Fingers Crossed!

Hello friends! Welcome to our first official blog post of Season 11 of Project Money. We are Emily and Ginger, and we have two amazing children - Luisa (2.5 years old) and Noa (1 year old). Over the last five years, we've undergone a lot of life changes all at once. Emily and I got married and moved from Chicago to Madison to be closer to family in 2014. We both started new jobs and a year later bought our first home. We had two children 18 months apart, and both took 3-month unpaid maternity leaves with the birth of each child. That's a whole lot of change in a pretty short amount of time!

When we first learned about Project Money we thought it would be an amazing opportunity for us to learn some new money habits to help us move beyond the pattern of just getting by to being able to create a strong foundation for our young family. As queer women, we have faced some barriers in the realm of finances. We had some significant expenses related to our family formation, including substantial legal expenses that would not have been necessary if we lived in a state that fully implemented marriage equality. We have also realized that we have some strong internalized messages around not feeling empowered when it comes to financial management and long-term planning.

We are kicking off Project Money with our coach, Cori, by taking a hard look at our spending habits and identifying some areas to trim down expenses. The first big category for us is cutting our grocery bills way down! We are also exploring smarter ways to pay down some debt that we have, such as a Home Equity Line of Credit, which has a lower interest rate than many other loans. Last of all, we decided to have our home reappraised to find out if the value has increased enough that we might be able to stop paying for mortgage insurance. We are hoping that the $350 we are spending for the appraisal will save us thousands of dollars over the next several years, if they find that our home value is high enough. Fingers crossed!