Category Archives: Goals

Things that Work

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I wanted to share with you things that we are finding that work for us as we continue to reduce debt and live crazy busy lives.

  1. Weekly menu lists:  a very simple list of 5-7 meal that we have all the ingredients for. Each day Matt or I or both can decide what sounds good for dinner. We usually make the list on weekends and it most likely follows a trip to the building to grab items from the freezers. Currently we are focusing on using up what we have an only adding items that are awesome deals. In the future we are considering purchasing a half cow but don’t have enough space for it right now so cleaning out is serving multiple purposes as well as keeping us to the $600 grocery budget.
  2. Zaycon foods: My plan is to order another 80 pounds of chicken breast this month for pick up in April. This will be the 3rd time we have ordered the chicken breast. 80# last almost 6 months for us. I have also been pleasantly surprised that each time we order the price per pound has dropped!  Another item that has been great is the uncooked chicken tenders. I will be purchasing more if they are offered in our area again. We have considered the bacon and hamburger but the price per pound seems a little bit much for us currently but I will keep options open!
  3. Coupons especially when playing the drug store game at CVS. I have reduced my spending greatly as CVS recently but it is still the best way for  me to save money and by lots of items. .
  4. Costco- this may seem out-of-place but I hate to grocery shop! Costco makes it fun and easy. I watch my prices and do try to purchase as much as possible with coupons but if we run out of an item than Costco is definitely cheaper for us that paying full price at the local super market!
  5. Coke Rewards- I am actually more impressed and pleased with this reward program than either diaper brands! I simply enter points and redeem for free product. The great thing is that they always offer free coke products and unlike the diaper reward programs the prices have not changed greatly!

February in Review 2013

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Financial goals: February has been an up and down month for us, especially in this area. We have had extra income but also extra expenses with Zach. But progress is progress and overall this goal was met!

  • Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June–  With the extra income, we now have no interest bearing debits. We were able to pay off our final two credit cards today!  We still have outstanding debt of 4600 but that is slowly and steadily disappearing!
  • Emergency fund to $2000–  We actually dipped into this fund to pay for some of Zach’s dental expenses. We will focus on bringing this up for the next several months! The plan will be to have it back at 1000 by the end of March so we can start working toward the 2000 mark.
  • Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system – DONE! I love the app and the “freedom/expense” accounts that are making tracking so much easier for me to keep track of the money.
  • Groceries: Spend $600 or less a month Goal met, we spent $515 on groceries this month! So are almost back on track for the year. I am going to roll the negative $25 balance into March and with the idea that by the end of March we will also be even for the year!

Blogging:  Goal: 15 per month This is my 12th post of the month and more importantly my 501 post overall. This month has been difficult with me being so sick for a week but I am going to keep trying!

Devotions: Goal is 5 a week   GOALLLLL!  I have finally found a time, in the mornings, that I am consistently able to read and complete a devotional! Still on the right track!

Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month. I have been able to consistently exercises 3x a week this month with at least 2 of those at the YMCA! I am very proud of myself. I did not met the weight goal but hope to catch up with this in March!

Budget vs Reality

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I don’t know that I have clearly explained on the blog why budgeting has become such a priority in our lives for the past year. Today, I am going to clarify that as well as discuss some changes that I have thinking about making.

First why is budgeting so important for us right now. We are in what we think of as “our lean years.” For the next 3 years, Matt will be home full-time with the kids, which results in no steady income. He is working on establishing his web design business and God continue to supply us with just what we need but we both know we need to be on a budget during this time. We have been working on reducing our debt to therefore reduce the monthly expenses but we also want to be realistic with what we have coming in.

One thing that has really been useful is our “Freedom Account.” This is actually a second free checking account that we are making monthly deposits into. This account has our car insurance and AAA membership money, our gift fund, clothing fund and auto fund. Car insurance and AAA membership amounts are easy to determine I divided the bill into 12 months and that much is deposit into this account each month. The other areas have been tricky and I am continuing to change. The gift fund was originally at $50 a month but when I looked and this was supposed to include birthday and Christmas present, I up the amount to $100 a month. I also used this fund for buying gift for parties the kids are invited to as well. I still am not sure this is the right amount and will consider raising it to $150 at the point we are out of debt and have enough coming in to cover that amount.  Moving on to the auto fund, this is designed to cover maintenance cost such as batteries and tires, in the future it can also be expanded to include saving to purchase a new to use car as well. I currently place $50 a month into this area. The final amount in this fund is clothing. I originally planned to place $50 a month into the account but at two months in I currently have a negative $80 balance. When looking that I have not even purchased a new season of clothing I really feel this amount needs to be raised to $100 a month or $200 a person for the year. However that in reality will mean that I will have to reduce the amount somewhere else because we simply don’t have the steady income for it. II do keep a fund for hair appointment and such but I am currently keeping these in cash. In the future, I also plan to add a travel fund but this year it was funded by our tax returns.  I think I should also add that our Emergency Fund is different from this account as well.

The other major items beside standard bills that I budget for each month are Gas and Groceries. Gas is the only area that I am consistently under budget it. However we have decided to not reduce this amount because of the unknown with gas prices at this time. I have noticed a 7 cent increase in a week here. The excess gas money will be used for extra things and/or added to the “Freedom Account” for clothing.

Groceries, the one area that I can’t seem to get a good  handle on. Last year the budget was $800 a month. I ended up spending $773 on average a month. In order to reduce our spending, I set the goal for $600 this year. In January, I was $120 over which I deducted from February’s budget. As of today, the grocery money is over spent by 20 cent. So I am trying to take a good hard look at this to determine is this amount realistic or not. A picture by numbers-$600 a month means $100 a person per month of our items including personal hygiene and cleaning products. Broken down even further that is $1.11 per meal per person or $150 a week for 6 people. .Currently both Lily and Haley eat lunch at school most days so that leaves close to $10 a week for the cleaning and hygiene items.  I am going to attempt to stick to this budget for the rest of February and March. By then I will be able to tell if it is realistic or needs to be increased by $100. I have a great stock pile at this point so I am hoping to keep it down to $600. What do you do?

What’s Up

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After the month of January seemed to drag on and on. The first week of February has flown by.

Last Saturday (2/3) we spent the majority of the day shopping in Winston-Salem. Both Lily and Kendall were able to pick out new frames for glasses that should be ready some time this week. I was also able to find some awesome deals on dress clothes for Zach. I purchased 3 suits (shirt, pants, tie and vest) for $46 total. We also had a huge stock up for the month trip to Costco.

Sunday was supposed to be an easy day for me but I had forgotten how much food I had planned for our Super Bowl party. The party was awesome with a great time had by everyone. I really enjoyed myself and we cleaned up and watched the last few minutes of the game in bed!

This week I have actually worked more than any week since the first of December. I worked a total of 31 hours at the hospital and another 5 at the Nursing home. Lily has cheer-leading 3 nights a week with church on Wednesday. In addition to all that I have managed to make it to YMCA 3 times to exercise!

An unexpected blessing this week is that our Federal tax money arrived. I was so shocked to discovery that after one week our refund was in the bank.  Our decision to split the money into 3 different areas seems wise to me at the moment. The first portion we used to pay down credit card debt. After discovering that currently we were paying 29.99% APR this became a very apparent good step to make. This is also a huge step toward our overall goal to be complete out of debt except for the house by June! Next we decided to use this to pay upfront for an education class for me. This will eventually be reimbursed by my employer. At the time of the reimbursement, the money will be used as travel money.  Finally, we used the money to purchase several items that we have been wanting for several months. The biggest of these is a Kitchen Aid Mixer. I have been looking at this for at least 3 years. I have watch the prices especially around Christmas when they should be prices lowest. At Costco today, we decided to check out the mixers. I was amazed to find it priced at $199 with a $20 mail in rebate! The other good news is that we will also get credit for this at the year need with our 2% rebate from Costco.  I am excited to finally not only to have matching dishes and glasses but a real kitchen appliance! I can’t wait to use it!

Next week does not look any less hectic as we have a fundraiser at church tomorrow where I am in charge of the food. I also have the continuing education class on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for 8 hours each day. I am working extra on Monday and Tuesday to cover for missing so much of the week.  My goal is to  find at least one time during the week to make a post!

January in Review 2013

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Financial goal: 
 Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June– We did manage to pay off one of our credit cards. I am proud to say out loud that for the first time in 5 plus years, we owe the big orange home improvement store nothing!
Emergency fund to $2000–  No progress yet
Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system –  I love the budget app I found for my iPhone. It keeps everything at my finger tips! This month we are over our grocery budget of $600 by $120. My plan is to take this out of next month. We are under our gas budget by $130 which we used at IKEA for some storage stuff. I am also keeping track of clothing and gift purchases. So far I am really surprised at our clothing expenses. I may have to add to this fund after a couple of months.
Overall, January was an excellent month for us financially but I did the budget for February and it is scary! Matt has several leads for additional work right now so if just one works out I will breathe a sigh of relief and thankfulness!

Blogging:  Goal: 15 per month  This is my 13th post of the month. I have really got to get in a good routine for posting.

Devotions: Goal is 5 a week   GOALLLLL!  I have finally found a time, in the mornings, that I am consistently able to read and complete a devotional! I hope to continue!

Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month. I am most excited because just this week, I have discovered 2x a week that I will be able to exercise at the YMCA on a consistent basis! I know for me if I can do something on a schedule it works out much better! I have not check the scales but I am almost certain I reached my goal of 4# this month!

De-cluttering the Closet

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I have recently found a new blog that instead of setting resolutions sets challenges for herself to complete. She futher breaks this down by weeks. This weeks de-cluttering challenge was to clean one closet. Well did I have a closet to clean. Our master closet is 8×8 but lately it has felt more like 4×4 with stuff everywhere including the floor. This worked out great timing as well because I store all the snow village stuff up high as well. Here are a couple of before pictures….

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The floor and one shelf, this was the best of the orgainzation on the shelves.

The floor and one shelf, this was the best of the orgainzation on the shelves.

I have been working on the closet in my spare time for most of the week and was able to finish it last night with Matt’s help. The great thing is that not only did I gain more floor room but I actually gained an entire 4 foot section of a shelf as well. Now on to the better pictures

All snow village packed up neatly

All snow village packed up neatly

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Neatly organized and labelled shelves.

Neatly organized and labelled shelves.

The EMPTY space!

The EMPTY space!

 

Organized shoes with lots of floor space!

Organized shoes with lots of floor space!

So in the past couple of weeks, we have re-organized Matt’s office, the closet, one of the kitchen cabinets and most of our laundry room. I am so glad to be getting things neat and organized! Now to keep them this way!

 

 

Back to the Basics!

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I have been living on a budget for many years, at least that I what I thought in my head.  I can’t even begin to count the number of articles, blogs, books etc that I have read over the years about reducing debt and living on less, at one point we even DVR Dave Rasmey so I should have this budgeting and getting out of debt thing down right? WRONG!! Oh boy is that WRONG!

First of all, living paycheck to paycheck and living on a budget are two very different things.  I have tried and mostly succeeded living paycheck to paycheck. The easy part for me if we don’t have it then we don’t get it. I am a master at juggling money. This month I am learing that living on a budget is a different beast, yes I have the money to cover this but that will put me over budget which  means I have to move the money from something else or simply make the choice to say no! The case in point here is that I still have $17 in my grocery budget for the month but I will not be adding to the grocery budget until February 14th due to my pay schedule, that leave 4 and 1/2 weeks for $17 to last, in addition to still wanting to buy some chips and drinks for our Super Bowl party! Next up is gas, I was excited to think that I only need to place $80 in the gas fund this week until I realized that mean I would have no gas money until February 14th as well. So I had to redo the budget for my 3rd January check to add in gas money to be used in February.

Next on the list of things I should know about money management but don’t/have forgotten is that if you know about an expense in advance, it is not an emergency and needs to be planned for. The mess up that I have corrected in this area is pool dues. They are currently not due till April but  I must make a plan to pay for them rather than just   “finding” money when they are due.

Finally, the one thing that I learned this weekend that is most upsetting and frustrating. Check each bill especially credit card statements to make sure the amount of interest you are paying. After working on a debt reduction plan and actually starting the plan in December, I was again revisiting some numbers and decided to check the amount due on our Chase Card. This account has been closed for several years, I receive the online statement and make payments on-line. I usually look at the statement’s first page when paying. As I was checking the statement for a pay off amount this time, and started looking for the interest rate. I almost feel out of  my chair 29.99%!!! I was so upset, how and why had I not seen this before. GRRR! So instead of paying off interest free medical bills my focus is eliminating Chase from our lives.  I am almost sick at the idea that for the past year I have been paying this outrageous interest rate!! My new debt goal is to get rid of Chase this month!

What’s Up 1/10/13

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  • It has been a sad week at our house. One of our neighbors passed away on Monday after a battle with cancer. We are closer to this neighbor than most as they have a son who is Haley’s age. We actually carpool for several years, the wife made our wedding cake and Haley’s dress for the wedding as well. Haley and I attended the visitation last night. It was hard and of course I didn’t know what to say but that is okay because I realize it was not about me! Another family that could use some prayer is Elizabeth and her son Jacob at http://trenchesofmommyhood.blogspot.com/ .  I have never met her but read her blog and know she would appreciate it!
  • I am finding that by using the envelope system on my Iphone I am keeping much better track of my spending especially in regards to groceries. I made a huge trip today to Food Lion to stock up on some items. But that will be the last one of the month because I only have $18 left in the budget for the month. I am determined that I will not go over, even if I have to end up missing a couple of deals over the next several weeks. I am also thinking toward making February “eat out of the pantry month”. This will mean I can reduce my budget to $100 and use the extra to pay off some more debt? Not quite sure if that will work or not but I will  make that decision after the next 3 week with less than $5 a week to spend on groceries!
  • Matt has a really good job in the works! This is awesome and a definite answer to prayer. I also am starting to pick up a couple of hours at the nursing home so I am excited to see how much we will pay off in debt/outstanding medical bills by the end of January.
  • Lily has a cheerleading competition this weekend. It is only an hour away so I am excited to see them perform!

 

Decluttering/How I spent my Saturday

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Last summer, we spent $1000 and did alot of updating to our house. One of the first changes was to move Zach to his own bedroom, giving Matt his office. Since then, I have been noticing how little storage room, is actually in the office and how much “stuff” ends up on the desk. Last week, I came up with the idea to move the server up high above one window to give us some more space it worked!photo (13)

So while completing this task, we came up with several more ideas for shelves and moving items around.  We did end up spending around $60 total for all the new items but I think the results are well worth it. It feels like we have twice the space, we now have all the records in the office, instead of the playroom and everything has a space.  Here is a peak:

the back wall

the back wall

over the desk

over the desk

front wall with a better view of the new shelves. Matt plans to paint these this week.

front wall with a better view of the new shelves. Matt plans to paint these this week.

 

 

 

 

Day In the Life- Eating Like You Are Rich While Shopping Like You Are Poor

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Today is the first Thursday of the month, this was good news for us in several areas. First it was my first paycheck of the year, which I was really unsure about because of taxes and some major changes I made this year during open benefit enrollment. I was pleasantly surprised today. Next the news keeps getting better, I will be receiving one of my “extra” paychecks this month as well. Because I am paid every 2 weeks, 2 months during the year we receive this “extra” check. Our budget is based on the 2 checks a month so it makes this an extra” check. Matt and I sat and looked at our budget this morning and currently the plan is to pay off 4 of our outstanding debts with this check. I will definitely let you know when this happens. After paying bills and getting excited that we actually are ahead this month, it was off to the grocery store. Thank you, Matt for the second part of the title.

I have mentioned before that currently we have quite a bit stockpiled but that I felt our stockpile lacked meat. One of the stops that I have been wanting to explore was our local meat processing plant. We decided to head there first today. I am so glad we did. We were able to purchase 18 “meals” of meat for $115.00. WOW! Last stop of the morning, Food Lion. They are currently having their house brand sale for each “house brand” item you buy you earn 0.25 toward your next order. I have spent probably an hour collecting coupons and working out the 2 transaction. We ended up spending  $43 and saving $49 or 54%. I used most of the Catalina that I collect over the past week. I also added 4 additional meals of frozen shrimp to the list. So all together today, we have spent around $165 of our grocery budget but really have enough meat for an entire month!!!

I do have to add a final shopping trip in it was on Wednesday to CVS. I needed make up removal wipes. I expected to receive 5ECB due to the beauty club purchases I made on Sunday. I was not expecting to receive 8.50 in quarterly ECB or a $4 of 20 facial care purchase. I was able to grab enough wipes for probably 3 months and spent $1.35, 94% savings!!!