Crazy Good Sale at Gap Haul!

Hi friends!

I wouldn't be posting this if it wasn't a crazy good sale at Gap but it is and I suggest you get on it while there's still stuff left!

I went to the Gap at Horton Plaza today and found some great stuff. I bought 8 things and the total was less than $80. That's less than $10 per item! I was able to find some of the items online so I will screen shot those for you. There's also an extra 50% off sale items with the code: SUPER (additional 50% off also in stores). Happy shopping!

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There's a lot more in stores and online but I wanted to post this ASAP since the sale will probably end soon. Remember it's an additional 50% off the red prices listed! Also 7% back on Ebates! It's a great time to stock up on those basics and layering pieces!

Have a great weekend!

Tasty Tuesdays: Tofu Recipes

I love tofu and would prefer it over chicken. So when it came to compiling recipes, I ended up with quite a few tofu recipes. Here are some of the easiest ones I've found.

1. Tofu Chorizo (link)

2. Agadashi Tofu (link)

3. Stir-Fried Tofu and Peppers (link)

4. Ma po Tofu (link)

5. Asian Garlic Tofu (link)

6. Spicy Tamari Tofu and Broccoli (link)

7. Coconut Red Curry With Tofu (link)

8. Spicy Kimchi Tofu Stew (link)

9. Brussels Sprouts And Tofu Stir-Fry (link)

10. Ginger-Garlic Tofu (link)

11. Spicy Crispy Tofu Recipe (link)

note: all photos belong to their rightful owners. please click on link to see original recipe.

Money Mondays: Tracking Your Spending

The month of January is almost over O_O! If you've made it your goal to spend less in 2015, now is the time to take a look at how you did. January is a great month to look at because there usually aren't any extraneous purchases. If you take a look at December, you might have a lot of spending due to gifts and that will skew your entire budget. January is when most people want to start fresh so it's a good month to set up a baseline.

What I've been doing is spending some of time with my good friend Excel. I made a little spreadsheet to track my spending. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. The less fancy the better since you don't really want to spend all your time on aesthetics but if it'll make you more likely to stick to it, then by all means, knock yourself out.

Here's what my Excel sheet looks like.

When trying to figure out what expenses are dragging you down, it's important to make categories. These categories will vary depending on your lifestyle. For instance, I have two sets of bills, one for my parents and one for the bills at our apartment because I want to determine whether it's something I can actually control. Obviously I won't be telling my parents to use less electricity, etc. Also, I've split up food into two separate categories because I eat out quite a bit so I was trying to determine how much I was spending by eating out. Starbucks is also it's own category because it's my own little daily reward. It's something I'm definitely not willing to give up when it comes to cutting costs. For me stuff, that's just clothes and other stuff that I'm just purchasing for myself. That's where my "fun" money fund goes toward. As a said in my Budgeting post, I'm trying to put 50% of my income towards debt repayment (loans & credit cards), 25% towards savings, and 25% towards fun. My fun money will be a combination of my eating out and my "me stuff".

If you have a lot of transactions, it's best to go through them on a weekly basis so you are not super overwhelmed at the end of the month. I've been going through my transactions every Saturday morning while I sip on my coffee. It's also a good benchmark for you before you start your weekend because if you know you've already spent a lot for the month, you probably shouldn't do any spending that weekend (or at least try not to spend any money on extraneous purchases).

Only one more week until January is officially done! Can't believe this first month will almost be over but I hope everyone is still financially on track! Remember that January and February are your guinea pig months. Don't get too down over whether you're meeting your financial goals. It's still early in the year so cut yourself some slack. If you are at least tracking your finances, you're on your way to determining your Achilles heel.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and have an awesome week!

Tasty Tuesdays: Chicken Recipes

One of the delights of cohabitation is figuring out how to cook for two. You've got two people with their own likes and dislikes and you have to come to a compromise. For us, I'm the lover of all Asian food and he's the lover of Mexican food. He also likes to eat chicken (for health reasons) and I'm all about the tofu life (the only meat I'll eat is Korean BBQ lol).

Last year I found a chicken recipe that I made to death (I would just make the chicken and not the pesto part). Now I'm on the hunt for more chicken recipes. As a part of my new years resolution, I'm trying to compile a bunch of recipes that I can actually cook. Here are 10 chicken recipes I'm really looking forward to cooking!


1. Quick Lime Cilantro Chicken (link)

2. Sriracha Lime Chicken Chopped Salad (link)

3. Sriracha Chicken and Broccoli Lo-Mein (link) 

4. Crock-pot Sweet Garlic Chicken (link)

5. Skinny Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo (link)

6. Chicken Fried Rice (link)

7. PF Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps (link)

8. Grilled Beer Marinated Chicken (link)

9. Honey Balsamic Chicken Tenders (link)

10. Pan Roasted Rosemary Chicken (link)

note: all pictures are property of their respective owners. 

Money Mondays: My Student Loan Story & Repayment Plan

Student loan debt is a heavy burden that most millennials are dealing with. Despite making enough money to live comfortably and paying the minimum on your loans, there is still that nagging debt about the size of a mortgage just shouting "I'm collecting interest for doing absolutely nothing!"

When I graduated from pharmacy school in May 2011, I had racked up a decent amount of debt. Despite getting financial aid for my 4 years at UCLA, the total of my undergrad education accumulated to $22,871 ($5,844 was a Perkins Loan and $17,027 was a loan through Sallie Mae). These two loans were in deferment while I went through another 3 years in pharmacy school and luckily they did not accrue interest at that time. My grad school loans were a completely different story. In August 2011, my grad school loans totaled $218,399 with $111,712 being a Stafford Loan (6.55%) and $106,687 being the Grad Plus Loan (7.65% interest). I'm more of a visual person so here's what it looked like.

It was a crazy amount to even fathom owing and it was only going to increase day-by-day since interest starts accruing 6 months after you graduate. I was lucky enough to find a job in June 2011 so that I could make some money as a grad intern while I studied for the boards. By late August I was officially licensed and "making the big bucks" as some would say. As December approached, letters from all the different loans companies started flooding my mailbox. How do you want to pay off your loan? 10 years or 25 years? Standard or Graduated? I knew I wanted to go with the fastest route possible so I went with the 10 yr Standard Plan.

One thing that I wasn't prepared for was not getting full-time hours. I was hired as a floater and 24 hrs was enough to have benefits and be considered "full-time" in my employer's eyes. Therefore, for the most part, I was only working 3 days a week and not really making enough to be on the 10 yr repayment plan. It was extremely stressful because at the time, both of my parents had lost their jobs so in addition to paying off my own debt, I was also paying for our home expenses. They dug into their savings to pay the mortgage but it was my responsibility to pay for everything else. Because of that, I ended up changing my loan to the 25 yr Standard plan. I figured I could always pay more when I had extra money rather than stress myself out trying to make payments. This definitely made it much less stressful.

First order of business was to start saving up for an emergency fund. As a floater, I knew my job wasn't very stable and when you first start out, you're also not very good (just being honest here lol) so you're not being requested very often. So from August to December (when my loans were going to be out of deferment), I saved and saved.

The second decision I had to make was how to plan my attack. There's usually two ways to go about this: either start with the loan with the highest interest (aka the "Math Method") or start with the loan with the smallest amount (aka the "Snowball Method"). Here's a great article on one versus the other that might be helpful. I went with the Snowball Method. I decided to completely pay off the Perkins Loan with the money I had saved up from August to December. One down, 3 more to go.

In August 2012 (one year after graduation), my loans looked something like this.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant sight but the silver lining was that at least the Grad Plus Loan was finally under 100k. By early 2013 I had saved up a decent amount but I was having a difficult time deciding what to do next. Should I just go for it and pay off my undergrad loan completely or should I pay off the Grad Plus Loan with the higher interest? I decided to just eliminate my undergrad loan. The satisfaction of completely eliminating a loan was worth going against logic, I suppose lol.

I won't bore you with what happened in 2013 and 2014. An Excel spreadsheet is worth a thousand words.

note: "Differences" were calculated by subtracting the total owed this year by the total owed last year

I also wanted to mention that the snowballing method just happened to work out for me because the loan with the lesser amount ended up being the loan with the higher interest (after I paid off my undergrad loan) so at this point, it's a no brainer as to which loan I should pay off first.

My ultimate goal would be to completely eliminate my Grad Plus Loan which is a pretty hefty goal. A couple of things I do want to use to my advantage this year are my bonus which comes around mid-March and my employee stock option which I was "gifted" when I first started with the company and is now fully vested. I may also borrow money from my 401k (at half the interest of my loan) to pay off a good chunk of the loan. Just a few things to mull over this year.

I hope this post was helpful to those of you with student loan debt. I do want to note that this method might not work for everyone. I have friends that are using the income-based repayment plan which might pan out better for some people. I believe the income-based repayment plan makes it so you don't pay more than 10% of what you make per month (based on your salary the previous year) and you pay that for 25 years. After 25 years of on-time payments, the rest of your loan is forgiven. I didn't really have the time to calculate out which would be better and as such, went with what I already know.

Money Mondays: Budgeting in 2015

Looking back on the previous year, I was quite disappointed with the amount I saved. I was so focused on getting my loans down that I ended up dwindling quite a bit of my savings to put towards my loans.

This year, my focus will be more on having a balance between paying off my loans and saving money. I was reading an article on Yahoo! Finance about the Payroll Leap Year and in the article it mentions how a financial planner tells her clients to put 50% toward debt, 25% toward savings, and 25% toward fun. She states that the percentages "take the emotional aspect" out saving and paying off debt.

After reading that, I realized it made a lot of sense. I've always had a lot of emotional attachment to my paychecks. I didn't really know how to divvy up my paychecks in a way that felt fair. By doing percentages, you'll have varying amounts depending on how much you worked so it won't be as hard as committing to a whole dollar amount when you have a paycheck that is less than pleasing on the eyes (and wallet).

For us biweekly pay-perioders, we already have our first paycheck in the bank. This means all we have to do is use the magic of Excel to do the divvying for us. All I have to do for the rest of the year is plug-and-chug. The less thinking I have to do (outside of work) the better!

Here's what my spreadsheet looks like:

How are you planning to reach your financial goals this year? 

Share your tips and tricks in the comments below. I'd love to hear about them!

Hope everyone's year is coming to a great start! 

January: Posts, Posts, and More Posts!

As I mentioned in my "2015 Restart" post, January and February will be the months in which I will prepare for my resolutions. Poor planning usually leads to failed goals therefore, I will spend a good chunk of time prepping so that I can hopefully accomplish all that I want to accomplish this year.

I've been checking Pinterest as well as some magazines I already have around the house for recipe ideas. I've compiled a bunch already and I've started breaking them down into different categories. I'll be posting some of my favorite easy recipes in each of the various categories for my Tasty Tuesday segment.

In terms of finances, I'll be continuing my Money Monday series so keep your eyes peeled for that. Tomorrow's post will be a quick one about how I'm budgeting for 2015.

A new series I will be starting this year which I'm extremely excited to share with ya'll is Wanderlust Wednesdays! We want to start planning for our vacation which we won't be taking until sometime after March and I want to take all of you along on the journey. I'm the type of person that does a lot of planning before a trip and I think this series will be not only helpful for others planning similar trips but it will also force me to do a little more structured research on the destinations I want to visit. Most of the posts will have to do with Peru, which is our top destination for the year.

I hope ya'lls are excited for the posts to come because I'm super excited to get back in the swing of things. I was pretty bad with posting during the tail end of last year but it was unbelievably hectic with all the traveling I did as well as the holidays. Time for a 2015 restart!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend and I'll talk to you guys 

tomorrow about my 2015 financial goals/budget. 

Thanks for reading!