You know those podcast episodes that you hit play on as soon as you see them in your feed? Today’s post was inspired by one of them – a recent Lazy Genius episode. In it, Kendra shares 20 helpful decisions she keeps repeating across four areas of life: personal, kids, food, and money. “Decide once” is probably my favorite Lazy Genius principle – it speaks to my heart which loves both efficiency AND intentionality – and though I’ve written about some of my “decide once” decisions before, we’ve never discussed money-related decisions specifically. Since I loved hearing Kendra’s, I thought it might be helpful to share some of John’s and mine, especially since we love chatting personal finance around here :) Let’s do it! P.S. This is probably obvious, but “deciding once” means making one decision about one thing and continuing to make that decision over and over until it doesn’t work for you anymore. Boundaries AND freedom! A mostly unrelated photo, but you know these Articles Club gals are a great source of riches in my life! 1. I sign up for every Meal Train that crosses my path, and I bring a prepared meal from a local shop. In this season of young kids, trying to prepare and deliver two meals in one day (for my family and the other family) was causing enough stress that it had begun to dissuade me from signing up in the first place. While it’s more expensive than cooking from scratch, I love that I can choose a meal that matches the family’s needs with ease (gluten- or dairy-free, vegetarian, etc.) and support a local small business, too. 2. When a school or teacher asks for money, we give it. Our oldest attends a public elementary school, and our middle will soon join her

Can you point to anything in your past about which you remember saying, “When our budget has room to breathe/I pay off my loans/I get a raise, I’m finally going to splurge on ______”? I can think of two, and I thought it might be fun to chat about them today. I’ve mentioned here and there the idea of our household budget expanding over time, which is both somewhat fiddly to talk about but also something I feel it’s important to be realistic about. And also, isn’t it the arc we all hope to realize over time? I’ve been writing this blog for almost 15 years – it spans from the perspective of a college senior to a mid-30’s mom – so I certainly hope my financial situation has changed over our time together. Yours, too :) And it has. John and I have moved from a season of paying off student loans and entry-level jobs (where splitting a burrito at Chipotle was a rare treat) to a new season where we have advanced in our careers and can comfortably afford most things we want. (Though you better believe we still live by our budget – in fact, I’m thinking of updating that very old post because so many of you have emailed hoping I’d get the example Google Doc fixed up. Let me know if that would be of interest!) Accordingly, our budget has expanded a bit, and it’s been interesting to adjust our behavior to fit it. It’s been sweet, but also has required some rewiring, some uncertainty, some resetting of expectations. For example, I was chatting with John about buying tickets to Wicked, which is coming to the DPAC here in August. I have wanted to see it for years and years and years, and I said

Two years ago, I wrote a Marvelous Money post about preparing financially for a baby. I did not, in fact, have a baby at the time, and so I took great pains to tell you to take my advice with a grain of salt. I also promised to revisit the topic at some point in the future. Today I wanted to touch on one aspect of our financial life post-baby, and I hope there will be more to come in the future. And good news! Whether or not you have kids (or ever plan to), I think you’ll find this post helpful, because it centers around what I feel is one of the most important personal finance topics to truly take to heart: trade-offs. In preparing our 2017 budget, we decided to cancel the trip we’d planned to take to the Southwest this year. Here’s the thing: we have the money to take this trip. It’s sitting in our bank account. But, because we also have the Very Big Goal of paying off our mortgage in the next five years, we are choosing not to take it. (Why am I connecting these extra mortgage payments to our foregone vacation instead of, say, our extremely expensive childcare? Because we were able to take more expensive vacations and still make extra payments before we had June, it might seem to make more sense to “blame” our childcare costs for this trip cancellation. But, because childcare is a must-do, and the extra payments are something we’re choosing to do, to me it seems like the payments are squeezing out the vacation.) Were we disappointed when we decided to postpone this trip? Yes. But, it’s hard to feel disappointed when I think about all of the marvelous adventures we’re still going to have this