About 365 days of marriage

I started this blog in April of 2011. At the time, Bret and I were wedding photographers and it was a way to share how marriage is more about the day to day and so much more than the wedding day itself. For about 5 years, I blogged about the joys and sorrows of the Christian walk, marriage, work, family and friends. I’ve blogged every day since a few weeks after I started. In May of 2015, we photographed our last wedding. Now, I have become passionate about simplicity, particularly in marriage, Christianity, business, travel and life. For a number of reasons, we have become minimalists. I’ve found that having simplicity makes life so much deeper, refreshing and joyful. I hope that this blog will help others see the benefits of living simply.

Day 3231 – Secret To Success – Create A Job

Posted on May 16, 2018 by 365 days of marriage

My original plan for today was International VA day…unfortunately, that is Friday, but I thought I’d carry on this Secret To Success series. Today I want to talk about creating your own job. When I started the work I’m doing now, I was still photographing weddings. For a number of reasons, I was not doing well in generating income. In some of the books I read around that time, they mentioned creating your own job. One of the things I do now is a mostly virtual assistant position for several business owners. It all came about because I casually mentioned that I love the business side of things.

As I’ve learned more about myself and my skills over the past few years, I realized I really do thrive with administrative and organizing skills. And truthfully, I actually kind of love it. I’m thankful for what I can bring to our real estate investing business in how I’ve organized things and ensure our different systems run smoothly and quickly.

So, if you want to create a job, look at the skills that come naturally to you. Sometimes this can be hard to see in yourself, so ask those around you. What you can do doesn’t come naturally to everyone. And don’t downplay your skills. I think that held me back for too long.

Then, go out and find the folks that need your unique skills.

What about you, have you created a job?

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Day 3230 – Secret To Success – Get A Good Night Sleep And Get Up Stupid Early

Posted on May 15, 2018 by 365 days of marriage

One thing that has helped us over the last year or so is getting a good night of sleep. We’ve also continued to get up stupid early. Most days, we’re out of bed by 5:00/5:30. It’s crazy how much you can accomplish by 9:00 when you get up that early. I’ve added a number of things into my morning routine, but I still have time to do it all because of getting up early.

Getting a good night sleep and having a great day starts the night before. We spend time expressing our thankfulness about our life, cuddling, and enjoying each other’s presence (it seriously rocks being married to your best friend….and working with your best friend). We also try to write out our to do lists the night before. It really helps your brain to know what the next day will bring, and to shut off “work brain” by writing things down.

We also try to get to sleep at a reasonable hour…we’re typically in bed by 8:30/9:00. Sure, it’s not super exciting, but the things we have accomplished over the past few months and years far outweigh the “this is a ‘boring’ life” thoughts.

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Day 3229 – Secret To Success – Know Your Numbers

Posted on May 14, 2018 by 365 days of marriage

This weekend, Bret and I spent some time figuring out our numbers in our real estate investing business. I do a lot of reporting and tracking so we can get a good idea of how things are working and our success rates. But those numbers haven’t told us everything. So we decided to see our ROI on different lead generating sources. It was really eye opening to see – wow, THIS lead generating source takes more time, but the ROI is UNREAL! Or, oh, I thought this source was really great, but it’s actually not.

It reminded me of a big success secret – know your numbers. I think it’s important for your goals whether you’re talking about your business or your budget. You can’t get by with what you think your budget is. You need to sit down and be really honest with yourself and your spending. One method we use to track our actual spending is Mint. It’s synced with all of our accounts and tracks all of our spending. You can think you spend about $200 a month on gas, but you actually spend $250. Knowing the true numbers is so important.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t easy, especially if you’re figuring this out with your spouse. Actually seeing on the screen how much you spent on Dunkin…or Krispy Kreme…can be a tough conversation. But once you get past that, it’s so so so good.

So what about you? How do you track your numbers? Have you taken the time to learn what they are? Let me know in the comments below.

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Day 3228 – Why You Shouldn’t Ask “When Are You Having Kids?” – or – Things I’ve Learned From Not Having Kids – repost

Posted on May 13, 2018 by 365 days of marriage

The follow post is one of my most read posts on the blog. I thought it would be appropriate to share today as a reminder to think before you ask someone “when are you having kids?” Especially today, which is a very hard day for those who desperately want their first child or another child. If you take anything away from this post today, don’t ask people about kids today.

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If you’ve read this blog any amount of time, you know Bret and I are not normal in a lot of ways. From sleeping on the floor, to having no real furniture, we are just weirdos. People don’t understand us sometimes, but that’s fine, we’re happy with our life.

Here’s another “not normal” thing to add to the long list of “Jen and Bret are weird” – We aren’t planning on having kids.

It’s something we didn’t expect. Both of us came from big families and figured we’d have a big family too. As we grew in our marriage, God made it clear kids probably weren’t in our future. When we meditate on our life, kids just aren’t in the picture. It is something we have prayed about, thought a lot about, and talked a lot about. Most of the time, when people ask or comment about us having kids, we laugh it off. “Ha ha, oh we’ll see!” It’s a minor thing to us when people bring it up. Something we shrug off like reactions to us sleeping on the floor. Even if we tell them we aren’t planning on having kids, and they follow up with, “Oh you’ll change your mind.” It isn’t a big deal to us.

But then we thought about things in a different light – what if we DID want kids and we couldn’t or were having a hard time getting pregnant? What if we had lost children?

This is when the desire to share this became about others.

We have a lot of people in our world that have struggled to have kids and desperately want kids.

I am writing this for them.

Please take a few minutes to look at someone’s situation from another angle before you ask “When are you having kids?!” Pause and ask yourself if it’s an appropriate question and time to ask. It may have been easy for you and your spouse to get pregnant. You may have several kids. You may not know that the person you’re asking has been trying, desperately, for years to get pregnant. You may not know of the tears, the heartache, the miscarriages.

Think about asking instead “Do you want kids?” or maybe, just maybe, don’t ask about their plans on having kids or not. If you don’t know if they can have kids or not, it’s for a reason. I understand, it’s a natural question. But it’s a really personal one. Trust me, I understand where the questions come from. In our society, there’s a “natural” timeline of steps.

Out of my deep love for those in my life that struggle with this – please stop asking them when they’re going to have kids. Please stop joking that you’re pregnant on April 1st. Please take a minute to think before you speak. And if you still want to ask someone questions like this, go ahead and just ask me.

originally posted 3/30/17

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Day 3227 – Why You Can’t Afford To Travel – repost

Posted on May 12, 2018 by 365 days of marriage

Last night, we watched the documentary Expedition Happiness on Netflix (make sure you go watch it if you’re into road travel at all!). Watching them travel through North and Central America brought up SO many memories of driving this amazing country. I am incredibly passionate about encouraging others to take a road trip too and showing them that you CAN take the trip. I wanted to reshare this post because I think it’s important in changing your mindset about travel (whether road trips or other trips).

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I absolutely love to travel. I especially love road trips. I love being able to escape the routine. I love waking up with the ocean as my background. But I used to see travel as unattainable and expensive. I would see people taking these amazing trips and jealousy would flood my mind and I would think things like “I really wish I could do that.” I mentioned how my business life changed when I read The 4-Hour Workweek (* Affliate link) by Timothy Ferriss. But there was another change in my brain about travel after I read his book. It’s not as unattainable as I previously thought. I can’t remember the exact amount and I can’t look at the book at the moment, but, roughly, there was a family of 4 or 5 who sailed around the world for a year or so. Now, how much would you expect something like that to cost? $100,000? A lot right? Well, they did it for about $25,000, I think. To sail the world and see amazing things. That’s crazy! So that was a BIG change in how I thought about travel. It’s not as much as you think.

While we were at the beach, I was reading Tim Ferriss’s new book, Tools of the Titans. I want to share an affiliate link to this, but I haven’t finished it yet and I don’t want to promote something I haven’t fully investigated. But I have to say, this book is AMAZING. It has such a great “pick and choose” format and I love that. There is so much great advice and practical tips and immediate actionable things. I happened to read the section How to Earn Your Freedom on the beach and I was struck by how we seem to view travel. There were a lot of things I highlighted in that particular section, but I think this quote is the most applicable to this post.

“Long-term travel doesn’t require a massive ‘bundle of cash’; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.” – Tim Ferriss Tools of the Titans p. 364

If you think you can’t afford to travel, you will never be able to afford travel.

Before we decided to go the beach, Bret and I had a long conversation about what we would do to celebrate our “met ya versary.” At first, it was not a fun conversation for me, coming from being in a pretty awful financial situation, and having hard conversations about money. Even though Bret was talking about the budget for our trip in a completely different way, I found myself getting stressed out and discouraged. But then Bret said something that completely turned my mind around. It was not “we can’t afford this” it was “what can we do to bring in the money that we need?” It was such a different mindset and was more of an exciting conversation.

We did a few things over the weekend, including going to the movies and getting a few meals, but for our purposes, I want to share just the expenses for the trip to the beach.

One tank of gas – $34.83
Breakfast – $34.22
Lunch – $12.46
Dinner – $15.13
Drinks – $9.70 (water, tea, beer)
Oceanfront room – $98.35
Breakfast – $9.94
Lunch – $13.77
Total – $228.40

As you can see, we paid for every single meal. We only packed water and coffee for the drive down. We did no planning, no pre-booking of the hotel, or looking for the best deal. If we had done a little more planning, we could have packed a cooler with drinks and sandwiches and saved a ton of money. We’ve driven across the country and back for under $500. We know about saving money while traveling!

Another thing about this particular trip is that we were only gone from 3 a.m. on Sunday morning until Monday around 4 p.m. That’s only about 37 hours.

This happened to be one of our most amazing trips. What’s crazy is that it was so simple, it wasn’t that much money, and it was a quick trip. The whole thing has made me think how I used to view travel and money versus how I view them now. It has renewed my desire to encourage YOU that you can travel, even if you think you can’t afford it or have time to go. I’m sure there are areas where you can cut back and save that money for a trip. In the nature of being totally honest, we spent almost $400 at Dunkin Donuts last year. That’s insane! If you don’t already, I recommend you get a Mint account! It tracks EVERYTHING, sometimes that’s not a comfortable thing to see….like spending that much on Dunkin. But it’s helpful in budgeting and planning for things.

So when will you take your next trip?

originally posted 2/23/17

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365daysofmarriage

Simplicity in Marriage, Christianity, Travel, Business, Life

Author Archives: 365 days of marriage

About 365 days of marriage

Day 3231 – Secret To Success – Create A Job

Day 3230 – Secret To Success – Get A Good Night Sleep And Get Up Stupid Early

Day 3229 – Secret To Success – Know Your Numbers

Day 3228 – Why You Shouldn’t Ask “When Are You Having Kids?” – or – Things I’ve Learned From Not Having Kids – repost

Day 3227 – Why You Can’t Afford To Travel – repost