It’s been another interesting month in our pursuit of making it through the year without buying anything new. To say that we have a lot going on is an understatement, but we’re still doing our best to keep on-track :)

As we’ve been speeding toward closing on our house and downsizing into a rental, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’d make the rent versus buy decision if we were already financially independent. There are lots of great articles in the personal finance world that examine the trade-offs between renting and buying but I haven’t yet stumbled across one that looks at it from the perspective of someone who’s already covering all their expenses from retirement savings accounts. Let’s fix that.

Let’s start with a joke. Four college grads are together at a fast food restaurant, marveling at a new gadget. The science grad asks “Why does it work?” The engineering grad asks “How does it work?” The business grad asks “How is it marketed?” The liberal arts grad asks “Do you want fries with that?”

This was a big week for our family. We accepted an offer on our 1900 square-foot house and signed a lease to move into an 1166 square-foot apartment! We’ve been planning on downsizing for some time and are excited to finally be there. One of the biggest surprises we had in this process was how hard it is to find smaller places to live in our area, especially as a family of five.

As financially-focused parents, we want to ensure that our kids learn the value of money. Our twins recently turned five years old and the topic of allowances is back on my mind. Rather than try to invent everything from scratch, I reached out to the experts on the Rockstar Finance Forums to see how others have made things work in their families.