When you follow a budget, it’s safe to say that you’re always on the hunt for ways to reduce your costs (and thus free up money for the budget categories that you’d like a little extra wiggle room in!). We recently chatted about shopping consignment sales, and today I’m sharing another way our family has recently maximized our budget!

Up until a few months ago, we had a cable and internet package from Time Warner Cable. We got the fewest possible channels (your standard NBC, ABC, etc.) for the lowest possible amount ($22). While this was fine, we were sad to miss out on a few favorites: namely AMC (The Walking Dead!), ESPN (Duke basketball!), and HGTV (Fixer Upper!). But, we weren’t willing to pay any more money to get them.

THEN. One of John’s colleagues told him about Sling TV, and the angels sang. Have you heard of it? After doing our own research, we canceled cable (though kept the internet!), signed up with Sling, and haven’t looked back.

Sling dubs itself “the best of live TV for $20 a month.” With an account, you can watch TV over the internet anytime, anywhere, on your television, tablet, phone, or computer. (You also sign up online and can cancel online at any time!) Our $20 a month package includes all of the favorites listed above, but if you want even more variety, they do have add-on packages for HBO, kids, and more sports. We also received a Roku streaming stick for pre-paying three months, which means we can now watch Netflix on our television, too!! (We always watched it on our laptop before!)

The channels that Sling does not provide? Local broadcast ones like ABC, NBC, and CBS. To bridge that gap, we installed an antenna (this one – boy, have they come a long way in recent years!).

Even though we’re really only saving $2 per month, I consider this a major budget win, as we’re getting more WHILE paying less money. Hooray!! We’ve been singing the Mohu and Sling praises to anyone who will listen for the last few months, but I did want to mention a few potential downsides if you’re considering making a similar move:

— Our antenna generally works perfectly. We did have an issue with spotty reception one night during a bad rainstorm, but it hasn’t happened since we moved the antenna further up our wall.
— Depending on where you live and how close you are to broadcast signals, the Mohu antenna might not be an option for you. (For example, my parents would have to get one with a much longer receiving distance, if they could make it work at all.) You can check your location compared to the signals here.

And that’s it! Have I convinced you?? Honestly, the worst part is calling to cancel your cable, because they WILL put the hard sell on you — but just keep saying “no thank you” :)

Let me tell you about my friend Stephanie, who recently moved back to the Triangle after living in DC for several years. Since she’s been here, the list of things she’s done, places she’s been, and people she’s met is mind-boggling. In fact, I’m positive she has more local friends than I do. (This is not surprising or upsetting, as I readily admit I am an introvert who prefers fewer, very closer friends over a larger circle.) She and I only recently met in person after being online friends for several years. Perhaps this emboldened me, because when she posted about a local book club she had joined, I inquired.

Stephanie, bless her heart, not only told me about the book club, but went one step further: she invited me to START an articles club with her. Even though it was a little outside of my comfort zone, I was instantly enamored with the idea. Both she and I had read about the concept on A Cup of Jo last year, and Steph had successfully hosted one with friends in DC. After a flurry of back and forth emails, our new version is taking shape!

And here’s where you come in: you’re invited! Yes! The first one will be on Tuesday, November 10, in the evening, in the Triangle of NC. We’ll meet about once a month (we are considering keeping it on the second Tuesday of the month). One gal will email out three articles to the group – perhaps themed, but not necessarily, and about topics that feel relevant to our age group: maybe friendship, career, work/life balance, children, or relationships. Then, we’ll gather and discuss them over appetizers, dessert, and drinks.

In addition to meeting new friends, Stephanie and I are both very set on actual discussion, so we’re hoping to attract ladies who feel the same way! :) If that sounds like you, and you’re available, shoot Stephanie an email – she will be rounding up RSVPs. Just as a note, depending on the level of interest, we might have to cap attendance, as the space where we’ll be gathering is not huge.

Whether or not you live near by, what do you think? Does an articles club sound like something up your alley? If so, take Stephanie’s example and reach out to someone about starting one – you just might be surprised! :) And feel free to leave links to articles you’re itching to discuss in the comments!

On one hand, this seems like an entirely inconsequential topic to devote a blog post to. On the other hand, it is a seriously genius trick that has revolutionized my leftover life, and I’m committed to sharing all things marvelous, inconsequential though they may be in the grand scheme of things.

Margherita pizza recipe and photo from Annie’s Eats

So here it is: if you have a slice or two of pizza to reheat, pop them into a skillet (I use stainless steel). Put on the lid and turn the stove on to medium heat. (No need to preheat.) After 6-8 minutes, the bottom should be crispy and the cheese on top should be melted. Emphasis on crispy — the revolutionary thing to me about this method is how delightfully crispy the slice gets! It’s amazing, and so far superior to microwave reheating the results don’t even compare.

I would love to hear: am I late to this party? Have y’all been using this method for years? Even so, if there’s at least one friend out there who hasn’t heard, I’ve done my job :)

Thanks to The Kitchn for enlightening me!

I have never been a baby person. It’s fairly well known among family and friends that I “don’t like babies,” as I mentioned in our announcement post. I’ll never be the one offering to hold your baby, and I don’t even think all babies are that cute. I even had a pact with a dear (baby loving) friend in high school that she would take any of my future babies from ages 0-2 and I would take hers from 14-16.

Rather than a cold, cold heart, I think this stems from a general uncomfortableness with the littlest among us, since I was never much around babies growing up. I did babysit, but only for kids out of diapers! Babies just seemed very fragile, and they can’t use words to tell you what they need (and I like words).

Perhaps because of this, even coming up on our third anniversary, John and I were never on the receiving end of the stereotypical pressure to have kids. I’m sure I probably would have hated it if we had been, but at some point, I actually started to get paranoid – do people think we aren’t fit to be parents?? This obvious (to me) conversational hole was especially ironic, because that very topic was in almost constant rotation between the two of us and our closest friends.

18 weeks!

Thinking back, we began having serious conversations about the future of our family at the beginning of 2014. This was my starting point: I can’t really vocalize why, and I’m certainly not convinced that I’m going to love the baby stage, but when I picture my life, there are treasured children in it. For me, that was enough to move forward. I also knew I wanted to be a younger mom, having my first child before 30.

My hunch is that John started from a similar position, but unlike me, he was not willing to move forward without being able to vocalize a more concrete and rational reason that we should do so. To gather ideas, we embarked on a yearlong quest to answer the question, “Why do people have children?”, hoping to find answers that would resonate with us. We posed this question to each other countless times. We did the same to friends with and without kids, those who knew they wanted them and those who were undecided. We researched online. We read books and blog posts. We listened to sermons and podcasts. We prayed.

The problem is this: all of the “negatives” about having children are very real and concrete: they cost a ton of money. They restrict your freedom. They can derail your financial progress and goals. They complicate your schedule. They complicate your travel. They’re messy. They’re needy. They keep you up at night. They don’t know how to use the bathroom.

On the other hand, the positives are generally intangible, and, almost by definition, unable to be understood or experienced before actually having children of your own.

While an interesting exercise and good conversation fodder, this seemingly unending quest was at times frustrating to me – it seemed like there was no possible answer that would convince John, and all I wanted was to move forward since I believed we were ultimately on the same page and kind of just wasting time. Just recently, though, I read something that really helped me understand why this wasn’t possible for him. It’s from his results from the scarily-accurate, Myers-Briggs based 16 Personalities quiz:

INTJs will strive to remain rational no matter how attractive the end goal may be, and every idea, whether generated internally or soaked in from the outside world, must pass the ruthless and ever-present “Is this going to work?” filter. This mechanism is applied at all times, to all things, and all people.

Apply it we did. We heard many perspectives from many people, and generated several ourselves, as to why people might have children. Ultimately, these were the most convincing to us:

Children will crack open a part of your heart that can’t be opened any other way. Not a new idea, but I would say the way Darren Whitehead in particular described this was extremely moving and heartfelt. I don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to learn about love.

Your relationship with your children will teach you more than anything else can about your relationship with God the father. This totally makes sense to me. I know what being a child is like, but even just being pregnant, I can already tell that experiencing the parent half of the equation will be truly eyeopening. I’m so looking forward to this.

You get to rediscover the world as you teach and walk alongside your child. This is the most obviously fun one! Though the magnitude of shepherding a child is not lost on me, I’m also so excited for all of the people, places, things, and ideas I’ll get to introduce our little one to – and experience anew alongside him or her!

Having children is the greatest expression of hope humans can participate in. We believe the best is yet to come. We are not cynical people. Deciding to have children is tantamount to saying we believe the world they will grow up in will be bright and beautiful, and that’s a statement of faith we want to make.

One more reason on my list: my husband is so precious to me — truly one of the best people I know — that it’s hard for me to even imagine getting to parent someone who was made from him, alongside him. Just thinking about that kind of makes me feel like my heart might explode.

By the end of 2014, we were convinced that children were in our future. However, even armed with that knowledge, we still felt hesitant about jumping in! With our backgrounds, I don’t think either of us would ever have stated that we felt 100% prepared or ready (financially, emotionally, or otherwise) to have a baby. But that’s the beauty of the system – you don’t just decide one day that you’re ready to have a kid, and one arrives on your doorstep the next day.

Once we flipped the switch and actively started trying to get pregnant, it’s kind of crazy how quickly my feelings of hesitation turned to impatience and even anxiety – I wanted to be pregnant immediately! There are so many (really hard and sad) stories of infertility and miscarriage in my circles, and despite the fact that there was no indication in our families or my medical history that either would be a problem, my mind instantly went there. So when we did see PREGNANT show up on the test after just a couple of months, there was relief and joy. No tears :)

We waited a full five weeks to take it, and agreed to look at it together after waiting the obligatory three minutes — but he peeked and saw it first! I know many people find a clever way to share the news with their husbands, but I can’t imagine finding out without John by my side. That didn’t stop us, however, from coming up with creative ways to tell our families and friends – more on that in my next post!

To conclude, one of my biggest fears was that by lingering on The Question for so long, as well as all of the potential negatives of adding a baby to the family, we’d never get out from under them — that even once I was pregnant, John still wouldn’t be excited. However, I needn’t have worried, as that couldn’t be further from our reality now. He is SO excited — probably more excited than me — and clearly already loves this baby so much. (Another gem from 16 Personalities that helps explain this: INTJs trust their rationalism above all else, so when they come to a conclusion, they have no reason to doubt their findings.) People ask us if we’re nervous, and the answer is no – I think we thought through all of our nerves already, and now only joy and peace are left!

Friends, I’d love to hear: have you always felt clearly about having (or not having) children? If you have children or know you want to have them, why? Do any of the conclusions we came to resonate with you?