Hello. It’s Kristia. Remember me? It has been a moment since my last post, so long that a long-time reader checked up on me. I didn’t mean to take over a year off from writing posts, but I promise everything is just dandy.
Life just happened…cliche, I know. Nothing earth-shattering or life-changing. Just work, marriage, and all that comes with raising active teenage daughters and preparing them to launch. Seriously, there needs to be a chapter in the parenting books warning parents how crazy Senior year can be.
And honestly, I also didn’t know what to write about anymore. I really felt I had said it all about my family’s frugal financial journey.
Double Nickel Selfie
When I birthed Family Balance Sheet, back in 2008, I was a mom of a toddler and an infant. I was struggling with trying to figure out motherhood and living on one income. Living frugally was a natural topic to write about because it was my life. I loved developing frugal recipes, writing about ways to save money and working towards our financial goals.
But in recent years, I felt like my content was starting to get redundant.
As my kids grew, I added more hours to my work week and my kids became very active with school, sports, friends, and clubs. My attention turned away from the blog.
In 2008 blogging was still very new and it was fun to be a part of a new medium. I met a lot of other women who were also staying home and starting blogs. The term Mommy Blogger was a thing, but the term didn’t offend me; I was glad to be a part of it.
Fast forward to 2024
Today, my toddler is now a college freshman who is loving dorm life and the freedom that college brings. Her baby sister is now a high school junior who will hopefully get her driver’s license next month.
Left my heart at a college in PA
After we paid off six figures of non-mortgage debts back in 2019, my husband and I turned our financial focus to college savings and retirement, and we continued to live fairly frugally.
Back then, Fall 2024 seemed so far off. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like dropping a daughter off at college.
She is attending a university within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) to study Speech-Language Pathology. In middle school she told me that she wanted to work with kids with special needs, but didn’t necessarily want to be a teacher. I told her to read and research career opportunities, and when she spoke to a speech-language pathologist at a career day her Junior year, everything clicked in her head. This was exactly the career she was searching for.
Our youngest daughter will start planning her college journey in the spring when we start visiting schools with her. She’s grateful to watch her sister go through the process first.
While we’re not empty nesters yet, my husband and I have been testing the waters by going out on more date nights. We’re reconnecting with friends that we haven’t really hung out with since we had kids. Many of our friends scattered with their own parenting journey, and we are finding each other again.
So what is going on with our family finances?
Well, for starters, college payments started over the summer. Always the planner, I emailed the university multiple times before she even set foot on campus with questions about scholarship payments, due dates, meal plans, etc. Hopefully, I’m not making a name for myself in the billing office, but this is all new to us.
One reason we guided our daughter to a PASSHE university is that the tuition and room & board is about 40% less than the Big 10 university that PA is mostly known for. Also, the university that she is attending has an outstanding reputation for her major, and she was able to join an athletic team. Everything fell into place quite nicely regarding her decision.
Along with navigating college finances, my husband and I are discussing our exit strategy for our small business and our eventual retirement. It is still several years away, but my husband is 62 and I hit double nickels this month. College and retirement are about to collide. I knew this would happen someday, I just didn’t realize how quickly someday would get here.
I don’t want to promise that I’ll be back soon, but that is my intent. As it turns out I have some new content to write about.
~~ Kristia