Let me start off by saying this again... It's been a while since I've posted.  With that said, I found a new tool that I find really helpful.  It's called Personal Capital.  This is not a budgeting application like Mint.  Although I still have a Mint account, I find myself rarely using it.

For one, I use Mint to follow my set budgets.  Although I always go over what I've budgeted for groceries and miscellaneous fund, I use it here and there so I know where my money is going.  Using it over the past few years, I've set up rules so that all my transactions are categorized properly.  There are one off transactions from new places I go here and there but it's easy to set up a rule to categorize it going forward.

The reason I like Personal Capital is because it tracks your net worth.  Your overall financial picutre, assets vs. liabilities.  My mindset has changed from, don't go over a budget in mint, to, what is my overall net worth and how can I increase my net worth.  At this point in my life, I know all my recurring monthly expenses and I have a good idea of how much money i'm spending per month on groceries and miscellaneous items.

The next step for me is finding ways to increase my overall net worth.

So I've been working on my expecting son's nursery for the past month or so.  I'm half way there fulfilling my vision that I wrote about in the previous post.  Here are few pictures to show you an update so far:

The last few items on my checklist are installing the new floors, rod and curtains, and building the new dressers to go on each side of the window.

My hope is to get it all done by the end of this week!  If that actually happens, I'll post some pictures of the completed room.

Well, there goes my 52 week savings challenge.  Had to use the saved up funds for baby #2's nursery.  In any case, I'm excited for the nursery as I have a specific vision for it.  My original vision had to be altered because two dressers would have been too long to fit on either side of the window.  Instead, back to one big dresser right in the middle.  I took before pictures and will post after pictures when I'm all done.

Wow, it's been almost exactly three months since I wrote my last post. Where have I been? Nowhere really... I was just experiencing a writing slump as it is one of my least favorite activities to do.

With that said, my last post was about investing your spare change automatically using Acorns. So I've been using Acorns a little over a month and I currently have $141.57 invested from my spare change. To be exact, I signed up on May 15, 2014. I like the idea and I think I'll stick with it. They have 5 different portfolios you can choose from: Conservative, Moderately Conservative, Moderate, Moderately Aggressive, Aggressive. I am currently using the Aggressive portfolio. Let me know if you want me to break it down.

Our journey to zero debt is still in effect. Instead of paying the student loan off with the debt snowball amount, I'm actually putting it away in savings. So the basis is, save enough to pay off the student loan at once. This also makes us feel a lot safer if we need cash for an emergency. If there's no emergency until then, we can pay it off.

I've also invested a chunk of our savings (student loan payoff fund) to 6 different stocks/funds that pay out monthly dividends and plan on re-investing the monthly dividends into more shares of which it came from. I've also been using an online bank where a lot of the transactions can only be done via iOS of Android app. It's called Simple. I like the idea behind it but the only reason I'm not fully migrating to this as my checking account is the lack of joint account feature. My wife and I share all our finances so it's imperative that we can have a joint account with a debit card of our own. I've been speaking with the customer service team at Simple and it doesn't seem like they're going to introduce a full joint account feature which is no go for us. I'll keep my eye out to see if they ever do.

So I came across this new app which is still in beta and you need to sign up to get on their waiting list.  Acorns, Invest spare change automatically from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio.  I think it's a genius idea and can't wait to try it.

The idea behind it is very simple.  I'm going to assume that you need to connect the service with your checking account and credit card.  Every time you make a purchase, it'll round up to the next dollar, and the amount rounded up will automatically be invested in a diversified fund.  I'm also going to assume that it makes money by charging a fee to manage your portfolio like any other investment out there.

The good thing about this is you'll be constantly investing without even knowing it or even feeling the pinch of having to come up with upfront capital.

I'm a huge fan of the set it and forget it method of building wealth and this is exactly what it does.