Last year, I was talking with a friend right after she had returned from a relaxing week in the Caribbean. "We did an all-inclusive," she said to me with a glimmer in her eyes. "A what?" I had no idea what she was talking about. After chatting about it for a quite a while, she clued me in on how an all-inclusive vacation works and what some of the perks were. To say I was intrigued would be an epic understatement. According to my friend, she could travel to any all-inclusive vacation spot in the Caribbean or Mexico and have almost everything included in one low price. I couldn't believe what I was hearing; my friend and her husband had paid only $700 per person for an entire week at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun. Not only were their flights and lodging included in her cost, but all of their food and drinks (even alcohol) were included as well. She seemed downright enthusiastic about their experience and went on and on about how amazing the whole thing was. I had to find out more.

To satisfy my curiosity, I started playing around with dates and locations on travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity. What I found out was a complete jolt to my system: all-inclusive vacations were cheap. Dirt cheap. Since I love to travel and hate to spend money, I started to wonder if I should go on an all-inclusive vacation myself. My husband and I had been putting off a honeymoon for nearly seven years at that point, mostly due to being stingy with our cash. Could an all-inclusive vacation provide the answer?

Our First All-Inclusive

Once I showed my husband my research, he quickly got on board. Of course. Why wouldn't he want to travel to a tropical beach and enjoy unlimited food and drinks all day and night? We bounced back and forth between several locations. I initially had my heart set on going to Aruba. However, my enthusiasm waned as the price crept slowly upward with each passing week. Then it was Club Med in Turks and Caicos. Then Jamaica. Then Mexico. We ultimately chose to do our first all-inclusive vacation in the Dominican Republic. When all was said and done, we paid less than $1000 per person including airfare to spend 7 days and 6 nights at an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana.

Before my husband and I got our financial act together, we didn't have a household budget. Since we didn't have and sort of plan, we spent all of our discretionary income on "wants" and financed anything that cost more money than we had. And the scariest part is that we never really thought much of it. Our income always lasted until the next payday, so we never worried about making ends meet.

But, after years of frivolous spending, we finally snapped out of it. Becoming pregnant with our second child made us start thinking seriously about our financial future, and the impending impact of another mouth to feed actually made us afraid. All of a sudden, we realized that we weren't kids anymore. Our twenties were spent chasing adventures and spending cash like it was going out of style. And here we were, in our thirties now and on the verge of having two children to take care of. And although we were completely clueless how things had gotten so out of control, we decided that we had to take control of our financial destiny.

A few weeks ago, I paid a sky-high electric bill.

After some investigation, I saw the problem: the electric company charged a $200 deposit fee for starting electric service at our new house.

The deposit was supposed to be waived, since we had a good payment history with the electric company. Only here it was, on our bill. And since we're on autopay, the electric company had already collected payment.

This post comes from Lynn Svenson, who blogs at The Photographer's Wife. Some reader stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success or failure. These stories feature folks with all levels of financial maturity and income.

One of the biggest impacts to my wallet (and heart) this past year was having a baby. Of course, there are plenty of expenses that go along with being pregnant and having a baby, like numerous visits to the doctor and the enormous amount of diapers. But in particular, I want to share how making the decision to have a stay-at-home parent has affected our wallets and our way of thinking.

We were overjoyed when we found out I was pregnant in the fall of 2011. However, along with that joy came some sadness. After taking a look at our finances, we realized we wouldn't be able to achieve one of our long-time goals of my husband staying home to raise our children. We do have debt, and my salary alone just wouldn't cut it. We ultimately took a big risk when we decided that my husband would stay home and I would bust my butt to get a new, higher-paying job after the baby was born.

You'll have to forgive the overt theme of today's post. I've been wanting to write about this topic for a while, but it's such personal issue that I've shied away from it.

But when I realized that this week's post would fall on Valentine's Day, I took it as a serendipitous opportunity to break out of my comfort zone and talk about something that scares me a little: my love life. Specifically, this is the story of my love life meeting my financial life. Oh, boy.

A couple of years ago, I met someone who changed my whole perspective. I started to not just think in terms of "me" but also "we." As these things go, we decided to share a life together. Sharing a life meant sharing an apartment. And sharing an apartment meant sharing finances.

Forget what the magazines say about travel. Forget what you see in commercials. They're all wrong: Travel isn't expensive. How do I know? Because I've been traveling the world for six years and have found that everything you learn about travel is generally wrong.

Experience has taught me that travel isn't expensive. Locals don't spend hundreds of dollars per day in your destination -- and you don't spend hundreds when you are home -- so why do something different when you travel? Traveling taught me that there are myriad ways to cut expenses and turn your dream vacation into a reality a lot more easily than you might think possible.

We're conditioned to believe travel is expensive for few reasons.

When we decided that we were going to start investing more in 2013, I didn't know where we would find the money in our budget. My personality embraces risk… as long as all our other savings goals are met and our bills are paid. So, because I wanted to have fun investing (and not lose sleep at night), I knew I could not cut our retirement contributions or our savings deposits. What I hoped was that I would find "invisible" money in our budget; money that we spent mindlessly that would now have an investing job.

Our spending record

I have recorded our spending for brief periods of time, especially when money was very tight, but I had never done it for a year. I knew it was a good thing to do, but it's a pain. In 2012, however, I created a spreadsheet and faithfully entered every dollar that we made or were given. I tallied every purchase made by check, debit or credit card and most of the ones made with cash.

I'll spare you most of the gory details, but we weren't as smart with our money as we thought we were. Granted, there were things out of our control: Our septic system needed to be replaced, and we had some unexpected medical bills. Most things, though, were in our control, including the ridiculous $36.75 I spent at the vending machine. Even though that's not a lot of money, it's more than I thought I spent on Wild Cherry Pepsi. Continue reading...

Personally, I begin to panic every year as the holiday season approaches. It's not because I don't love Christmas. I really do love the holiday season, in general. I just cringe at the thought of all of the money that gets spent unnecessarily, especially mine. And as holiday spending has steadily grown out of control, expectations have come along for the ride. What is now considered to be a reasonable amount of presents is completely different than it was when I was a kid. Nowadays, children are getting showered with big gifts, expensive toys, and things I never would have dreamed of receiving as a child.

My mom once told me that, when she was young, she typically got an orange and some candy in her stocking on Christmas. Seriously. And she was thrilled to get it. She also reminded me that she and her siblings would each get only a few small toys as well. The thing is, this isn't just some story about walking 10 miles to school, uphill, both ways. It is actually the truth. Of course, it happened 60 years ago, and I cannot believe how times have changed. Kids certainly expect a lot more gifts now, and it doesn't take much to figure out why things have changed so dramatically.

Doesn't it seem like the holiday season creeps up on us earlier every single year? It is no longer surprising to see stores decorated for Christmas in early November... way before Thanksgiving! This year, several stores even announced that they would open for Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day, and they made many customers upset in the process. Continue reading...

Sitting on my desk as I write this is an application I should have filled out months ago. Twenty-two months ago, to be exact.

It was then that I left my 40-hour-a-week office job, which included a convenient 401(k), dependable health care plan and, most refreshingly, a kind and understanding boss. It was tough to leave that job, but I wanted to pursue a career in freelance writing.

The entire experience was overwhelming. Details of that are for another post, perhaps, but the point is: what I found most overwhelming was dealing with my own finances. Administratively speaking, my employer had taken care of my retirement plan, taxes and health insurance. It was great.

In my last article at Get Rich Slowly, I gave the background on my income and expenses. My husband's income and expenses are a little more difficult to compile. For one, Jake left the life of a steady paycheck about a year ago in order to start his own business. This means that his income fluctuates, which of course we knew going in. It also means that the first few years he's going to make much less than we hope he will eventually. We also knew that going in.

However, another major factor is that Jake's idea of household budgeting is "make so much money it doesn't matter what you spend because you can afford it all." When he started working at The Big Firm right out of law school and was making $90,000 a year, this was something that was more or less possible, especially since he was working 80+ hours a week and didn't accumulate vacation or sick time. He didn't have time for anything really spend-y. However, even though he's now living the entrepreneur's life, he's resistant to budgeting. Earlier this week I sent him J.D.'s article about how to budget for an irregular income, and his response was: