they even do.

Bottom line, leave them alone for now, let them go down and you can be sure they will go right back up.

Third– Make sure you know what is going on with your employment. If you are still working make sure you know what the contingency policy is for payroll, if you are furloughed or can’t work reach out to your employer to see what their plans are. They might not know right now either, but they should be willing to share whatever they do know with you.

Fourth– Stretch the budget. Cut where you can, if that means you cut gym memberships right now (you can’t go anyway…) or other items, so be it! I saw one guy get a 60% discount on his Amazon prime membership because he asked for it! He said, hey I’m not getting my usual perks as there isn’t prime shipping and I don’t really use it for anything else, what can you do? If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. Same as I said before about payments, talk to your lender as they may have different options to at least give you a LITTLE more wiggle room. You might not even have to call to find out, I know we’ve all been getting way too many emails from every single company we’ve ever interacted with- search your inbox, you might have the policies or resources right there.

If you need ideas for how to stretch that budget further I have several posts to help- a couple of cheap food ideas and recipes in the “The Loneliest Cookbook” category and ways to save on groceries here.

Fifth– confession time. Beware the stress spending! I am a self aware Retail Therapy girl, I work to curb my retail therapy spending especially when I am feeling stressed or anxious. I even wrote a whole blog about it! But did I buy myself some pajamas with German Shepherds on them so that Fern and I could match? You’re absolutely damn right I did. And some makeup from ELF. And a shirt. And a dryer vent vacuum attachment. See what I mean? Little purchases add up and they might make you feel a tiny bit better momentarily, but keep yourself in check!

To be honest though the pajamas were totally worth it because Fern was really excited that we matched. We did a photoshoot.

So my final thing about overspending or stress spending, is that if you need to do something for yourself, if you are feeling awful and you need to bring yourself the tiniest bit of joy- you do that. You buy those pajamas. But try to focus on self care that doesn’t cost money, because we need to hold on to that a little tighter right now.

If you have other questions about what to do with your personal finances in this time, or if you just need someone to talk to because you are quarantined, you guys know where to find me.

I hope you guys are all staying healthy and safe, I hope you are wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart, and I hope you are being kind to yourself. You are allowed to be upset, and stressed, and scared, I just hope you make room for gratitude also. Snuggle your pets, because you can’t snuggle anyone else right now, and as always I am wishing you sugar and savings!

Holiday Gift Guides

Hello Lovely Savers!

The Holidays are approaching and if you are looking for gift ideas for someone specific or you are just looking for ideas to save money, I wanted to put all of the Sugar and Savings’ gift guides in one place.

Check out the lists below or keep reading for budget friendly presents!

Gifts for Mom
Gifts for Dad
Gifts for the College Student
Gifts for your Sweetheart

3 Budget Friendly Holiday Gifts

Books. Books are a great gift for anyone, you can share one of your favorites with a loved one or write a fun note in the cover for them to keep as a treasure.
Board Games. I just shared this tip over on Instagram but did you know you can buy games at thrift stores? Some board games I’ve looked at buying for Handsome Man are like $20+ and we will have just as much fun playing a used one from Goodwill for $6.
Quality Time. This could be an activity you will do together, or they can do with someone else. Growing up my favorite gifts were tickets to plays with my Mom, or one year my Sister gave me a sleep over with her and it was the best day! The activity doesn’t need to be extravagant, just something you do together.

There you go Lovely Savers! I hope these gift guides can help you enjoy the Holidays and stress a little less. This is a season for joy and remember that you don’t have to go into debt to show people that you love them.

As always, thank you so much for all of your support, Lovely Savers! I love sharing my tips and tricks for money and how to deal with everything in between. Please join the Facebook Group: Sugar and Savings- Budgets and Saving Money to be a part of our community of other lovely savers. We share our thoughts, and plans with money, and we celebrate each other’s wins! And each month I go live to answer YOUR questions about personal finance!

Until next time, wishing you all Happy Holidays and Sugar and Savings,

Grocery Delivery- Does it Save Money?

Hello Lovely Savers! This week I wanted to talk about a potentially (key word here) great way to save money… having your groceries delivered!

Growing up, in our neighborhood, we had the Schwan’s Man. A beige boxy truck with a swan for a logo, that would stop at certain houses and deliver groceries. I was convinced that it was ACTUALLY an ice cream truck and that my mother was lying to me so that I was not able to have those awesome little ice cream cups with the pull off lid. I knew those came from Schwan’s but had little to no understanding of why you couldn’t go up to the truck to buy some, you had to order them. And I had little to no understanding of why my mother did not order some then! Was she TRYING to deprive me?

Then when I was old enough to figure out it really was a grocery deliver service (and that you can buy those ice cream cups at regular grocery stores too, she was just choosing to NOT for some reason) I did not understand why anyone needed their groceries delivered. Didn’t they know Cub was down the street? Did they really pay someone to bring them their food? Were they just really lazy? It was baffling to me.

Then even later when I had to do my own grocery shopping, and I was already more frugal than is probably good for me, I could never imagine spending money on a delivery service. Surely, it was crazy expensive right?

One day I heard an ad on the radio (see? Sometimes those things are good to listen to!). It was for this generation’s Schwan’s Man- Coborn’s Delivers. If you signed up for Coborn’s with a code from the radio station, your first 3 month’s of delivery were free and you got like $10 off your first order or something. Well, for the sake of this blog of course, I was willing to try this mysterious delivery if I didn’t have to pay delivery fees AND I saved $10.

So I logged in and signed up and had groceries delivered for the first time. I wouldn’t say that it saved me any time- as I had to learn to navigate the site and find the foods that I liked, but it definitely didn’t take me more time that it would have taken to actually go to the store. Then on the day I selected, I had big green plastic bins delivered to my door. They were packed with cooler ice packs and after I unpacked my food I just logged on again to schedule a bin pick up for free.

It was pretty slick and, at least with Coborn’s, it really wasn’t any more expensive than a regular trip would be. Even if I had paid delivery fees, which were only $5 usually, I could see the benefit of having this done every now and then. And I did use it again when I was on rest after surgery in July!

Now- why did I say “potentially” a great way to save money then? If everything was so comparable?

Because I am a pro grocery shopper. I am so particular that I know what food costs and what I am willing to pay for certain items. I’ve been doing this blog a long time, I’ve been a stickler for saving money for even longer. I go to the grocery store with a list every single time, but even I know the dangers of grocery shopping while hungry! Impulse buys? Candy aisles? Seasonal decor (why is this in a grocery store?!)?

Everything in that store is designed to be tempting. So maybe, if you are particularly susceptible to impulse shopping, having to search for specific items on your list without those other aisles could save you a chunk of change.

And what about the time? Once you get good at using the website, it does go a lot faster. AND you don’t have to drive to the store, find a parking space, walk through every aisle because they renovated AGAIN and moved all of your favorite stuff, and wait in the check out line. Someone has to tell the stores that they don’t need 27 check out lines if they are only ever going to open 4 of them at a time. THEN going back home, unloading the car, and putting it all away. I only TYPED this and I feel like I need a nap.

You know yourself better than anyone. Would spending $5 on delivery be worth saving the time and skipping the tempting impulse buying? For me it was. And sure, there are other pros and cons to a grocery delivery service, but I write a personal finance blog- not a grocery deliver critique forum. It was worth the $5 delivery to me (and if you keep your ears tuned in during commercials- possibly free delivery!) and it might be worth it to you as well.

A word of caution- I have only used one delivery service. I have HEARD that some services may charge more for their food to offset their costs. 1. That makes sense. 2. Be conscious of what items usually cost and whether or paying a little more on them would be worth it. Again, you know yourself better than anyone. If you fall victim to impulse shopping and spend around $10 extra on those impulse items, and the delivery service fees are $5 and they charge $2 more on a particular item, maybe it would still be worth it for you.

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

An Income Issue

Hello Lovely Savers! Today I wanted to talk about an issue that pulls on my heartstrings… income issues.

“Taylor, why does income pull on your heartstrings?” you might be asking. Because I am a personal finance nerd, obvs. Also, because sometimes, no matter how hard you try to save and budget- the spending isn’t the problem.

I see this with clients every once in a while, they cut EVERYTHING from their budgets and they stick to those budgets like it is their purpose in life, but even with all their sacrifices they can’t get ahead. They feel stuck, and like all the sacrificing wasn’t even worth it, and they feel hopeless. I would know, I’ve been there.

And it’s at this point that I ask them to look outside of the budget, I don’t ask them to try to cut more than they already have. I ask them to look at where the money comes from. There are so many people who work at their jobs for years and they don’t even consider any other options because they are comfortable and it “pays the bills”. But what about when it isn’t paying the bills?

In one of my really old blog posts I talked about leaving the non-profit world because it couldn’t pay the bills (and several other reasons). I felt SO GUILTY leaving the job I had worked so hard to get, and I was made to feel like I was being GREEDY to ask for more hours and thus more money. I left in June that year, and when I did my taxes the following year do you know how much they had paid me in 6 months? $5,000. They wanted me to work there for $10,000 a year. And it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was right to leave, I am worth more than $10,000 a year.

Sometimes it isn’t even the salary. Occasionally I have had a client, and when we are going over their budget I naturally ask how much they bring home each month, and they explain that it is a little lower than they’d like because they only work 30 hours a week.

“Well”, then I ask, “why do you only work 30 hours a week?”

“Because they only want me to work 30 hours a week.”

Like, I’m sorry, what? Then they can find someone else to work 30 hours per week! And I understand that some people have limitations and that inhibits them from being able to work 40 hours, I am obviously not talking about that in this scenario. If you WANT to work 40 hours per week, then find a job that will pay you to work 40 hours a week!

It’s also my experience that if a job is only willing to pay for a half-time employee or a part-time employee (less than 40 hours per week), then they are NOT giving competitive compensation. And they are probably not providing benefits either.

Even if you are an Administrative Assistant, and they pay you $18/hour which is the going rate for Administrative Assistants in your area, if you are only scheduled for 30 hours per week you are making less than $600 per week. If you worked 40 hours you’d be making a little over $700. And sure, that $100 doesn’t seem like a ton in the grand scheme of things, but if your financial goals could really use that $100, it isn’t anything to sneeze at. AND if you don’t receive benefits from work, and you have to supply them yourself, you might be out another couple hundred per month to pay for things like health insurance and dental and vision, etc.

I am not suggesting that anyone working less than 40 hours should go get a second job to compensate for the missing income, if you want to, go for it. If you find somewhere willing to hire you for 10 hours a week, they probably are not paying higher than minimum wage, and it might not be worth the stress.

What I am really suggesting is that you determine what your goals need, and if they need more income to make them a reality, don’t be afraid to ask for it or find it somewhere else.

YOU ARE NOT OWNED BY YOUR EMPLOYER. You may feel loyalty toward them, toward the job and your coworkers, but no one can hold you back from reaching YOUR goals. As disheartening as it is, if you leave, they will replace you.

So there you have it Lovely Savers. If you have worked your butt off to stick to a budget, and cut the cable and all the fun stuff, and you STILL can’t make it past Baby Step One ($1,000 Emergency Savings)- time to look outside of spending. Is there enough coming in? If not, what are you willing to do about that?

Sorry that today’s blog might be a little bit of a downer, but thank you so much for all of your support, Lovely Savers! I love sharing my tips and tricks for money and how to deal with everything in between. Please join the Facebook Group: Sugar and Savings- Budgets and Saving Money to be a part of our community of other lovely savers. We share our thoughts, and plans with money, and we celebrate each other’s wins! And each month I go live to answer YOUR questions about personal finance!

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

How to Paint your Front Door

Hello Lovely Savers! Welcome to my fun DIY door painting project!

Handsome Man and I had been planning on painting our front and back doors for quite a while and I finally talked him into letting me do it! (We only bought the paint 3 months ago…)

I think part of his hesitation came from the color I was requesting, a bright teal, and part of his hesitation came from thinking it would be a bigger project than it is. Also maybe his hesitation came from the fact that I was the one who was going to do it and there was a very real possibility of me spilling paint everywhere. Whatever, I didn’t. So there.

To start this project we picked out the color and bought a gallon of porch and floor paint. We didn’t mean to buy the whole gallon, there was some miscommunication between us and the paint lady, but it’s fine for the two doors. We will have extra for touch ups down the road.

2. To get the doors ready for repainting (ours were already painted, if your doors are not, I suggest sanding down the finish and priming it) I wiped down the doors and then sanded them. I made sure to sand extra where there were drips from the last paint job and where some of the paint was peeling. If your paint is peeling, try to get as much of it off as possible so the new coat doesn’t peel later. After sanding I wiped the doors down again.

3. How do you paint a door?! Well for the front door, handsome man removed the handle but you can also just tape like I did with the back door. Then I googled. Because I don’t instinctively know how to paint a door and now that Ted is finally trusting me with this I cannot afford to mess it up! I found several tutorials on Pinterest where they even marked out the parts of the door and the order you need to paint them in. Awesome. Color by numbers? I can do that.

4. So according to my handy dandy google directions, I used a brush to first paint the tricky bits in the groovy areas (so official, I clearly know what I am talking about.). Then following the pattern on the guide I painted the rest with a brush. Handsome Man has an unnatural hatred for brush strokes so I only did that for the first coat.

5. For the second coat I repeated the instructions, using the brush on the tricky bits and then a small roller to complete the rest of it. We only needed two coats but you may want to do a third.

Ta Da! A beautifully painted door!!!

It completely transforms the front area, and brightens up the front of the house. To see all of the projects we tackled on the front of our house (and under $100!) read the full blog here.

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

Update your Curb Appeal- On a Budget!

Three things you can do on the cheap to make your house shine!

Hello Lovely Savers! The air is starting to get a little brisk in the evenings and the leaves have an EVER SO SLIGHT tinge of orange mixed in among the green… which means fall is almost here!

If you are anything like Handsome Man and I, you are scrambling to get your outside projects done before the season is upon us. Or maybe you live in a state where Summer actually lasts as long as it’s supposed to, we are not so lucky.

Today I wanted to share a few things that we did to SUPER update the curb appeal of our house, all on tight budget restrictions.

1. The Front Door. The front door is the focal point of the home. It is literally the first thing people see and it is a blank space for creativity. Our front door was painted this burgundy red before we moved in (and not super well).

It was fine for a while but I wanted to dress this home up. I wanted something light and welcoming and bright against the dull grey of the house. 1 gallon of porch and floor paint later, and voila!

You can see the steps I took to paint the door here.

Total Budget for Update: $100
Front Door Project: $35
Total Left: $65

2. The Windows. Now OBVIOUSLY if you are on a budget you are not about to spring for brand new windows. And luckily, with our home, we don’t need em. We LOVE our big window right in front, it lets in a ton of light into the living room and was a big selling point for us. But, if your trim is peeling or looking dingy, maybe its time for a clean up job. Our windows were in pretty good shape, but they had these (same color as the door) burgundy shutters.

I didn’t mind the shutters, I think they frame the window nicely! However, they needed an upgrade too. We kept the same shutters and spray painted them a dark blue to contrast against the grey and teal on the door. The spray paint was really cheap, but as a disclaimer I did need more than I thought I would, and Handsome Man made some extra trips to Menards for me.

Total Budget: $65
Window Project: $25
Total Left: $40

3. The Yard. So… I’m sure I’ve complained before about our yard. We saw the house during an open house in May- Before anything in MN grows back from the winter. We BOUGHT the house in June. When EVERYTHING WAS GROWING LIKE CRAZY. See, the lovely woman who lived here before us, didn’t like to mow. So instead, she decided to just plant hastas and ferns and day lilies…. EVERYWHERE. I still can’t talk about the number of ferns we had to dig up… traumatizing. That being said, that was last year’s project, this year we just wanted to stay in control of the plants. We cut the front yard “prairie” way back and dug out a ton of the pants in front of the window. Other than a new shovel, we only spent money on some grass seed which we plan to put down this fall to over seed what is already there. With some manual labor, and DIY attitudes, we saved a ton of money and the house looks way better already. And not like it sits in the middle of a jungle. We still have a ways to go, but neighbors have already stopped by to compliment how much better it looks! I wish the pictures below actually did the transformation its due justice.

Total Budget: $40
Yard Work: $20
Total Left: $20

So whether you are a home owner, renter, getting ready to sell a home, or looking at buying a home, these are just a few ways you can spruce up the front without breaking the budget. They are also really easy projects even for brand new homeowners and DIYers. We sure aren’t done with everything we want to do to the house, but for under $100, we have done pretty good so far!

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

Selling on Facebook vs. Craigslist

Hello Lovely Savers!

My blog posts have been pretty silent since last year, and that is because I have been focusing on the Sugar and Savings Facebook group- “Sugar and Savings: Budgets and Saving Money”. It is a Facebook group dedicated to working on our budgeting skills and money management, with a focus on paying off our debts! Each month, I also go live in the group and answer questions submitted by you guys, all around best money practices. It is a lot of fun and I would love to have you join us if you haven’t already, you can find our page by clicking here.

Today, however, I want to talk about selling items on the internet! When you need a little extra cash or are hoping to add a payment to your debt snowball, doing a deep clean of your house might be the perfect way to get there. Whether it is clothing you don’t wear, or baby items you don’t use anymore, or furniture that you want to upgrade- it has never been easier to snap a picture and put it up for sale online.

But which site do you use? An app? Facebook? Craigslist? In this post we’ll look into the pros and cons of Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and compare the two. Let’s get started.

Facebook:

If you are like myself, you are already on Facebook a thousand times a day anyway. And there is a nifty little button right at the top that looks like a little lemonade stand (sorta?). That magical button takes you to the Facebook Marketplace, where you can search anything your heart desires and if someone is selling that item- you can find it, and usually for relatively cheap.

Fun fact: our entire dining room is furnished with items found on Facebook Marketplace, from our dining table and chairs, to two Pottery Barn accent chairs that I got for pennies on the dollar. Handsome Man said I couldn’t decorate our whole house by thrifting on Facebook or going to Goodwill- he was wrong.

You can also use this magical button to list your own items for sale. You take a picture, you name a price, and you describe it, and people can see the item and send you a message if they are interested in buying it. That being said, it is attached to your personal profile. So if they are looking at your item they can also see which city you are listed under and your profile picture. However, to that same point, you can also see who you are working with and your bases are covered as long as you are safe about it.

Craigslist:

Personally, I haven’t been on Craigslist since… 2015? I bought a dress for a costume party, but I know my older brother uses it quite frequently for home improvement items. And to be fair it was very easy to buy from Craigslist and there are a lot more options as far as if you were looking to purchase a specific item- comes with the territory of being around longer. So for the purposes of this blog post, I went through the process of listing an item for sale, to see how it works from that side.

It was fairly easy to set up but you have to use an email address, and while I like that it doesn’t share your email address with viewers, I also don’t check my email often enough for it to make that the easiest form of communication with potential buyers. I find emails get buried under my daily dose of 1,000 advertisements. And not only do I have to make sure I respond quickly enough, but then I have to hope they also respond back. My main issue with Craigslist is how dated it is, it gets the job done for sure, but hoping that potential buyers take that extra step to go onto an entirely different website and then reach out via email… it sounds like more work than it’s worth.

Overall, both sites work for when you are trying to purge and make a little extra side money. I prefer Facebook, but it is all about personal preference, and if you find an item not selling- try the other site! They are BOTH free, which really should be the top “pro” of each of them.

As always when working with strangers online- PLEASE BE SAFE. Don’t give out personal information, meet in public places, if something seems shady don’t do it, and always let someone know if you are going to meet a stranger alone. Text them when you get there, and call them when you are done. Or better yet, bring a buddy.

I hope this helps anyone who is looking to make some money online, for more money saving tips please check out my E-Book: “If I’m an Adult…Where is my Money?” available here on Amazon!

Thank you so much for all of your support, lovely savers, I love sharing my tips and tricks for money and how to deal with everything in between. Please join the Facebook Group: Sugar and Savings- Budgets and Saving Money to be a part of our community of other lovely savers! We share our thoughts, and plans with money, and we celebrate each other’s wins!

Until next time, wishing you all Sugar and Savings,

Taylor

xoxo