Where this thing begins…

Earn. Give. Save. These are pretty much the directions that money can take in our lives (we’ll add spend to the mix as well, but we didn’t want our URL to be that long). In many ways, money is the greatest tool we have, but it can also be the biggest troublemaker as well.

Who are we? You’re probably not interested in all of the boring details, but we’re Andrew and Julie, and we live in a great little town called Holland, Michigan. We both attended Hope College, an excellent private, liberal arts college, located in Holland as well. The two of us had all kinds of mutual friends, but never met until we got set up (yup) a couple years after we had graduated. I asked Julie out, she said yes, and the rest is history. We love hanging out with friends, playing games, running, and the Food Network.

Our money story really began when Julie’s parents gave us a CD (remember those?) to listen to on the way home from Thanksgiving in 2007. It was a live recording of Dave Ramsey talking about his “baby steps” system. We had never heard this approach to money described in quite the same way, and it was clear that is was something we wanted to put into practice as much as possible as we prepared to get married. We’ve already worked through Baby Steps #1 and 2 (if you’ve heard of them) and are crushing #3 as quickly as possible.  More on this in posts to come!

This site is about taking your hard-earned cash and putting it to work for good. We’ll share the basics we’ve learned about budgeting, finding deals on stuff you’re gonna buy, investing, giving, faith and money, and talking to your spouse about money (eek!).  It’s stuff that everybody is thinking about (particularly in America right now) and we’ve found it to be really interesting. So interesting, in fact, that here we are, blogging our little hearts out about it.

Do we have all the answers? Heck no! But we’re trying to figure it out, and we’re hoping you’ll join us for the ride.  So, let’s kick this thing off!  We’re glad you’re here…