About

About Me: My name is Miguel and I’m a simple living and budget spreadsheet expert! I’ve been decluttering my life since 2018 and love everything simple living related. I’m passionate about personal finance and have paid off a large portion of debt along with saving for big life events like my wedding by creating budget spreadsheets! I aim to help you learn how to live a simple life, become intentional with your spending, and manage your money right!

Simple Living can help us be more peaceful, carry less stress, and enjoy the important things in life.

Living this type of simplistic lifestyle can also improve our spending habits and allow us to be more intentional with our money and what we bring into our lives!

The Simple Paradise Story:

After graduating with my communications degree and racking up student loan debt, I began to develop poor spending habits after working full-time.

This included ordering things I didn’t need from Amazon almost daily and making large purchases without thinking twice.

I had no discipline or intentionality with my spending or my savings, thus, my finances were in shambles.

Furthermore, the seeds for simple living had been planted during my college years.

How it Started: I began looking into simple living and minimalism after moving from one apartment to another during my Junior year of college. This experience made me realize all of the junk that I was packing and moving up two flights of stairs was basically just sitting there collecting dust!!! After this experience, not only did I want to minimize my belongings, but I also became a huge proponent of minimizing your wardrobe and creating a capsule wardrobe.

After college, I was in the process of decluttering my wardrobe and other belongings at the time…

However, decluttering my stuff became increasingly hard due to the fact that I was adding so much junk and spending all my money -____-

Giant Facepalm!!

The Turning Point

Fast forward a few years and my Amazon habit had improved greatly and I was beginning to find interest in personal finance content.

I was learning vital aspects of personal finance like budgeting, an emergency fund, and a Roth IRA.

As this was happening my girlfriend at the time, (now Fiance) introduced me to tracking your income and expenses on a spreadsheet and encouraged me to use the spreadsheet she had made.

At first, I was against it and didn’t really know how to use it.

For some reason, I didn’t really want to see all of my finances like that…maybe it was painful to see where my money was going and how much $ I was really spending…But I needed to see the truth lol.

I’m not sure why but whenever anyone would suggest tracking all of your finances down to the penny, I always thought it was important but was just too lazy to get around to doing it lol…

But now I was given a method thankfully <3

living on a budget, Simple Monthly Budget spreadsheet Google Sheets

Creating My Minimalist Budget Spreadsheets

After using the spreadsheet that was given to me, I was inspired to create my minimalist budgeting spreadsheet that had the look and features that I wanted.

All I can say is that I was hooked!!

I spent hours and months creating an annual budget to use for myself.

I wasn’t super experienced with Google Sheets or Excel, but I learned quickly and I oddly enjoyed making these spreadsheets.

Ever since my lovely Fiance introduced that spreadsheet to me, my financial world has never been the same!

I now have created multiple budgeting spreadsheets that I use and offer on this site…and have learned to budget for savings goals and effectively pay off my student loan debt.

I have become an expert in tracking my finances and becoming more intentional with my money.

At this moment in 2023, my debt is under $10k and I’m almost finished!

Using my budget spreadsheet and creating intentionality/proper planning with my spending helped me to save for my Fiance’s ring and pay off debt while also managing bills and other expenses.

This also makes it harder for me to spend freely without thinking twice because I enter every receipt and dollar into my spreadsheet no matter what!

My Goal

Ultimately, my goal is to inspire you to embrace simple living and to help beginners learn about finance and budgeting!

By tracking your income and expenses, my hope is that you’ll become more intentional with your money and spending habits!

I feel the most effective way to budget and manage your money is to track your expenses using a spreadsheet!

This way you know exactly how much money you make and how much you spend…Otherwise, you really have no clue and are just guestimating how much you spend and on what.

And trust me, you’re spending way more than you think!

All in all, I want to provide helpful minimalist budgeting tips from the perspective of someone who was terrible with money, but now understands the value of tracking all of your finances responsibly!

Get Inspired by My Favorite Blogging and YouTube Resources!:

Blogging:

YouTube:

Go Here For More of The Simple Paradise:

Here Are Some Fun Facts About Me 🙂

I’m a kid at heart
I’m Introverted
I have a degree in communications from Penn State
I enjoy writing about various topics related to Simple Living, Simple Budgeting, Minimalist travel, Minimalist wardrobes, Decluttering, and more!
Around 2018, I simplified my wardrobe and never looked back, Now I continue to declutter my belongings and encourage others through this blog!