Monthly Archives: January 2014

January 2014

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This has been a particularly busy month for me, but I still have managed to make progress.

Financial Goals–

1.  Pay off lawn mower by March 2014 to avoid interest being charged.  Made the $100 payment  Goal Met!

2. Emergency Fund to $2000.  $100  moved to this account yesterday Goal Met

. 3. Groceries: Spend $600 a month-  Actually spent this month $400 including a Pamper Chef order.  Goal Met

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month with any remaining to be move to Auto fund for repairs. $103 left in the budget.  With the additional money we spent at the end of January for tires and the repair cost for the January. I am going to use this remaining money to “repay” some of the areas I have recently borrowed from.  Goal Met

Blogging:  Goal: 15 per month  This is post number 15! I am really happy with this as I did not actually post until the 8th this month!  Goal Met

Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December 2014.  I weighed in today for a contest at work and have lost 8# this month Goal Met

 

Doing a happy dance!

January No/Low Spend Final Update!

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  • Get $100 in our Emergency Fund.  Transferred $100 today!
  • Pay off the outstanding Verizon bill from where we switch names
  • Deposit for Beach vacation
  • Reduce Groceries to$400 for the month with the remaining $200 set aside for Cheerleading competitions.  Total spent for Groceries $298.63.  I did use the remaining $100 on a order from Pamper Chef!  $212 used for Cheerleading competition spending money!
  • Transfer $50 to auto fund by the end of the month. This has been transferred! Goal Met!

 

I have  managed to met 3 out of 5 of my original goals, I am extremely pleased with these as they were made prior to our planning a trip to Michigan.  This was an awesome way to start the new year!  I will have my goals for February posted on Saturday!

No Spend Challenge and Shopping.

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One of my goals for this challenge was to reduce our Grocery spending to $400 for the month with  the remaining $200 set aside for Cheerleading competitions.  This is one area that we are doing excellent with. One of the reason is my winter cleaning has left our pantry much more organized and we also developed a list of items we have and need to use up.

I did realize that we were running really low on fresh veggies to use this week. We decided to  make several shopping stops today.  First up was a quick trip to CVS. I purchased 2 tubes of toothpaste, 2 2L of Diet Coke and a candy bar. I ended up paying a total of $1.55 of which $0.60 was tax. I received back 4 ECB. Next, was a stop at Aldi, total spent was $14.88 and finally Walmart. I purchased a baby gift and spent 1.71 for a bunch of celery. We check the celery at Aldi but it was limp and Lily wanted celery and peanut butter one day for lunch.   Our grocery total is $298.63 for the month!

I have a chance to order some items from Pampered Chef this week so I am going to use $100 from the left over grocery budget to pay for these items that are all going to be used for cooking.

This goal is MET!!!!!! So far for the challenge I am 2/5. By the end of the week, I hope to achieve 3/5!! This is huge for me as the challenge goals were set prior to planning of our trip!

 

 

A Space to Call My Own

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This weekend the weather has been extremely cold. That was a good reason for me to stay inside. One of the things, I was able to accomplish was organize and cleaning up my desk. We (Matt and I ) did our yearly purge of paperwork.

 

My desk before....

My desk before….

 

After! I was able to purchase the words for $3.00 at an after Christmas sale.

After! I was able to purchase the words for $3.00 at an after Christmas sale.

Hopefully this will let me be more productive.

Cooking Day-Non Chicken 1/23/2014

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Matt pointed out the other day that although we have lots of food to choice from we were running extremely low on quick and easy to prepare meals. So with a few minutes of discussion, we decided that today would be a “cooking day”  I am quite pleased with the results.

First, early this morning, I placed the turkey that was purchased prior to Thanksgiving in the crockpot. I must say this is the best way to cook a turkey. I cooked it on high for 4 hours till the internal temperature was 160 then switched to low for another 3 until the temperature was 170*. I cook it breast down, rubbed with olive oil, and coated with Paula Deen seasoning. I did place one onion inside the cavity and added 1 cup of apple juice. We enjoyed turkey for dinner, I have plans to use the rest for at least 2 additional meals this weekend plus at least one or two meals of plain turkey.  In addition to the meat, I have already frozen 16 cups of broth with plans to finish with at least another 20 cups today from the bones and skin.  Total cost for the meat for 5 meals is $12.

Next, we purchased for the cost of processing some venison in November. We have not been able/ forgot to count the total amount of ground venison we received but we are thinking it was around 60#.  Today we used 8# to make and freeze 2 cheeseburger quiches  and 11 packs of Salisbury Steaks. Matt and I both worked in the kitchen for a total of 3 hours or less for these meals. The Salisbury Steaks will need to have a starch and vegetable add to complete.  Total cost for 13 meals of meat is $6.

This was one of the easiest cooking days that I have done in a long time. In less than 4 hours and for less than $25 total, we have 18 meals for 5 people. That works out to  $1.38 a meal. This should go a long way to helping reduce our grocery spending for the first part of the year!

How I Wasted Money This Week

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One of the things that happens to me when I am really working to save money or trying to keep my budget on track is that I begin to notice little things that cost more money than they should in my mind.  This week has been one of those weeks, we are so close to being on track and even ahead  that I am constant thinking of ways to stretch us that last little bit.  I often share about how I save money but in order to get an accurate picture I am going to share on how I have “wasted” money this week. I will start by giving you my definition of “waste”.  Waste equals buying something that was not needed or on the best deal possible! I will be the first also to say that not all of the items on this list were a waste but maybe better viewed as overspending. I will also say up front most of these things I would not or can not change, so enjoy

  1. Purchased 2 new bras at JCPenny. I had received $30 in rewards for the month of January.  My intention was to use this money to buy a bra. I have purchased 10 bras in the past 6 months but am not really happy with any of them. The major problem is that the underwire comes out the side. I did purchase 2 without underwire but these did not provide as much coverage as I like.  Instead of 1 bra I ended up purchasing 2 bras and a set of pajamas. I spent $28 and saved $92.
  2. Throwing out over a years supply of Vitamins. In cleaning, out the pantry on Saturday, I rediscovered several packages of Juice Plus vitamins. I had purchased these several years ago and each year start by taking these regular for less than 3 weeks. This year, I knew that I was not going to complete the cycle again. What I did not realize was that  all the vitamins that I had expired sometime between 2010 or sooner. Into the trash, they all went.
  3. I often keep extra food items in my bathroom closet, simply because it has some additional storage space. I have been seeing on a shelf and forgetting about a couple of cases of Protein shakes that I purchased last year at Costco. My plan was to starting taking these for lunch; however one case expired in August of 2013 and the second in November 2013. I actually attempted a shake from the November case but they just are not drinkable. I know that I spent around $50 on these cases.
  4. Between Thursday and Sunday, we have eaten out 3 times. We have lots of food in the house but chose to eat out anyway.
  5. Girl Scout cookies. 5 boxes to be exact. Definitely not a need but very good!
  6. $719 for 2 pair of glasses for myself. I need new glasses and I have to go to Bifocals. But I chose a really expensive frame and also purchased a pair of sunglass to use this summer. This was definitely an overspend.

So am I the only one wasting money this week?

Shopping Trip

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So far this month, I have spent $217.56 on groceries. Yesterday, we went shopping and I have no plans to make another trip this month. I have come to realize that I usually don’t shop like other people. I find it very interesting to read the details about other people’s trips and thought it might be interesting to explain how I do shop. I live in a very small town, which has a Walmart and one grocery store chain. I try to combine trips and usually buy items that are on sale only for most trips. Keep in mind that we currently have 40# of chicken breast, 50# of ground venison, a bag of shrimp and probably 10# of pork in our freezer. At the brand sale earlier in the month, I stocked up on canned goods including beans and veggie as well as staples such as oatmeal, ketchup and mustard.  This month, my focus was stocking up at our local store (Food Lion) brand sale and keeping the grocery bill as low as possible. Any amount left in the budget for the month will definitely help to meet our financial goals for this month.

We did end up shopping at CVS, Food Lion, Harris Teeter and Costco yesterday. The first stop was CVS, I purchased eye patches for Kendall and grabbed the best deals on items that we use.  I spent a total of $13.69 of which $4.59 was the cost of the eye patches. At Harris Teeter, I spent $8.96 for only items on sale that ended up costing less than $1 each they included 4 boxes of Hamburger Helper, 2 boxes of cereals, bottle of shampoo, mousse, 2 bottles of Hair Spray, hair gel, toothpaste, 2 boxes of granola bars  and a  roll of sausage. Costco is the only store that I would actually consider grocery shopping because I purchased items that we were out of  including milk, creamer and eggs. I spent $73 at Costco. The final stop was Food Lion where I had $12.50 in coupons from the previous sale, I ended up grabbing items for our Super Bowl party and spending an additional $14 above the coupons.  The total spent for the day was $105.

Does anyone else shop this way?

 

January No-low Spend Challenge Update

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  • Get $100 in our Emergency Fund.
  • Pay off the outstanding Verizon bill from where we switch names
  • Deposit for Beach vacation
  • Reduce Groceries to$400 for the month with the remaining $200 set aside for Cheerleading competitions. I am currently sitting at $217 spending on Groceries for the month. I did already use $100 for our first competition last week.  Goal half met!
  • Transfer $50 to auto fund by the end of the month. This has been transferred! Goal Met!

I am actually pleased with my progress so far this month. After our trip to Michigan I was shooting for 50% achievement but I think the way things are looking, I may be able to met 3/5 of these goals. Progress is nice.

The additional challenge this week was to sell something! Zach has just gone through a huge growth spurt and I was able to sell some of his clothes for $30. I have another lady also wanting to look at the rest.

Extra money has been coming in this month due to me picking up some extra time at work. The hours have been very long but I hope to get this year off to a good start!