Wealth: Happy Hour

Making sure that you have additional income for investing while still having a fun filled life can be tough sometimes. Whether it's batting away friends that want to go out to eat or simply trying to work more to gain more income, making sure that there is money left at the end of the month can be harder than it sounds. That's why there is happy hour.

No, I don't mean happy hour in the bedroom sense. Although, that is definitely a happy hour! What I mean is going out to eat while the local eateries offer discounts during their "slower" hours of the day. Where the restaurant benefits from gaining a customer where there normally wouldn't be one, you benefit from the nice price deduction on the same or somewhat lesser portion sized meal.

Happy hour has many possible origins. Some say that it originated from the United States Navy in early 1913 when a group of stay at home mom's (homemakers?) organized a get together semi-weekly called the Happy Hour Social. Others believe that it was simply made by restaurants as yet another hallmark way to make some more dough!

Budgeting: The Gaps

If you're anything like me, you've got a budget to stick to each month so that you can have enough left over at the end to invest with. That some times can feel so straining that you feel like you have almost no air to breathe. It can feel utterly suffocating.

In times like that, I like to remind my wife (and myself when I have these moments!) that we simply need to find a way to have both a good savings rate and a good time. There are numerous ways to make this happen but I'll go over the most notable way we've conquered this in our lives.

Prior to taking on a budget, the wife and I would have a good time almost non-stop when we weren't working. We had a good amount of money coming in and we saw no reason that we couldn't use a ton of it. One of our favorite things to do was to go to a restaurant in the city called Old Chicago for their beer tour. The beer tour is a beer drinking challenge where those who wish to take it on have to drink 110 different beers in the restaurant. This can be achieved through up to four beers a night and has no expiration date. In fact, it took me a good three years to complete my first tour through it.