Category Archives: Budgeting

September Challenge

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I have decided to join Carla on her low spend/no spend September challenge.  I really need to do this to help beef up our Emergency Fund and get our spending/budgeting back on track for the year. She has set some lofty goasl but I decided to keep it simple but just as lofty!

1. Emergency Fund at $1000 by the end of the month. Both Matt and I are anticipating extra income this month in addition to any money we are able to save from our budget will hopefully make this reachable.

2. Grocery spending at $200 or less not including our Zaycon Food chicken order. We have already begun working on this!  We cleaned out our chest freezer this weekend and made a menu planned of approximately 20 meals that we can make with the items we found. Our plan is to stick to these meal and only purchase items that we are out of and need for regular days. I am hoping that this will be mainly bread, milk and eggs  but we had to purchase cat liter, tarter sauce and dog treats already so this may prove more difficult than I first imagined.

August in Review

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Financial goals:  August was an expensive month for us with Auto expenses, College and our Vacation. However we are ending the month about the same as July $1000 behind our set budget. The month of September should be better as we are expecting payment for a website, a partial refund of tuition and I have some extra work available this month as well.

  • Pay off Lawn mower by March 2014, so no interest is charged. Payment of $100 made, almost a triple payment
  • Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June– No new debt incurred! This is a major accomplishment considering the extra expenses of the month.
  • Emergency fund to $2000–   This will receive the biggest push this month as I hope to re-establish and get it to around $1000, because of Auto repairs it is currently at $100
  • Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system – Still working well! It has really allowed  me to track expenses this month. It worked on vacation as well!!!!!!!!!!
  • Groceries: Spend $600 or less a month   Awesome month in this area, we spent around $200 including  food for the beach!  We are currently only $20 over for the year. We have spent some time cleaning out one of our freezers and making meal plans. The goal for August is to spend less than $200 except for an order of Zaycon chicken that we should receive in October. If we are able to meet this goal, the extra will be placed in Emergency Fund to beef it up!
  • Gas- Including our gas for vacation we spent $550 in addition we spent another $150 on auto repair and service. The Goal is $400 a month, so we did met this goal if you eliminate vacation and repair. I hope to keep this expense low in the next month due to the need for tags, inspection and renewal of our AAA all come this month. My goal will be to use any funds not need to cover these additional expenses as my auto fund is empty!

Blogging:  Goal: 15 per month This is the 15th blog posting of the month, for the second month in a row.

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.. To be honest, I have not even address this goal this month. I have not gained the 10# I lost but there has been no progress. Repeat from last month…..

On paper, August appears to be a successful month, we really enjoyed our vacation so that makes it even better.

The anticipation is that September will be a better month financially for us in the terms of income.

Repurpose

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One of the major ways we save money is by repurposing as much as we can. Today, Matt and Z had their second day home alone. Of course they would work on a cool project. This scooter was a hand me down from my niece several years ago. Lily used it but has now outgrown it. After a little work and some paint it can now be use for at least a year by Zach.

Random Thursday Update

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  • We leave for the beach in 9 days. I am probably more excited about that than the kids!
  • Purchasing only items we are out of has kept my grocery spending down to $60 so far. That includes a 3 month supply of toilet paper purchased yesterday!
  • Gas budget is low as well. We have only spent $100 so far for the month. I am hoping to stay way low with our trip this month!
  • Today, Haley Lily, Kendall and myself all had dental appointments. Haley and Kendall were cavity free. I was as well but am needing some gum work done. Lily has several major issues the first of which will be 2 teeth “wrapped” due to cavities. She also has several other areas of concern and most like definitely will need orthodontic work in the future
  • Lily also had an eye appointment today. Much better news there, she does not have to patch anymore but may have to again in the next couple of years. She was so excited as she is working hard to not cross her eyes without her glasses!
  • I have been working some longer hours this weeks so am definitely looking forward to some relaxing pool time if the weather cooperates!

Budget Blurbs

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I had a vacation day today so I am enjoying a long weekend. Yesterday was pay day as well as the beginning of the month so I thought this would be a good way to start the month.

  • Groceries- I am continuing to roll over the excess from June. We spent $324 on groceries in July. Our currently budget is $124 so that we will be even for the year. Today I spent $40 at Costco so that leaves up $82 for the rest of the month. The currently plan is to only purchase “needed” items until after our beach trip. So we will be making a huge stock up trip the first weekend in September as well as purchasing chicken from Zaycon foods.  My goal is to end August even for the year!
  • Vacation- Because of my pay schedule, I will receive 3 paychecks this month instead of two. The plan is to use the middle check as our vacation money with a little pulled to offset our regular expenses. The budget is as follows:
    Condo Rental= $800, half was a deposit with the remaining due the week we leave.  Total expense $400
    Gas- $200.  One tank of gas each way and a third tank for the week at the Beach
    Meals- I have prepared ahead the majority of the meals and already purchased a lot of the food. We are planning on eating out twice each way (total 4). With an additional three meals out at the beach, one of these meals will be from the gift fund as it will serve as my Birthday meal, a second will be at the treat of friends who are staying with us for half the week. So in reality we will be eating 5 meals out during the trip and purchasing some groceries as well. Total Budget is $500
    Entertainment- My philosophy at the beach is we enjoy the beach most of the time. However I am putting in $100 for putt putt and or a trip to Magic Kingdom for the kids. A lot depends on the weather and we also may slide some of the grocery money to this as well.
    Total Budget for vacation:$1600 with $400 already paid.
  • Clothing- I have been doing quite a bit of shopping over the past two weeks. I purchased bras for myself, swim suits for everyone but Matt, Pajamas for Lily and Zach, Shorts for Matt, socks and shoes for myself and Lily, and the three white t-shirts an one pair of socks that were on Kendall’s supply list. This should keep us well stock until the weather has a definite turn to cooler probably late October or early November.
  • Gas- I have lower our gas budget to $400 after examining our spending for the year so far.

My goals this month are simple keep groceries, gas and vacation as close to even as possible. I don’t think we will have any extra income this month but as long as we stay even I will be happy.

 

Cooking/Budget Thursday

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July has turned into a very rough budget month for us. My car has required two larger repairs, one we were able to fund with money we had saved; however the second forced us to dip in our emergency fund. The bright spot is that we had the Emergency Fund to us. We have done fairly well in the areas of both gas and groceries. In our gas fund we have $144 remaining. In groceries, we have only spent $300 but because of the huge amount we were over in June, I would like to keep this capped at this amount. Looking to the week ahead, we should have no extra expense and plan to eat our of our freezer and garden until our beach trip in 3 weeks.

We are planning to spend a week at the beach in August and I will post a detailed budget for that probably in the next week or so. One of the ways that we are able to afford this trip is we will be eating in the majority of the time but in order to make it a vacation we need to plan ahead so no one has to spend hours in the kitchen cooking. I spent most of my day today, cooking for our trip. I have frozen all the meals I prepared in throw away containers so that we will not have to bring anything back.

So now to the cooking part. I started with a bag of chicken quarters in the crockpot this morning. I was able to make 2 chicken casseroles to freeze (one for the beach) in addition to 2 bags of shredded chicken to be used for other meals. I also will be freezing between 10-15 bags of chicken booth for future use as well.  Next I prepared a baked Ziti, for the beach. I have also made and frozen a dozen muffins in addition to the remaining dozen for breakfast in the morning.  Finally, a pot of chili with some frozen for our hot dog meal at the beach. In addition I was able to cook lunch for everyone and dinner for our family in addition to supplying a meal for a family in our church. I am feeling quite accomplished right now and very happy to make one major item off my to do list!

Budget Thursday 7/11/2013

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The most exciting news for this week is that we were able to sell our red mini van. It sold for the exact price that we paid for the new van! I did apply a large chunk of the selling price directly to our personal loan. The remaining portion was placed in our saving account to cover tuition cost for Haley in August. I know this was not the most effective application however it helped cover the expenses we have an did make a dent in our overall debt.

We are currently on track with our grocery budget for the month. If you will recall, I spent all but $50 of our July grocery budget in June. As of today, we still have $17 left of the $50. I have spent much less than I anticipated so far so I decided to re-address and direct the budget for the rest of the month. The currently plan for the month is to stay as close to goal as possible, I honestly think $50 over is very achievable. Today, we made a meal plan for the next week. After checking the freezers and discussion, we are going to buy essentials such as bread and milk only for the next 6 weeks. The last week of this we are vacationing at the Beach. This should allow us to continue buying items on stock up prices but not overspend!

Our irregular account has taken several hits this week. First we purchased a starter for my car last Friday. I was able to do this without touching the Emergency Fund! Next I have purchased a book bag for Kendall for the school year, this purchase came out of the clothing fund.

Overall not a terrible week for our budget and hopefully with our meal plan we can reduce the amount of dinning out we have been doing lately.

Budget Thursday – Fourth of July

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Happy Fourth of July! I spent a good part of my morning working on our budget for July.

I ended the month of June spending all of our grocery budgets for both June and July except for $50. I  seriously doubt that we will spend only $50 this month so I have chosen to include $150 for our projected grocery budget this month. I think that by the end of the year we will be back to an average of $600 a month for food but I also realize that it may take several months to get back on track so to speak. The really good news is that we are starting to get items in from the garden and with the stock pile of ground beef, I purchased both the month of July and August should be low spending months for us in terms of grocery items.

I was able to place $50 in the Emergency Fund but no extra money on any of the debt. We are hopefully and expecting that Matt has another website complete this month which will help reduce debt and increase the EF. This is in question at this moment as well  due to the starter going out on my car yesterday. I currently  have about 3/4 of the expected repair cost in our auto fund so I may need to use some of the EF to finish out the amount. I am also hopefully to pull this amount out of the gas budget and not touch the EF. But either way this unexpected expense will be covered without a major dent in our normal budget.

The worse budget news of the month is that I am looking at $200 shortage for the overall budget of the month. This amount are designated into gifts and clothing. My plan is to cover this amount first from the extra work I picked up last month at the nursing home and next with Matt’s monthly income from the websites he supports. I will keep track of these amounts during the month and report where the money comes from.

Saturday Shopping 6/29/2013

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Kendall requested a trip to Build a Bear for her birthday this year, so today we headed to Winston-Salem to celebrate all of her favorite things. An added benefit for me was that I could get some shopping and awesome saving in as well. Matt used 2 emptied Starbucks coffee bags for 2 free coffees. I had $10 Bear Bucks for Build A Bear and we ended up hitting Bath and Body Works to grab some hand sanitizer as well. However these were not the highlights of the trip saving wise.

I knew that today was $1 Flip Flops at Old Navy, however the other in store sales combined with a $10 off $40 that was given to be at the cash register made a good deal on flip-flops into an awesome trip for clothing. We purchased 4 shirts for Matt, Matt a pair of shorts, 3 shirts for me, 3 pair of Flip flops for me, both the little girls got 2 pair of flip-flops and Zach got 3 pair, one for this year and two for next.  The total cost for 18 items $55 or 56% savings.

One of the last stops of the day was Harris Teeter. I knew they were running a Super Doubles promotions this week. I spent around 2 hours last night preparing a list. We chose to return to the “new to us” Harris Teeter. My only disappointment was that they did not carry “Suddenly Salad” but their customer service makes up for that in full. We purchased all items that we use on a regular basis including Kool-Aid Jammers for $1 a box. In total I spent $31 and saved $81 or 73%!

Budget Thursday 6/20/2013

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Today was payday for me so I spent quite a bit of time working on the budget. First I finished up paying all the bills for the month and next I worked on our budget for next month. I am really working toward a zero budget where every dollar has a name up front and then the “extra” is for spending money.  We have had ALOT of extra expenses for the month of June but I am pleased to say that by the end, we are actually even for the month. I want to transfer around $100 from our gas budget into the auto fund to cover the cost of new tires and brakes for the van we purchased, but that is a want.  We have been able to make a sizeable dent in our debt this month, including another $225 paid off today. I am currently down to no medical bills, one credit card and our personal loan. On the down side, I have overspent our grocery budget at this point by $131 and have another $100 set aside for the next two-week. I have purchased chicken tenders from Zaycon and a huge stock pile of items from Bath and Body Works. If we don’t need the additional money for groceries then it will be applied to July to help the short fall.

On to the month of July, I gave every dollar a name and came up $240 short for the month. I have recently been working at the nursing home and with that income in addition to Matt’s web income, I plan to make up the difference prior to the end of June and start July again with a zero balance, meaning our income and expense are equal.