About Us

We are just another young couple trying to save enough money to get a dog. And hopefully, one day, a child or two. (Have you heard it costs $250,000 to raise a kid these days?) This blog will chronicle our personal finance failures–our investments that tank, our inability to cut spending, our fights about money–as well as, hopefully, eventually, our successes.

We started getting serious about personal finance a few months ago, after we had paid off our wedding-related credit card bill and realized we could finally save. That’s when Hannah read The Ultimate Cheapskate, and we started getting inspired. We decided to start tracking how much we were spending, and Jon’s Budget Beast emerged. He designed a spreadsheet, complete with spending categories and subcategories, pivot tables and pie charts and a bar graph. For almost three months, we’ve been tracking everything. Give a dollar to a homeless woman? Put it on the spreadsheet. Buy a pack of gum? It goes on the spreadsheet. Have friends over for a drink? Show them the spreadsheet. Half of our social conversations now revolve around IRAs, the stock market, the budget, or some other equally boring topic. Don’t worry, we won’t invite you over for dinner.

This blog is essentially selfish–it’s a chance for us to talk publicly about things we would otherwise be talking about only between ourselves. It’s a chance for us to bore other people instead of just boring ourselves. In addition to expounding endlessly on our budget and our (modest) investments, we’ll talk about the role money plays in our relationship. (Hannah grew up on a commune, and yet she’s the one who doesn’t want to pool finances … Who would have thought?) If you have any comments, thoughts, suggestions, or crazy stock tips please email us at monogamoney(at)gmail.com. When it comes to personal finance, we need all the help we can get.