Your life is chaotic, your money doesn’t have to be.

I’m Alan. I live in Arizona with my beautiful wife and our amazing two girls. We’re the dictionary definition of the messy middle — a house we just bought, retirement, college, student loans, and generally fighting to keep our heads above water.

By day I’m your friendly neighborhood IT guy. In my free time I enjoy an ice-cold Arnold Palmer and screaming into the void about personal finance topics.

Here we talk about what things really cost, using our real numbers. Not estimates, not averages — the actual amounts we paid, what insurance covered, and what I’d do differently.

Some of it’s going to be uncomfortable to publish. That’s sort of the point.

Start here: The Loyalty Tax Is Real: How I Procrastinated My Internet Bill in Half.