Why I started this
My wife and I started our adult life exactly where most people start: stressed about money.
When we graduated from the College of Idaho, we made the decision that my wife would stay home with our daughter. That meant my first job — paying $57,000 a year — was our entire household income. I'm not saying that's a small number. Plenty of families make less. But for us in that season, no amount of money would have felt like enough. We had no debt and a healthy savings cushion behind us, but no real idea where our money was actually going.
We were budgeting on vibes. Every decision was either "yeah I think we can afford this" or "probably can't afford this, we'll have to wait" — and neither answer came from real numbers. We wanted to buy a house someday. We wanted to retire comfortably. But it's hard to plan the path from here to there when you don't honestly know where "here" is.
What changed
We sat down and built a real budget. I'd love to tell you it clicked on the first try. It didn't. We cycled through budgeting apps, tried strategies that looked great on paper and fell apart by week two, and started over more times than I'd like to admit. But when we finally landed on a system that fit our life, everything changed. Within a few months, our financial picture looked completely different. Same income. Different life.
Our $57k budget, after a few months
- 10%
- Given to our church
- 3%
- Going into our 401(k)
- 7%
- Saved for a future home down payment
- ~$40k
- Real living expenses, debt free
On that $40k, we ate good meals, kept the house warm in winter and cool in summer, and still went on an Alaskan cruise for our anniversary. Not in spite of the budget — because of it. The budget didn't limit us. It freed us from the constant low-grade stress of just not knowing.
Where Square One comes in
Our income has grown a lot since that first budget. The approach hasn't changed. When we want to grab a coffee, we look at our budgeting app and know immediately whether we can. And speaking from experience: a coffee you can afford tastes significantly better than a coffee you played the guessing game with.
That's what I want for other families in the Treasure Valley. The hardest part of getting your finances under control isn't the math — it's the trial and error. It took us multiple apps, multiple strategies, and more than a few false starts to find the system that stuck. My goal is to help you skip all of that and jump straight to the part that works: real numbers, an honest look at your history, and a plan built for your life, not someone else's.
