No Debt Plan

No Debt Plan is a blog about living a debt-free life. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed (e-mail subscription also available). Learn more about me, or some of my most popular posts. Thanks for visiting!

I have been bad about not getting my articles out at my typical 7am time. Sorry about that! We’ve been rather busy the past few days. We’ve had the whole “my wife may be getting fired” issue to worry about, and we’re taking a mini-vacation this Memorial Day weekend.

This is a point I am going to consistently hit on while writing this blog. Don’t forget to live. Yes, saving money and not overspending is very important in life. But don’t become a hermit. What good is that pile of money if you have no friends or family to enjoy it with?  Enjoy life as it comes, but make smart choices.

The problem with many people is they want to live today like it is their last day, all of the time. That’s all well and good until your last day is sixty years from now, you get laid off, and you have no money set aside. It’s a very fine balance. So don’t get me wrong — keep it up. Run through the No Debt Plan, save for retirement. But don’t turn down every opportunity to enjoy life.

For example, my work partner and our wives went to the SEC Baseball Tournament last night to see Ole Miss and Kentucky play. Granted, our company paid for it as a relationship building event, but it was fun. It cost gas to get there and we could have said “eh, no thanks”, but we didn’t do that. We had a lot of fun even though we only stayed through the top of the 5th inning. (It was getting late and we had been there 2.5 hours already).

Another example — we’re taking a mini-vacation this weekend. Some married friends are all getting together at someone’s aunt’s lake house (for free). Cost? Gas and food. Both of those could be significant costs, but we had planned to go to the beach instead. The beach would run $150+ per night in lodging on top of further gas costs (more distance) and more food costs (eating out vs. cooking). So we’re getting to enjoy ourselves, relax, take the puppy with us, see our friends… and it is somewhat frugal. We’ve got the money saved up for the trip already, too.

It should be a lot of fun. But I need to run — laundry and packing call!