MARCH’S 10 THINGS

I can’t believe it’s already time for a 10 things update. March has been literally insane, but mostly in happy ways. As usual, here are 10 things that have been on my mind, some personal finance related, some not.

(1) We moved to Arizona! We packed up our bags in Tulsa and moved to the Phoenix area last week. It has been quite the whirlwind. We didn’t have time to come out to look for a house to rent so we took a risk on a house that we found online that looked like it would work. I was really happy when we pulled up with our U-Haul that the house actually existed and we hadn’t been scammed. 😉 Arizona has been a dream so far.

(2) We sold our house in Oklahoma in about two weeks. [Related: How to Sell a House Fast]. We originally bought our house with the idea that we’d stay about a year and then rent it out. But I also kept open to the idea that we might want to sell if we moved out of state. In the market we were in, it made more sense for us to sell than to rent since house prices went up a ton in our area, so we went for it. We are still super interested in real estate and hope to add some rentals soon-ish.

(3) We bought a dental practice. Today is Danny’s first day solo at his dental practice! A while back we started getting an itch to move. We love Tulsa but we were definitely missing having mountains or an ocean nearby and doing all the things we like to do outside (biking, hiking, camping, etc). We pulled out a map and started narrowing down places that we both want to live. My first choice was Hawaii and Danny’s first choice was Utah. He loves the mountains and I love the sea. In the end, literally the only place we could agree on, where we’d both be happy, was Arizona! Within just a couple of weeks of making that decision, we found a dental practice for sale through a friend of a friend and the rest was history.

(4) I continued tracking our spending this month even though our spending was ridiculous. We basically blew up our budget this month with moving and buying the dental practice. Now that everything is official and we have a separate business account and entity for the dental practice, it won’t impact our personal spending. Make sure you’re signed up for our newsletter so you can see just how bad this month was for our budget (we share our real budget numbers and spending and offer tons of little tips and tricks to help you payoff debt).

(5) We love a lot of things about Arizona. Arizona has been good to us with lots of reminders of home. In our last decade of marriage, we’ve lived in Utah, China, Florida, Uganda, and Oklahoma. Arizona has a little piece of everything for us. The dry air and mountains to remind us of Utah, lots of Chinese tourists at parks like the Grand Canyon who I love speaking with SO MUCH, palm trees and sand everywhere to remind us of Florida (plus the beach is only 4-5 hours away), Bluebell ice cream and QuikTrip to remind us of Tulsa. Truly the promised land for us. I know I might be complaining in a few months when its +100 degrees everyday, but right now I am soaking up every second of this perfect 75-80 degree weather, hiking, biking, swimming, etc.

(6) We sold a lot of our things before we moved. [Related: How to Sell Stuff from Home] including a good amount of our furniture. Which means we had to buy some when we got here to Arizona. We rented a U-Haul which gave us 5 days not only to pack up, move, and unpack, but then we used our last 2-3 days to hunt for furniture. We got lucky and found an amazing used sectional on Facebook Marketplace and brought it home with our U-Haul which was super handy! Still on the hunt for a couple of things like a kitchen table, but we were glad to have the couch done while we still at the U-Haul. We used the cash we had on hand from selling our old stuff to buy our new stuff which has been really helpful since our spending was already crazy for the month.

(7) We saved a ton of money by moving ourselves. We didn’t really have room in our budget to hire movers or anything like that so moving ourselves was really the only option. Our biggest costs were $1,000 for a U-Haul and gas to get us +1000 miles. We used boxes from a previous move and asked Lowes and Home Depot for their inventory boxes. We enlisted the help of family and friends to help us load and unload the truck and Danny’s dad was kind enough to drive one of our cars to Arizona, so he drove a car, I drove a car, and Dan man drove the U-Haul. Having Danny’s dad here felt like having Mary Poppins here– he took care of M, our dog, and was the most helpful cheerful guy around.

(8) I lost my credit card. Do you know when the worst time to lose your credit card is? When you’re in the middle of a long distance move. I have exactly two credit cards. One from Chase with amazing rewards and then a dinky one from Wellsfargo that I got when I was 18. I was SO thankful for my dinky Wellsfargo card this week when I lost my Chase one! From all the crazy things we had to pay for the past week, I would have been in huge trouble. After I searched EVERYWHERE for my card (which was terrible, because our house/lives are a war zone with boxes everywhere etc from the move), I reported my card lost and wouldn’t you know it? A couple of hours later I found it in our stroller. #typical. This is actually the exact reason I don’t use cash despite my deep respect for Dave Ramsey (who says you should only use cash)– because I lose things so easily. At least with my card I can cancel it– cash would have been gone forever. [Related: Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Cash].

(9) Went to the Phoenix Zoo. One of the best things about being in Arizona is that M is reunited with his life long bestie. They were due 1 day apart and his mom was my bestie in law school. We snuck away from the moving chaos to go to the zoo with them (for free on their annual zoo pass!) and those boys were in heaven.

(10) This is my first full week as a work from home mom. Now that we’re starting to get settled in, I’m starting to focus more on my online businesses (this blog and my online law firm). I started working at 5:30 this morning and will work until M wakes up. I’ll work some more when he has a nap this afternoon, and when he goes to bed tonight. Wish me luck!

For the comments: How is your March going? I’d love to hear from you!

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