We’re no Young House Love yet (particularly the recent baby on the way part), but we did do a little rearranging in light of our recent purchase and the holiday season which is upon us.  Here’s what things looked like before we got move-crazy:

As you can see, we had a monster entertainment center that was taking up a good portion of our smallish living room.  We donated that item to a local resale store, Ditto, which benefits the Christian schools in our area (we’ll even get a little tax benefit from that).  Then we needed to come up with an arrangement that would best accommodate the big green chair-couch (on the left).  Here’s what we came up with:

It turned out pretty well, and we’re even getting the chance to use our IKEA chair in a better way as well.  The green monster found its way to the near center of the room, and does a nice job of making some separation between the living and dining room.  Although we decided to forego a Christmas tree this year, we do have our handmade stockings (handcrafted by Julie’s mom) hanging below our windowsill:

The new TV is great!  Watching movies in high-def is excellent, and more than anything, our new living room seems to be making better use of the space.  Not a typical blog post from us, but we hope you’ve enjoyed it!

If you’re like most people, you probably spend a good deal of time on the Internet in the course of a given day.  You’re probably also using search engines to navigate your way across the web.  One of my favorite features in Firefox (PC or Mac) is the ability to create a dropdown list of search engines that you can use in the toolbar on the right side of the browser:

One of the options that we’ve installed is something called GoodSearch (branded “you search, we give”), a specific search engine (powered by Yahoo) that makes a small donation to a charity or school of your choice every time you use it.  The donation is in the neighborhood of a penny per search, but if you use the web as frequently as we do, this may start to add up for your chosen charity.  In fact, once you register the charity you’d like to search for (center of the home page), you can even find out how much they’ve benefited from other searchers over the last year.  With the Firefox toolbar option, using GoodSearch is something you can build right into your web experience.

The quality of the search seems to be pretty much on par with that of most search engines, although you may have to get used to it if you’ve been using something else like Google for a time.  Bottom line: it will get you where you’re going, and you’ll be blessing your chosen organization.

Another opportunity the site offers is a sister program called GoodShop, which makes a donation to the charity of your choice based on purchases made through the site (similar to how Upromise helps you save for your child’s education).  You’re able to make purchases through Amazon, Apple, and the like, and GoodSearch passes on a portion of their referral income to your designated charity.  So, give it a try—someone will be glad you did!

We’re actually kidding—Julie and I have really enjoyed putting together the budget spreadsheets that we use on a monthly basis.  They will probably continue to evolve (we’ll update as changes are significant), but we’d like you to be able to use them as you see fit.  All of them include emergency fund and net worth calculators as well. Feel free to edit and share them as you please.  Also, if something doesn’t seem to be working quite right, leave a comment, send us an email, or send us a reply on Twitter, and we’ll get it fixed.

There are versions for both single and married households, and they are available in both Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers formats.Single Household

Our Budget, Single Household (Microsoft .xls format)
Our Budget, Single Household (.zip file containing Apple Numbers format)

Married Household

Our Budget, Married Household (Microsoft .xls format)
Our Budget, Married Household (.zip file containing Apple Numbers format)

NOTE: These aren’t meant to replace the type of counseling or budgeting that a professional could provide. If that is the type of service you are looking for, we recommend looking at the coaching and classes available through Dave Ramsey.

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…