About

Welcome to Couple Money!

Couple Money is about handling family and finances responsibly in order to spend more time doing what we love. We’re not frugal people just to be frugal. We have taken some time to really discuss this and decided on working towards doing what we’d love to do. We’re using our lives with this blog as one long case study.

It’s hard to map out something without some sort of destination. We were chatting about goals that we have that we’d like to achieve. It had started simple when we were getting married. We wanted to pay off debt I had acquired, develop an emergency fund, and save money for a house.

Couple Money is about family first, then finances.

Almost 3 years later, we are moving along with our goals and developed a new one.

Have no debt except for our mortgage. Currently we don’t have credit card debt or car payments. The only debt left right now is my student loans, which have a low interest rate.
Have a steady mobile income of $50,000/year or more. While this would be less than what we earn now, if we have no debts except a mortgage this would work well for us. This income can from freelance work (which is my main source of income now), working remotely, or passive income developed from products we create.

We’re going to explore options as they become available. Our time frame is 5 years, so we have some work to do. For inspiration, I read successful bloggers who are living the mobile lifestyle like Chris Guillebeau.

About Couple Money

My plan for this blog is to keep track of our family’s steps towards financial freedom. We’ll include our victories and lapses with balancing family and money issues. I’ll try to keep this personal finance site focused on topics that we face in the real world. I enjoy reading and writing about personal finance. Some topics you may notice covered here:

Keep in mind, I’m writing from our personal perspective. We’re looking at what works for us in personal finance, so from time to time my opinions and thoughts will reflect that. I think you can appreciate what works for us may not work for you. All that I ask is that you read up on why we do things a certain way and share your story and tips.

In case, you’re curious and/or tech minded, I’m currently using an HP Pavillion dv6 laptop and a HP Mini 110 netbook to write this site. I use Nearly Free Speech to host the site and Wordpress is my blog’s platform.

Keeping Up with Couple Money

Stay up to date with all the latest posts by subscribing to Couple Money either by email or RSS. This saves you time and is completely free.
Email me at elle(at) CoupleMoney (dot) com. I do read my email daily (except on vacations). I would love to hear from you personally and I’m open for feedback.
Chat with me on Twitter. Besides catching my daily thoughts, I also enjoy answering questions and chatting with others.

Share your thoughts in the comments section. I love reviewing thoughtful comments from readers. Some topics have several ‘right’ answers and I think sharing different view points can be helpful. Please remember that I will delete comments that include:

Bad language or offensive material
Get Rich quick schemes, pyramid marketing schemes, or any other money scams
Spam comments about your non-related blog

Some Posts To Check Out

If you’re new to Couple Money, here are some of my favorite posts that have been popular with readers as well.

Couple Money Press

I’ve excited to see what happens in 2010 and I wanted to keep a list of mention, interviews, and lists that Couple Money appears on.

Disclaimer:

As you can probably guess, I’m not a financial guru and I make no claims to be. I’m constantly learning about personal finances and this blog is just a collection of the tips and life lessons we pick up. Couple Money is not intended to be a source for professional advice.

If you’re looking for professional help with your finances and you live in the United States, try using The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) to find a fee based financial planner. They should be able to work with you and your individual financial situation.

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Handling Joint & Separate Bank Accounts as a Couple: February 26, 2010 at 7:28 pm

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Ryan @ Planting Dollars January 31, 2010 at 4:25 am: Best of luck with the $50k a year mobile income goal. That’s actually the exact amount I’m shooting for in two years time as well.

Just so happened to stumble on your blog today, very well done.
thriftygal @ Chasing Prosperity February 3, 2010 at 10:13 am: I just found your site through financial samurai and think that you have a really interesting theme/concept. Since I make most of the financial decisions in our family (not by choice!), I’m very curious to find out how you do it as a couple. I’ll be visiting often to see how you do it

I do have one question. What do you mean by ‘mobile income’?
Elle February 4, 2010 at 10:14 pm: @ThriftyGal: thanks for finding the my site. I absolut;ey love financial Samurai and love reading the latest posts. When I say ‘mobile income’, I mean we’d like to our income to be independent of where we live.