2017

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Sheila

I have done lots of shopping this week. We did our monthly trip to Costco, I headed into CVS for an awesome deal on shampoo. And so far I have made four trips to Food Lion. I actually convinced my mother to head to Food Lion tonight and helped her get a great deal on our Easter Ham and drinks.
Spring is here, I am so excited to say that all my plants have survived the winter except for the mosquito bush. I will definitely be replacing it! The trees I planted in the fall have started to bloom as well. On my kitchen sink, I have sweet potato slits growing in addition to 6 pear tomato plants!
We have been officially without heat or air for the past 14 days. The temperature is suppose to drop in the thirties today. I hope this is the last cold spell and my goal is to keep the heat off as long as possible. It would help the budget if we could lower electric cost to $150 for April and $200 for May.
All three of the little kids are on Spring Break next week. Lily has decided that she is going to continue with charter school next year. So we have 7 more weeks until the summer.
Kendall and Zach brought home their report cards today. Kendall has straight A and Zach has 3 in all areas except for spelling. Lily received her report card last week and has all A’s as well. I am so proud of these kiddos!

Eating on Vacation

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Sheila

As a family, one of the things we enjoy doing together is travelling. This works out well with the girls competition cheerleading in addition to Matt’s family being so far away and in several different states. By far, the most expensive aspect of traveling is food. I have tried several different methods over the past several years to reduce this expense. I am very please with how my latest method work on our trip to the Myrtle Beach for the cheer competition. Since December, I have been purchasing and earning gift cards to use on this trip. I am excited that we ended up feeding 6 of us for each meal. Gift cards were purchased each month and taken from our regular grocery budget. Total spent on food for four days for six people is $438.31 or $18 a person per day. However the actual amount spent is $174.86 or $7.28 a person. Since we normally do not eat out but once a month, this trip was definitely a treat and we managed to contain our cost! I am planning to continue using this month as it does reduce our cash outlay and increases our enjoyment!

Below is a break down of each day.

Thursday- Breakfast at home!, Lunch KFC $24.71, Dinner P.F Chang’s $87.10 Total $112

Friday Breakfast IHOP (purchased gift card) $50.00 with tip. Lunch Chili’s (purchased gift card) $40 with tip Dinner Olive Garden to Go (used Buy One Take One) $37.86 Total= $127.86 Total cash $37.86

Saturday- Cracker Barrel (gift cards/no purchased) $54.00 Lunch- Left-overs or home made chicken nugget Lunchables Dinner Steak and Shake (gift card purchased) $50.00 with tip. Total = $104.00 Total cash $0

Sunday Breakfast McDonald’s $24.45 (used McDonald app for savings) Lunch Appleebees (gift card purchased) $49.00 Amanda paid the tip for this. Dinner- Wraps in parking lot. We did stop for TCBY yogurt $10.00 used gift cards and Krispy Kreme Donuts $10.34. Total = 94.45 Total cash $35

March in Review

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Sheila

I am super behind on blogging for the month. Our cheer trip threw me off, in addition to our crazy busy life. I am hoping to get up several post in the next day or so.

Debit Reduction: This month our overall debt increased by $175. This is sad but because our trip was the last couple days of the month it had a negative effect. I will establish a goal to reduce our debit by at least 200 next month.

Blog Post: 14
Days on Treadmill: 0 Everyone feel we should get credit for the day we spent walking at the outlet stores.

Groceries- $220- This is a great success! I am hoping to keep spending down to $300 for the month of March. My favorite sale of the year is on but other than a trip to Costco this should be our spending for the month.

Gas: $370 spent. This is over-budget, we purchased new windshield wipers for all the vans and our trip to the beach is included on this purchase.

Earnings: Matt and I combined for a total of $180 this month from our apps and Swagbucks. This is a higher number than both February and January.

I am a bit frustrated with us raising our overall debit but we needed and enjoyed our trip to the beach. I have high hopes for April, small changes over a long period of time always works.

5 Things Friday 3/24/2017

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Sheila

I am starting to really enjoy my work schedule. I have two really long days on Tuesday and Wednesday but Thursday is my day off. I switched things up a bit and Friday (today) is designed to be a shorter day. This actually is giving me time in the morning at home to get ahead and I am home by 5 so dinner is very easy to enjoy.
Matt is working Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. This is a great thing but it also means that I have some extra chores to finish as we have a competition next week and will leave on Thursday for a mini vacation.
One of our planned activities for our mini vacation is shopping at an Outlet Mall. I am very excited to grab a couple of Nike gift cards using Swagbucks. My goal is to get at least one pair of shoes for FREE!
I have ended up shopping quite a bit this week. Including two trips to Walmart and a trip to Food Lion and a trip to Lowes.
Food Lion is changing things up and running my favorite sale of the year. This is the quarter back sale. I made a trip on Wednesday night and plan to make at least 3 more in the next month during the sale. This week I did a total of 3 transactions spending $57.

Shopping on Their Dime

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Sheila

Today I went to Walmart, to search for a special hair product for Lily. I was not able to find what I was looking for but decided to pick up some special treats for our trip next week instead. I grabbed 3 different snack size candy bars, a box of Chex mix, a can of hair gel and some special treats for dinner tonight. My total out of pocket was twenty four cents.

You will notice on the above receipt that I used three separate gift cards. The first one was from Shopkicks. Which is the newest app I am using. It is super simple, open the app as you walk in the store, find certain items and scan the barcode. I do know that additional credit is given for purchasing items but since there has not been any items that I normallly purchase I have not. I have only been using this app for six weeks and this was my first cash out. I asked for a gift card last night and it was available for use within five minutes.

The other two card where redeemed on the cricket app. We do not use cricket services but the app offers additional rewards through the mplace app. Currently I am earning about 1000 points on Mplaces a day. Which this month is averaging out to be a five dollar gift card every 7-10 days!

Free food always takes better!

Monday Menu Planning 3/20/2017

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Sheila

I am very hopeful that Spring has finally arrived and will be staying around for awhile. This week, we have 3 baseball practices, 2 nights of cheerleading for each of the girls, piano, church and Matt will be working 3 nights this coming week. Thankful our breakfast choices have definitely improved after a trip to Aidi on Sunday.

Breakfast– Saturday-Breakfast burrito bowls. Sunday- limited choices Monday-choices Tuesday- Spinach egg cups Wednesday- Baked oatmeal. Thursday- choices . Friday- Choices. Choices include : poptart , fried bologna, eggs, grits, left-overs , toast or cereal.

Lunch- Zach and Kendall have sandwiches, chicken nuggets, , homemade lunchable and salads. I am taking left-overs this week. Nothing new or exciting here. I have gotten slack with taking my lunch so I already have a salad packed for Monday!

Dinner- Saturday Sandwich and chips Dinner- Dinner out for Haley’s birthday
Sunday- Lunch- Hamburger and hot dog’s at Mom’s   Dinner- Gumbo over rice
Monday- Grilled chicken pasta and mandarin orange salad
Tuesday- Chicken Enchilada
Wednesday-  Beef and Broccoli
Thursday-  left-overs or homemade pizza
Friday- Breakfast casserole.

Shopping on Sunday 3/19

Posted on March 19, 2017 by Sheila

This morning we were running really low on breakfast items, in fact we had no cereal, poptarts or grits. So a trip to Aldi was definitely in order. We attended an early service this morning so were able to breeze through the store and totally restock our breakfast supply. Total spent was $45.

The next stop was CVS. I was unsuccessful in grabbing the scrubbing bubbles deal from last week so I started with 12 ECB. I was able to purchase 2 18 double roll packs of Scott Bathroom tissue and 2 containers of mouthwash for $3.87 out of pocket or a 92% savings. I also received 9 ECB in return. I am really excited as this was an easy transaction with no glitches!

Total Grocery Spending for March $135

5 Things Friday 3/17/2017

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Sheila

We are managing to stay under budget for groceries this month. So far we have spent $86 after our Costco check. My goal is to spend $150 or less for the month.
We have managed to reduce our credit card debt for the third month in a row! The reduction is VERY slow but the fact that we are able to achieve this goal for three month in a row is awesome!
I ordered 16 bags of dirt that arrived last week. The goal for the weekend is to get the dirt spread in the square foot garden and make a planting plan for the year.
We don’t have a cheer competition this week which means I am planning to spend 3 nights at home and going to bed on a regular schedule.
I am definitely ready for Spring, during the past week, the temperature has turn cold again and I am not liking that at all. Give me 60 degree days PLEASE!

Counting My Blessings! 03/13/2017

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Sheila

Both Lily and Kendall participate in competition cheerleading. This continues to be a choice that we make as a family to participate and pay toward. Matt often works events at the Coliseum to help fund this activity. I will be the first to say that it is EXPENSIVE. Just as an example, we pay $110 tuition in addition to competition fees, chorography fees and of course the cost of uniforms. The above fees are paid directly to the cheer gym but they do not include the cost of travel, food and admission to events.

On Sunday, we planned to attend an event at UNC- Charlotte to watch Lily compete, in the normal budget this is a relatively cheap event. First off the travel is less than an hour. Next the advertised admission price was $10 for adults and kids under 10 are free. Usually we pay $20 for adults and $10 for each kid that is not in the competition. Parking fee run around $10. Finally, I have been saving gift cards for the past 4 months to pay for meals while we travel. Our plan was to stop at Applebees and use gift cards to pay for the meal.

I ended up spending a total of $5 yesterday, this is a HUGE blessing! First no fee to park, next up was no cost for spectators! This is highly unusual and amazing even to save $30 made me smile.

After the completion, we headed to Applebee which was very close to UNC-C. The experience was BAD! Waiter with his underwear showing, our table need to be refilled with both Ketchup and Sweet n low, no knives to cut food with, wrong food or food not cooked correctly, used kid’s menus and sun directly in my eyes. Needless to say not a good experience, I spoke first with the manager and then with a area manger who after hearing our experience, covered our meal. I count this as a BLESSING! I did not expect or anticipate the entire meal being covered but it was a BLESSING! I left a small tip because the waiter did refill glass but his serves was equal to the setting.

An estimate of the total BLESSING we received yesterday= $100!

Busy Weekend

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Sheila

We are having fun and checking several things off of our to do list this weekend. On Saturday, we spent most of the morning sorting through clothes Zach was excited to “find” 7 new pairs of jeans that he can wear. He is finally in a size 7! Everyone else realized that except for swim team bathing suits, we don’t have any need of summer clothes. I am sure that we will purchase a few items just for fun but we do not need anything which is awesome!

Lily and Amanda went to help pack backpacks of food. My niece Brooke was also helping. I think they would make good lunch ladies with their hair nets.
Saturday night we attended a dance party for one of Kendall’s cheer teammates who also is good friends with Matt. My plan is to post these pictures on Wednesday!

Today, Sunday, we enjoyed watching snow fall for the most part of the morning. We are leaving at lunch to head to a cheer competition so I have spent most of the morning, fixing hair.

Teens Tots and Everything In Between

Life, Love and Coupons

Category Archives: Budgeting