Came across the blog Can I Get Rich On A Salary today and despite the terrible blog name I like the writing so far and am putting it on the roll to make it a regular read. Here's an excerpt from a recent post:

We do, however, practice the art of self-deception in our personal finance. That means we trick ourselves into thinking that we make and have less money than we do. As I look back at how I felt about our personal finance through the last year, I remember feeling money was tight. I remember several different months in which our credit card bills seemed ginormous. I remember having to shuffle money around to get enough into our checking account to cover those credit card bills. I remember feeling like I was raiding our savings- and that we weren't saving as much as usual. All those feelings translated, I'm sure, to our tightening our belts here and there. So for us, this works pretty well.

This is how we do it:

* We have a fairly aggressive plan of automatic saving and investing. That's where we've set it up so certain amounts of money get deducted from our checking account each month and get funneled immediately into pre-set investments. So we sort of never see that money, and it never feels like it's in our pockets.

* We reserve each month for major expenses. Essentially, we total up a handful of our largest expenses that tend to hit in one or two big payments. For us, that's mostly property taxes and insurance (our homeowner's, auto, and umbrella coverage is all with one company). We divide the total by 12, and that's how much we set aside each month. We actually move this money out manually each month, but lots of banks allow you to do this automatically too. Again, we sort of never see that money, and it never feels like it's in our pockets.

* After taking care of the first two items, we pay ourselves a "salary" each month. And though it wasn't some grand master plan, we've set that salary a little too low. We haven't raised it sufficiently, given what's going on in our lives (particularly with the kids). This contributes to money feeling tight.

I removed a blog from the blogroll that had not updated in quite some time; I won't say which it was because I may put it back on if the blogger gets back into it. For now, though, it is replaced by Can I Get Rich On A Salary (which should probably be titled Can We Get Rich on Two Salaries? given the fact that the author says he & his wife are both earning 6 figures.)