Monthly Archives: November 2013

November in Review

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I am posting these a day early so that I can share a major way to save money tomorrow on home renovations!

Financial goals:  November has been a better month for us, however with the expenses of car insurance, which I had not completely saved this time and lot of Christmas shopping it was an expensive month.  We were able to reduce our monthly expenses by $100 by reducing cable and eliminating our home security system. This new number will begin in December so I will be developing a new plan for the 2014 with these new figures.

  • Pay off Lawn mower by March 2014, so no interest is charged. Payment of $100 made, almost a triple payment. Steady progress. I have added to this initial debt with the purchase of flooring but have a plan to still pay all off prior to interest being applied!
  • Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June–  No progress this month but no new debt. We missed this goal obviously but my new goal is June 2014!
  • Emergency fund to $2000–  I have been talking and being in January this will be a major goal and I will be adding a line item to our budget to make it a reality.
  • Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system -Slight adjustments in this area as well. I am going to be moving several items to cash envelopes such as hair to make this easier.
  • Groceries: Spend $600 or less a month  We have spent $453 this month. In December my plan is to stick to less than $200 by eating out of the fridge and pantry!
  • Gas- Goal Met!! We currently have $150 left in our gas budget which we used for part of our car insurance.

Blogging:  Goal: 15 per month:  This is post number 14 with another post with pictures about our new flooring!

Devotions: Goal is 5 a week   Goal Met! I am really enjoying my morning time.

Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month.. I have been consistently exercising 2x a week and actually lost some weight in addition to my clothes fitting much better. I will be continuing to work on this next year.

So my goals look much better this month! In December I will be spending some time reviewing each goal and deciding how to proceed for next year. I will plan an several post on budgeting and at least an update in December with new goals stated for January. Progress should be celebrated!

Thanksgiving 2013

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This was a somewhat different Thanksgiving for us this year, out of the past 10 years we have travelled to Michigan for at least 7 or 8 to celebrate with Matt’s family. However this year, I am required to be available for work on Friday so travelling was out of the question. I have spent the day shopping and eating!  This morning I shopped online at JC Penny’s prior to a quick trip to CVS to pick up candy, soda and Nyquil. Matt and all three of the kids are fighting colds. Lunch was at my parents and then the adults sat around looking at the Black Friday ads, while the kids played. One of the highlights of the day was my hour and half nap. We decided to decorate our live Christmas tree and since it is smaller than normal we chose to use only about 1/3 of our ornaments. I hope to post pictures of all our decorations later this week.

I ended the night with a trip to Walmart.  Matt and I had planned to have a black Friday date but since he is feeling really bad, I decided to venture out alone. I did miss both the skillets and crockpots but I managed to grab a steam mop, pajamas, socks and Zach a guitar.

A very different low pace day but I have to say it was one of my favorite.

Productive Weekend

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I was able to get some extra hours off of work this week so I have been planning ahead to get things done this weekend. I am really excited at how much we have managed to accomplish!  I know that the next several weeks will be progressively more busy so I am so glad to feel like I am ahead of the game. Here is a list of thing that we accomplished this weekend:     1. Snow village is total complete!
2.  Christmas decorations are almost complete except for the tree which we will be picking up on Thursday. As a bonus, I have even managed to get some of the boxes back up in the attic
3. I am over 75% complete with Christmas shopping. My goal for this next week is to finish up all that I can  face the dreaded wrapping.
4.  I made an early morning trip to CVS this morning and saved 80%. I will be posting more about this trip on Thursday, when I return to CVS to use up the ECBs that I earned. I always look at these trips as one because I am carrying things forward.
5. We were able to purchase flooring and a new toilet for Lily’s new room. It would be awesome if she actually got to move into her new room on her birthday weekend. But that is a lot of work between now and then!
6. Naps on both days!
7. Finally, we have managed to clean out the fridge so that we can have some really comfort hot meals this week as the weather is too cold for my comfort!

 

Saving Money/ Budget Update

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We did it!!! We decided to cut our cable bill.

I have been unhappy with our  cable company for several years. The last time our “contract” was up they sent us a letter which I didn’t read carefully, that locked us into our service for another 2 years. Finally this past weekend that “contract” ended. Matt and I have been exploring objects over the last month. Because we do live in a small town, the options are limited.  We also received a new offer from the cable company in which they were only going to increase our current pricing by 5% or $10 total.  We both were appalled to pay $180 a month for our bundle of tv, internet and phone. Unfortunately, with Matt’s business there is not another option for us in regards to internet and after some research we discover that without losing our current number or having a “long distance” number from this area, we also are stuck with phone service as well.

Our initial plan was to eliminate cable tv completely and  reducing our phone to “local” only, is would drop our bill by $100.  However, we also discovered that live television is very difficulty to obtain without a huge antenna. So after spending almost an hour on the phone with Time Warner, we ended keeping basic cable (13 channels), our phone with no long distance and internet. Matt turned in all the other boxes and gadgets from them as well.  In the end we dropped our bill by $80!

When combining this with cancelling our security system, we will be decreasing our monthly expenses by $110 a month!   I also have a plan in place to have us end the year even for the year and start next year with a zero budget!  I also hope to get a small emergency fund in place as well.

Have you saved any lately?

Birthday Party Sunday

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Today we enjoyed two separate birthday parties. Matt and Lily attended the party of one of her classmates, while Kendall, Zach and I attended Zach good friend at church’s party. I was very surprised to find that not only did they have bounce houses for the kids to play in but a reading time and cookie decorations. Everyone had lots of fun and enjoyed lots of sugar!

 

Saving Money in November

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One of the advice that you will receive reading any financial advise is to check your budget and eliminate as much as needed. I thought we were on top of this; however as we have discovered there were some major savings that we found.

The first of which is our security system. This was initial purchased around 6 years ago. At the time, we had two teenage daughters and 3 very small kids in the house. Our biggest concern was not about someone breaking in but rather someone getting out unexpectedly. When we started to try to find money in our budget three years ago, one of the first things we did was call this company. We were able to reduce our monthly monitoring fee by $10 and received some new free equipment.

Over the past two months, we have again been looking at our expenses with the goal of having a total balanced ( income=expenses) budget to start 2014.

This was an easy decision for us to cancel the contract. One of the biggest factor was that the company no longer supports our equipment.  This of course becomes a problem when we need to replace a couple of sensors and the battery of the main box. Our plan currently is to keep the system in place as we own the equipment. The monitoring  by the company, ends November 30. The one feature that we will lose is that if an alarm goes off, police and/or fire will not be notified by the company.  We did end up throwing away several sensors but for the most part we still like having an alarm on the doors and most windows.

This is an easy saving of $28 a month! Keep reading because a much bigger saving and change are in the works for next week!

Wordless Wednesday-Veteran’s Day Program

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Our kids ministry presented a special program for veteran’s on Sunday. All three of the little kids played bells and sang. Lily also gave her testimony. I don’t have any great pictures but I do have an awesome video!

Just Too Busy! What Have We Been Doing?

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I knew that the past several weeks had been busy and I felt exhausted, but I didn’t realize how tired and busy we all were until last night!   Because of the kids whiney, crabby and bad behavior, I made the decision that no one was going to church instead it was going to be an early night for all.  I debated this decision as the kids needed to practice for their veteran’s day performance, but I am feeling very strongly like it was the best one. Everyone was asleep by 7pm and although they did whine today the improvement is very noticeable!

I actually have been off work for two days;  yesterday, Wednesday, I went with Amanda to have some pilar cyst removed from her scalp. Today, the little kids, Matt and myself headed to Matthew for eye appointments for Lily and Kendall. Lily received awesome news because her left eye is getting strong and we most likely will be getting a lower prescription when we return in three months. Kendall, whose teacher voiced some concerns to us, is going to start patching her left eye daily. The doctor does not feel like this eye is getting weaker but that instead as Kendall grows we are noticing the weakness more and they will be able to get a more accurate prescription for her as she now can read the letters.

After the appointments, we headed to IKEA. A quick stop at the OLD Navy, provided Zach with a jacket and a coat. But the most exciting news for all of us was the Zach is now officially tall enough to play in the play area at IKEA. Matt and I enjoyed 90 minutes of shopping kid free but I still think Zach was the most happiest about it. We ended up going to the Dollar store for items for Operation Christmas Child and ended up stopping at Olive Garden for dinner.  Today, was another busy day but all the little kids really enjoyed it and both Zach and Kendall are again asleep by 7pm! Here is proof he can get it!

Finally tall enough!

Finally tall enough!