April 2016 | Ditching Normal

Library z-lib

Lifestyle

Collaboration with Speak Your Silence

April 26, 2016

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to volunteer for a collaboration with Speak Your Silence. My lovely friend Laura (who happens to also be an amazing personal stylist) asked if I would help out with a photo shoot to show different ways to style their signature white T shirt. Of course I jumped at the chance! Speak Your Silence raises awareness and funds to assist with the cost of counseling for individuals who have been affected by child sexual abuse. I’m all for people helping people, however that may be.

Throughout the month of April these shirts can be purchased at Piece Unique in downtown Boise and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Speak Your Silence. Since April is almost over, you better hurry! If you can’t make it downtown by then, you can always pick up your very own shirt at speakyoursilence.org/shop!

I was fortunate enough to work with and get to know the beautiful soul of Jean from Double Take Photography during this collaboration. It’s amazing what life presents you when you are open to new experiences!

Check out Speak Your Silence’s blog post here and some of the pics below from the shoot.

4 Peeps liked this so far.

Lifestyle

Get Free Stuff for Paying Your Bills

April 21, 2016

I’ll admit it. At this point, I feel super entitled to free stuff. I’ve put in a lot of time learning how to capitalize on credit card rewards points and now I can’t wrap my head around why I would ever pay for something, ANYTHING, and not get something in return for free. Lacey and I pay with credit cards for literally every bill and expense we have. Yes, this will now include mortgage payments. I’m going to tell you exactly how we do it because you should be getting free stuff for paying your bills too!

Before jumping right in and signing up for random credit cards to start paying your bills with; think about what your end goals are. What do you want to get in return? Look back on a previous post or two of ours that should help you decide on what card to sign up for to get a certain reward in return.

Once you select and receive the credit card that is going to get you the awesome reward you’re going for, you’ll want to create an online account with the bank that sponsors your new credit card. For example, if you signed up for the Chase Sapphire card, you’ll create an online account at chase.com . While logged in to your account, find where you can set up auto-pay. It’s usually under a tab titled something like “manage payments”. I would highly recommend you set auto-pay to pay off your entire balance each month. This is an important step to make sure you don’t miss a payment and completely jack up your credit score (35% of your credit score is your payment history).

Now, take your new card and link it to every reoccurring monthly bill you have. Login to all of your online bill pay accounts for things like cable, internet, electricity, gas, water/sewer/trash, Netflix, iTunes, and anything else you can think of. If you’ve never setup AutoPay for things like these don’t worry, it’s really easy. Similar to how you setup your online account with the bank that provided your credit card, you’ll create an online account and set up auto-pay for each service you subscribe to. Set your credit card as the payment source for every monthly bill you have. By doing this along with putting all of your day to day expenses on your card (groceries, gas, meals,etc), you’ll be shocked at how easily you’ll hit your spending requirements.

At this point, you may have figured out that your mortgage company and the bank you make your car payments to won’t allow you to pay with a credit card. This totally sucks because these are likely your 2 biggest monthly bills and now you’re missing out on tons of reward points! While most banks won’t accept credit card payments, they will accept checks. There is an awesome service called Plastiq that will let you set up your credit card as a payment source while they will, in turn, send a check to whoever you need to pay. Boom goes the dynamite cuz you’re back in business! While the Plastiq service does charge a 1-2.5% fee per transaction, if you sign up through our referral link you’ll get $200 of fee free payments. Pretty cool of them to do that.

Is it worth the % fee that Plastiq charges for making your payments? Well, that’s up to you. To put it in to perspective, let’s say your monthly mortgage payment is $2,000. You’ll get charged about $40 to make the payment through Plastiq. Let’s say in this example that you’re using the Southwest Premier card to make your payment. For the $40 you spent to put $2000 on this card, you’ll reach the spending requirement and will get an estimated $650 worth of free flights within a matter of weeks after receiving the card. You’ll be headed to Cabo, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Aruba, or any of the other awesome new locations Southwest now flies to. So if you’re in a rush to hit the spending requirements on a credit card to get the bonus, it may be worth a few bucks to do it through Plastiq.

I hope this gets you started on a path that earns you awesome free stuff for every dollar you spend. The next time you get an unexpected $1,000 bill…turn that around and get a free vacation out of it! Good luck! Let us know if you have any questions.

Turn your next unexpected bill into an unexpected vacation!

1 Liked this post

Lifestyle

Checking in on our 2016 Game Plan

April 13, 2016

We figured since it’s over a quarter of the way through the year, now would be a good time to check in on the 2016 game plan we set at the beginning of the year. How obvious is it that I’m left brained? I blame work for making me think of the year in terms of Q1 , Q2, Q3 and Q4. Anyway, since Q1 is now complete, we are practicing what we preach by holding ourselves accountable and evaluating where we are on our goals. This is good because it gives cause to celebrate and pat yourself on the back, as well as realign the next section of the year to focus more on the goals that haven’t gotten a lot of attention yet.

As a recap, our goals are listed below:

Visit 10 different cities
Continue downsizing
Continue paying more on our mortgage
Spend more time with family and friends
Improve photography skills
Bedroom remodel
More collaborations
Save $15,000 by using rewards points
Learn a second language
Add yoga to the workout routine

To be honest, I’m fairly shocked that we have even started this list. To say I’m proud of our progress is putting it lightly. I’m ready to celebrate how far we are on our game plan! Let’s see how we are doing:

So far we have been to two cities (San Diego and Houston) this year, and in another month we will add five more to total seven. We have more destinations on our list for the remainder of the year, but nothing is officially booked yet. I have been to San Francisco, but since Mat wasn’t with me, I figured it wasn’t fair to count that.
San Diego was a blast.
Well, we did it. We sold Mat’s car and are now down to one! Oh my gosh are we crazy or what?! Our plan with this goal was to find out the Kelly Blue Book value of his car and put it up for sale at that price; no budging at all. We planned to leave it up for a couple of weeks and then if nothing had happened we would re-evaluate. The car sold in less than three days! I wasn’t entirely sure I was even on board with the whole one car thing, so I panicked a little. I will admit it does take a little more pre-planning, but so far, totally worth it!
We were paying double on our mortgage, but since we sold Mat’s car, we put that extra money toward our condo each month. We are trying to have a free place to live as soon as possible! Seeing the principle balance on our mortgage go down each month is motivating and slightly addicting. We understand that we might not always be at a place in our lives where we are able to pay extra, which is why we are trying to take advantage now!
We are known to be homebodies, especially in the winter, so we have been making a conscious effort to spend more time with people we love. We have been meeting up with other couples for dinner, drinks, brunch, etc. We spent the last three weekends in a row with family. We also plan on meeting up with five friends on our next big trip! Anybody else want to join in on the fun?
We just purchased a camera and plan on meeting up with a friend (who just so happens to have been our wedding photographer) to learn more about it this weekend! As I type this, Mat is messing around with the different settings. I may or may not have just made him do some karate/ninja moves to test out the action setting. We definitely have a ways to go on this goal, but at least we have started!
We also have a ways to go on our bedroom remodel, but we have completed the most important task-getting a king sized bed! Oh it’s so wonderful. I always feel like I get in it too late and have to leave it too early in the morning. I want to lounge in it all day because it’s so big and inviting. New West Elm bedding doesn’t hurt either. 😉
We sort of fell into a collaboration of sorts with Venture Magazine and are stoked about it! The individuals we have met through this magazine are amazing and we can’t wait to get even more involved in this community! We also did a rad photo shoot collaboration with the ever entertaining Damon of Dynamic Shutter Photography. I also was a part of a photo shoot/event for an amazing cause, Speak Your Silence. More on that when I can give some sneak peeks. I also have another collab coming up next week that I am SO excited about! All I can say at this moment is that it involves some insanely talented individuals, including personal stylist (and my friend!) Laura Tully, amazing photography duo Ben and Joella, and Will from Flowers at Will.
Some fun collabs with Venture Meridian Magazine so far!
So far (thanks my brilliant husband) we have saved roughly $10,000 in travel costs. This includes flights to San Diego, our hotel in Houston, as well as flights and hotels for our big trip coming up to New York, Italy, Malta and Chicago. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, but will wait until things are finalized before sharing.
To be honest, we have done nothing to further our learning of a second language. Now that we carpool to work, I talk the whole drive (not surprising, I know) so Mat isn’t able to listen to his Rosetta Stone. We need to carve out some time on the weekends for this, as it helps immensely when traveling. Mat picks languages up MUCH faster than I do. I actually think it’s not possible for me to learn another language. This is me. For real.
Guess how many times we have been to a yoga class this year? The answer is zero. We need to work on that. Any suggestions on where to go? Please let us know, we need help in this area!

Now is a great time to check in on the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year. Remember, don’t focus on the negatives, but celebrate the positives! That will give you more energy and encouragement to get back on track with your goals. I’m always down to celebrate any accomplishment, no matter how small it might be. Speaking of that, I think it’s time to open some wine to celebrate our progress.

photograph by Ali Smith Photography

7 Peeps liked this so far.

Rewards Points Travel

Go to the Final Four for $200

April 7, 2016

For as long as I can remember I’ve dreamed of going to the men’s NCAA basketball Final Four. Maybe it’s due to the fact that these games are always crazy exciting, or maybe it’s because my dad and I always had such a good time busting each others chops over whose bracket was better. Whatever the case, this year I was able to finally check ‘attend a Final Four’ off of my bucket list. I’m going to tell you how you can do the same next year for $200.

I always had the impression that only super rich and famous people could afford to go to events like this. It wasn’t until this time last year when I discovered how we could fly to the Final Four, stay in a nice hotel, and go to all 3 games for only $200 per person. You can take the same exact steps we took to get yourself to the 2017 Final Four in Phoenix, Arizona.

First things first…this year’s championship game…are you kidding me?!?!?! Unbelievable! I can’t tell you how lucky we feel to have experienced in-person one of the greatest championship games of all time. The crowd absolutely exploded when Marcus Paige for North Carolina tied the game with 4 secs left. Then the roof almost blew off when Kris Jenkins hit the game winning buzzer beater shot to win the National Championship for Villanova. I caught both shots on video with my cell phone. Check them out below this post. Don’t mind all my screaming 🙂

Ok, back to how you and yours are going to go to the 2017 Final Four for $200 a person.

Get your tickets
- Go apply for the 2017 Final Four ticket lottery on the official NCAA site here. You only have until May 31st to apply, so hurry up! You will pay $200 per ticket in advance. But wait Mat, that still sounds expensive. Well, it breaks out to be $66 per game since you will get to see all 3 games of the Final Four. Very good deal considering an average regular season game would cost $40ish per ticket. Also, your odds of getting selected are better than you’d think. It’s not guaranteed, but every person I know that has applied for the lottery has been selected. If you don’t get picked, your $200 will be fully refunded, so you have nothing to lose.
Get points for free flights to Phoenix
- I’d recommend using Southwest Airlines to get to Phoenix. They have nonstop flights to Phoenix from numerous cities. You can use our referral link to apply for the 50k point offer on the Southwest Premium card. The public offer is only 25k points right now. Once you get the 50k points from this card, you should be able to book 2 round trip flights for free (depending on where you’re flying out of). Let us know if you have any questions on how to get and use these points.
Get free nights at a hotel
- There is currently a 100k point bonus offer for the Hilton Surpass card. This offer is being referred to as Hilton’s “best offer ever”. With these points, you could book your free stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Phoenix which is right down the road from the location of the 2017 Final Four. (we’re not getting compensated for promoting this card…it’s just a rad offer that we recommend).

So there you have it, by signing up for the ticket lottery and the 2 credit cards mentioned above, you should be well on your way to the 2017 NCAA Final Four. Lacey and I would definitely recommend attending! Not only are the games themselves awesome, but all of the free festivities outside of the games are tons of fun as well! Check out the pics and vids below from our trip last weekend to the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four.

Let us know if you have any questions!

Final Four 2016 Fan Fest BareNaked Ladies

The Barenaked Ladies performed outside the stadium during Fan Fest.

Ferris wheels are always more fun than we think they’re going to be.

This pic was on our custom lanyards that we wore around our necks.

3 Peeps liked this so far.

Venture Meridian

Teaming up with Venture Meridian Magazine!

April 1, 2016

Following a recent photo shoot we did with the good folks at Venture Meridian, we were lucky enough to be offered a monthly column in their magazine! We couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity and are hopeful that we’ll be able to consistently provide helpful tips and stories to their readers. Spoiler alert! Our columns will focus on downsizing, traveling, and having a fun budget-friendly lifestyle.

The April issue of Venture Meridian magazine was released earlier today. You can find our first column on page 38! Check out this magazine and show them your support as they are busting their butts to provide an awesome magazine for Idaho!

(The featured image used on our homepage linking you to this post, along with numerous others in the Venture Meridian Magazine are compliments of Ali Smith Photography)

2 Peeps liked this so far.