Our Bill Pickle

Budget Update: February 2021

March 2, 2021

Our monthly budget update includes 5 highlights from the last month and 3 goals for the month ahead. Here's the update for February 2021.

Our monthly budget update does not change much.

It is primarily fixed expenses, like rent, phone bills and car insurance, which remain the same month after month. Even the amount budgeted to our miscellaneous line (more on that here) stays the same most months.

So instead of giving a line-by-line breakdown for our monthly budget update, I do something a little different. Each month, I share five highlights from our budget, along with three goals for the month to come.

Here is the update for February 2021.

The Snowman’s Guide to Personal Finance: a review

February 23, 2021

Around this time last year, I won a copy of the Snowman’s Guide to Personal Finance by Steven Arnott (thanks Kari!).

This little book popped up on a couple Canadian personal finance blogs I enjoy in early 2020. I enjoyed Kari’s Q&A with the author and the other reviews I read, so I threw my name in the hat…and actually won!

The book arrived just as the snow melted and spring began. And even it’s a personal finance book, not a seasonal read, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a book with snowman in the title after an east coast winter.

If you’re from here, you know what I’m saying.

Several months later, winter has come back around and it finally felt like the right time to pick up this book. A quick read, I finished it in a couple sittings and today, I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Disclaimer: As mentioned right off the top, I won a copy of this book, so I didn’t pay for it. That being said, the decision to read and review the book here was my choice. A review was not requested and I’m not being compensated for writing one.

Should you do your own taxes? Three things to consider

February 18, 2021

Should you do your taxes yourself or take them to a professional? Here are some things to consider when it comes to doing your own taxes.

I’m a big fan of doing your own taxes but that wasn’t always the case.

For several years, the idea felt daunting. The way I saw it, the existence of professional tax prep services suggested it was not a job for a novice, especially one with so little experience taking care of “adult” business.

So, for years, I gathered my documents and handed them over to someone else to deal with.

And for years, it worked out just fine.

But over time, I started to question my assumption about filing taxes. As I got older, I started to wonder: is it really that difficult a process?

I decided to find out. We picked up Turbo Tax at the grocery store and I set to work preparing our tax returns.

I’ve been doing our taxes myself ever since.

But what about you? Should you be doing your taxes yourself or taking them to a professional?

Here are some things to consider when it comes to making decisions about doing your own taxes.

The super simple way I track our spending

February 16, 2021

Our spending tracker is so simple I hesitate to call it a spending tracker. Here's how I'm tracking our spending using Google Sheets.

Our spending tracker is so simple I hesitate to even call it a spending tracker.

There’s nothing fancy about it. In fact, I went out of my way to make sure it was the opposite of fancy.

What can I say? I like my budgeting tools to be functional above all else.

And this spending tracker is definitely functional.

Here’s why I decided to start tracking our spending, what our spending tracker looks like (and why we went with Google Sheets) and how it’s been working for us over the last few months.

How much I spent upgrading my underwear drawer

February 4, 2021

The cost women’s underwear is one of those things I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

There are few things I hate shopping for more than underwear. Styles and sizes are inconsistent from brand to brand and while it is possible to find affordable options, I have never had much luck as far as longevity goes.

Maybe it’s me, but I find the whole experience to be chaotic.

If it were possible to buy one set of underwear and wear them forever, I’d be all about that. Alas, that’s not the way it work, which means, every once in a while, I end up doing what I call an underwear drawer refresh.

I did my most recent on in November 2020. Here’s what that looked like (and how much it cost).