About

Hi, I'm Lindsey. I'm a pharmacy technician in Macon, Missouri, a small town in the northeast corner of the state where US-36 crosses US-63. I grew up out in the county, about fifteen minutes from town, and I've been filling prescriptions and answering the pharmacy phone since 2015.

My husband Tyler is a maintenance technician at a plant in the area. He can fix almost anything with a motor in it and in the summer he mows yards on the side. We got married in 2021 at a park pavilion, and in January 2022 we moved into our side of a duplex with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a fenced yard for Moose, our red hound who howls at the mail truck every single day.

The jar came first. Tyler's grandma gave us an old one-gallon pickle jar, and we started dropping every loose quarter and every $5 bill into it. In January 2025 we sat down at the kitchen table and decided we'd buy our first house by the end of 2026. That's when I started this blog: to keep us honest, to write down what actually works, and because a few friends kept asking how we were doing it on two small-town paychecks.

What you'll find here

Our real numbers: the monthly budget, what an all-electric duplex costs to heat in a Missouri January, how we shopped our car and renters insurance, what we spend on groceries, what Tyler's mowing and my furniture flips bring in, and how the house fund is growing month by month.

I'm not a financial advisor, an insurance agent or a loan officer. I'm a careful person with a spreadsheet and a calendar on the fridge. I share what we did and why, so you can ask better questions about your own situation.

Thanks for reading. If you want to say hello, the contact page is always open.