I’m Addi and I’ve been blogging since 2011. This little corner of the Internet is for me to share stories about my life with my 4 boys, personal finance, online business and some of my favorite things.

When I started my blog, I was at a place where I felt like I had failed myself. 

I graduated from college with a teaching degree and immediately knew that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. 

At the time, I was working for a small distribution company and started to realize that I really enjoyed learning about business. So, I went back to college to get my MBA.

I finished my degree and then two months later, my first son was born. It was a magical time and I enjoyed every single minute of it. 

A year later, I gave birth to my second son. Again, it was such an amazing time and I was over the moon with joy.

But… and I hate to say that there even was a ‘but'.

I felt like a failure. 

I had two college degrees and wasn’t using either one of them.

Something was missing. 

On the outside, my life looked happy. I was a new mom of two wonderful little boys, but on the inside, I felt like a failure. 

At the time, my husband and I were building a home. During one of our meetings with the salesman, he mentioned to me that his wife was a stay-at-home mom, but also a blogger.

I remember shaking my head and pretending like I knew what that meant, but really I was like “a blogger, what the heck is a blogger?”

Naturally, I went home to figure out what it meant to be a blogger and how this woman did it while still being home with her two kids. 

This was the day my life changed. 

I didn’t even entirely know what it was, or what she did, but Frugal Fanatic was born that day (this was the original site I had created).

I was determined to make this work, and thought if she could do it then so could I.

I was clueless and spent hours upon hours trying to figure out how to do everything.

This is where I would like to tell you that I was an instant success and rode the money train with blogging, but that didn’t happen.

In 2014, I had my third son and barely kept everything afloat. I was constantly juggling my kids and my blog and felt so overwhelmed.

I was on the verge of giving up, but something inside of me felt the need to prove myself.

Prove that I could make this whole blogging thing work.

Prove that I could run a business and still be there for my kids.

Prove to myself that I wasn’t a failure.

I knew if I gave up, I wouldn’t just be giving up on myself, but on all of the women who needed to see that it’s possible to run a successful blog from home without sacrificing what is most important in their lives.

I wanted to prove to myself that I could pursue my dreams while still enjoying my life.

Luckily, I didn’t give up on myself and stopped treating my blog as a hobby. I started setting goals and became very intentional. 

In 2016, my little blog that was started on a whim generated six figures. 

Since then, there have been a lot of ups and downs.

As soon as I felt like I was headed in the right direction, I had to take an entire year off when I had my fourth son due to some health issues. 

Again, I wanted to give up.

I kept thinking, why am I even doing this?

What’s the point? 

But… I wanted to serve and help women just like me to see what was possible for them.