Where Did My Money Go?

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Sheila

I often asked this question and one of items that I have been focusing on this year is knowing where I am spending money. My idea is that is where you spend money is what you see as important. I often wonder how I am doing in comparison to others but even with research it is hard sometime to find some real numbers. I did find this neat graph.

I also did some further research that I am going to share as we go along as well. I am going to do an honest comparison between the numbers I found and our spending during the month of February. I will say that our spending is up for February simply because of the extra income from tax refunds we received. Please leave a comment if you think this numbers are correct or if you see something totally off.

15% of our spending this month was on Debt Reduction including Credit Cards. I know this is a high number for us. We pay off our lawn mower so that we did not have to pay any interest on this transaction.

14% was Utilities. This is a high number for us, the reason is that it included an additional cell phone bill we received when switching names on our account. Normally I would estimate that utilities are about 6% of our spending.

Our mortgage $594.80 represents 8.8% of our spending, combine with utilities approximately 25% of our spending which is significant less than the 33% above for housing.

9.69% of our spending is on groceries which includes cleaning products. I did overspend our budget by $55 last month but in comparison to the 13% above I am still way below. In research, I did discover that a “thirty family of four” spends an average of $632 a month of groceries. Dining is an area that I am really trying to monitor this year. In January, we spent over $450 on eating out, by becoming aware of this, in February we reduced this to $200 or 2.97% of our budget. This will definitely be an area I continue to monitor as the average for dining out is $223 a month but I am unsure how many people this amount represents.

$383 or 5.68% of our spending was for Auto/ Transportation cost in February. I typically budget $400 a month. I was surprise to find out that the average fuel cost is $243 a month. We definitely always exceed this amount but due to the fact that all of our vehicles are paid for we still are way below the 17% average noted above.

Charitable cash donations represented 5.48% of our spending. The averages I found ranged between 3 and 4%. This is a significant decreased from the 10% I expected to find.

12.38% of $836 represented our spending on clothing in February. I do know that this included a new wardrobe for Zach and at least half a new winter wardrobe for Lily. In addition, I purchased clothing for our trip to Michigan in January in this same category. Both the kids have sudden grown significantly in the past couple of months. The reason this amount is so high for February is that I intentionally used our tax refund to pay off credit card debit for these clothing items. The only averages I could find were based one adult which was $121 a month on clothing.

Household or as call above other spending represented 7.34% of our spending. I use this category for things such as our YMCA membership or expenses that I don’t know where else to place them. I am pleased to find out that this is probably close to the national average of 7% .

CVS Shopping 2/16/2014

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Sheila

Although we still have some snow still laying on the ground, things have pretty much returned to normal in our state, so back to shopping I go. I really debated this trip to CVS but decided some of the deals were too good to pass up. I was really surprised today when one of my receipts showed a saving of 100%. I ended up pay $1.16 for this transaction but that was entirely taxes. I usually including taxes in my spending vs savings so I was excited to come home and check out my real savings. I am going to be very detailed with this trip because just about anybody could do the same.

I started with 5 ECB that I received on Friday for purchasing Diet Cokes.

First transaction: 1 Child’s Culturelle regular price 27.49 on sale for $10.00 Spent $5.68 got back 10 ECB

Second transaction: 4 bottles of Suave Kids 3n1 Body Wash/Shampoo, regular price 3.79, on sale for 2.75, coupon B2G1 Free (deducted $3.00), 2 Suave Men’s Body Wash, regular price 2.77 sale price $2,coupon B2G1 Free (deducted $3.00), 3 packs of Mega M&M, regular price 1.48 sale price 0.75, coupon B2G1 Free (deducted $1.29) used the ECB from above. Paid 1.16 received back 4 ECB and 0.75 ECB.

Trip total: Spent $6.84 saved $46.76 or 87%

Are You Thirsty? Stockpiling

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Sheila

Today was officially another snow day for us. I was unable to get out of the driveway or up the street as of 10am when I had to make the decision. However, with the temperature being 45 with the sun shine, we were able to venture out to a couple of stores this afternoon.

The items that we purchased are for the stockpile. The first stop was CVS, the last 2 weeks they have been running a special on 2 Liter Diet Cokes. They are on a stock up price of $.99 each, in addition for each $10 spent you receive 5 in ECB. I have been slowing purchasing a couple but decided to finish up today. I purchased 15 Diet Cokes a couple of Sprites and a couple of Cokes for a total of 19 drinks. I did not use any coupons but did use one of the $5 ECB I received. Total spent $14.97, saved $24.09 or 62%. I also received another 5 ECB to be used later. The total cost per 2 L including tax was $0.79!

The next stop was Food Lion (our local grocery store), I read on Wednesday of an awesome deal. PowerAde and PowerAde Zero are on sale for $0.89 with the purchase of 15 you receive $10 off at the register. The total cost per 32 oz drink including tax is $0.23! Matt decided he was okay with stocking up. I did a total of 7 transactions which was the only down side, we ended up purchasing 105 drinks. In addition to the awesome saving this represents, I will earn 3 points from Coke Rewards for each of these bottles which will be 315 point, of which 250 points earns a free 12 pack!

Total Spent $18.55
Total Saved $146.59 or 89% And I didn’t even use a single coupon!

Brand Loyalty and Coupons

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Sheila

One of the first things you will read when beginning to coupon or trying to learn more about coupons is that you can’t be brand loyal. I disagree with this statement. I have discovered over the years, that I am more brand loyal than I would have ever imagined. The things that come to mind are deodorant, laundry detergent, toilet paper and of course Diet Coke. In addition, Matt has used the same razor brand since we got married almost 10 years ago. This weekend almost all of the above have been needed and on sale so I have spent $93 of my $300 grocery budget on these items. But most of these should last the rest of the month if not several months

. First of all, let talk about Matt’s razors, I have learned that is it usually cheaper to buy him a whole new “Proglide razor” than purchase the replacement cartilages. When we travel, he will use disposable ones just to save time. So I usually purchase disposable razors when I find a really good deal( less than $1.00) on them. I know his preference for razors so if a good deal is running I will buy at least one and stick back, however this morning, he let me know that he was completely out of razors. I checked my bag and found a rain check so this afternoon he was back in business. I love CVS because their rain checks never run out. I ended up spending $2.00 for his razor of choice!

Next is laundry detergent, I have tried several brands including the Kirkland one but return to Tide because it cleans and does not bother the sensitive skins of Lily or Zach. Tide usually goes on sale once every 3 months or so. I try to stock up but also know that I can grab an ok deal at Costco on Tide if I need to. I feel like the money I spend on Tide is made up with keeping the resale value of the kids clothes in addition to prolonging the life of most of the other clothes. CVS also had a good deal on Tide so I purchased 4 20 load bottles. This should last until the next sale cycle. The one exception I make in this area is a general exception across the board, if an item is free and I am shopping that store anyway, then I grab it. One of the black Friday deals at CVS was their brand laundry detergent, I grab both my free bottles. I will use these on our beach trip because I watch swim suits and towels every day or for towel at home. These are nice to have in a pinch as well. if it is free then it is worth one load of laundry.

Following close behind the laundry detergent is toilet paper. We have a really bad septic systems that we have spent several thousand dollars on in the past 4 years. So I have to be careful what we put in it. I have found that Scott Extra Bath Tissue, first is soft enough to use and then is one of the safest for our system. Luckily, between coupons and sales, I can always find it for $0.45 cent a roll or less. Today, I grabbed it $0.40 cent a roll. In comparison when purchasing from Costco, I end up paying $0.63 a roll for the house brand, I purchased 54 rolls today so I am positive that we will be using them for several months!

Finally deodorant, I have always like Mitchum, luckily I am usually able to purchase for $1.00 or less a bottle I always grab as many as I have coupons for anytime I see them for this price. Matt on the other hand is adventurous in the area. But last year, he discovered “Right Guard” cooling effect. I have been able to stock pile about a 2 year supply so currently unless it is free, we don’t purchase any men’s deodorant!

Productive Weekend

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Sheila

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!

How We Re-stock

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Sheila

For the past several months, I have been on a mission to clean out our freezers. I can finally say that I did succeed. So now what? This month’s grocery budget or should I save overspending will show just how much we can spend in a month. But more about that later.

The first stop we made to re-stock the freezers was a local meat market. We ended up spending around $200 but purchased what I am planning on being enough meat when combined with our chicken order that we will pick up this Saturday to last approximately six month. We purchased chicken wings for our super bowl party in January, several packs of steaks, a couple of London broils, flank steak for use in some fried rice meals, cube steak and a pork tenderloin which Matt split into 4 separate roast before freezing. I did purchase 20# of ground beef which I divided up and froze most of the following out of:
2 meatloaves (this are uncooked but can be easily thawed)
2 Cheeseburger pies. (We have eaten one of these this week)
7 meal packs of Salisbury steaks. ( Matt will combined with frozen mashed potatoes for a really quick but hearty meal).
8 packs of already browned ground beef.
4 meals of stuffing for green peppers. We enjoyed one of these for Amanda’s birthday and a second is a left over meal. The other 2 packs are in the freezer.

Next stop was at Costco where not only did we purchase food to re-supply us but also we need to purchase several vitamins and medicines that I have not been able to coupon for in a long time. We also had to renew our membership which only ended up costing me $14 so I will continue because that works out to around $1.25 a month and just the convenience of buying in bulk is well worth that cost!

Finally we headed out to Target to grab an awesome deal on Starbucks coffee and to gather some additional items we need to make meals out of our chicken.

In addition to cooking above I have also added a Baked Ziti to the freezer and will be placing some Taco soup in tomorrow as well.

I did take a look at our overall grocery budget for the year. Including all the additional spending this month, our monthly average is $650 which is less than last year. My plan is to make a couple of small trips over the next several months but I would imagine that by the end of the year our spending will be at less than $600 a month!

The plan is to let you in on how we end up processing 120# of chicken on Sunday or Monday after it is completed.

Savings!

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Sheila

A list of the things we have done or are currently doing to save money :

No heat or air for the past month! The goal is another month or 6 weeks. The last several days have seen highs in the upper 80s but with low 60s or 50s at night, we have survived with ceiling fans. I can’t wait to see how much this has effected our power bill.
By switching our cell phone bill to my name, we increased our discount by 2% and for some reason they applied the discount differently as well. As a result, our total cell phone bill is over $50 less starting in October!
Matt has been researching our cable tv and its charges. We were both really surprised to find $10 charge for on demand items that we have been paying for over a year that simply we don’t use. In addition, we are planning on dropping our cable tv entirely in the month of November, when our contract is up. We should see this reduce our monthly bills by $100 a month. We know that the first 2 months will be sent on obtaining boxes but still $100 a month is HUGE!
Matt cut his own hair yesterday. The current decision is that some things are just better left to the pros. Hair cuts being one of them!
We are continuing to clean out our freezers. A major shopping trip is planned for next weekend but we are continuing to eat what we have. A good example is today, for lunch everyone chose a left over for lunch. At dinner, I used left over taco meat and made a taco bake which basically was a free meal!
By combining discounts, I was able to purchase a new comforter set for our bed for less than half of the advertised price including shipping and tax. I will definitely be posting pictures of that after it arrives.
I was able to purchase 3 Diet Cokes and 2 bottles of dish detergent at CVS today for $0.34 and left with $2.50 in ECB. I started with NONE! I did use a rain check
As I was cleaning at work last week, I found a huge stack of papers that have been sitting in the same place for 9 months. My first thought was to toss them but then I realized wait they have only been printed on one side. So I brought the stack home, cut off the corners with the staples and not have an entire pack of paper to use for printing and the kids art work. I honestly have not bought paper in over two years. We print a lot but keep a scrap paper bin at church and then recycle all we get here. This saves us a bunch on paper. I do have some “clean” paper for use for official things but have found that no one care what the back of my coupons or list say and the kids are so used to coloring on paper that they use at least 10 sheets a day for art!

So it is important to see savings as a marathon not a sprint!

September No-Low Spend Challenge Update 3

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Sheila

1.Emergency Fund at $1000 by the end of the month. I did receive a refund on Haley’s tuition so I was able to place $500 in the fund. I still need to find another $500 but this is a start.

2. Grocery spending at $200 or less not including our Zaycon Food chicken order. This week was expensive for groceries. I did place our chicken order and will be picking up 120# of chicken in a October. This week I have made two stops at the grocery store, one at Aldi and another at Food Lion. I am over my $200. Currently I sit at $226 for the month.

As you can tell, I most likely will not be able to met either of my goals for the month. However, I am glad I accepted the challenge as it has made me hyper aware of spending and has actually keep my grocery shopping well under budget as well. I will only do a find update since I am already fallen from the wagon so to speak.

What Does Our Stockpile Look Like?

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Sheila

Over the past several months, we have been cleaning out our freezers and pantries. However during the last three weeks, two of the stores in the area have been running some really good deals so I chose to start to stock pile again. I am always looking for what other people consider a stock pile and how they do it so I thought I would share about ours. Here is a breakdown of some of the items we have on hand:

10 tubes of unopened toothpaste. I was able to grab 4 tubes for free this past week! I will not be purchasing any more, but free is free no matter how many you have.
20 plus bottles of Shampoo and Conditioner. I did purchase 3 bottles of Kid’s shampoo this past week. This is definitely an item, I will not be buying anytime soon. In fact, I will not even be looking for any deals on these until I am down to 5 bottles or less.
15 un-open bars of soap. Lily has very sensitive skin so I try to stock up when even one of the few brands she uses is on sale. I was able to purchase 3 bar packs at Harris Teeter for $0.35 this week.
6 bottles each of Ketchup and mustard. These were actually purchased in January when I was able to find them for $0.50 or less.
4 5# bags of sugar. I remember purchasing these at less than $1.50 a bag, they are in Ziploc bags so they should last a good long time.
40 can of vegetables. I purchased these at Food Lion two weeks ago for $0.25 a can. I prefer the frozen veggies but these are awesome to have on hand.
10 cans of soup. Tomato soup is one of the few items that I am brand loyal to, so when I find coupons that make it less than $.50 a can, I buy. But I also have another 10 cans of cooking soups as well.
10 cases of soda, I take usually 1 a week to work. These were all purchased in May and June when I was able to get for around $0.08 a can or less than $2.00 per 12 pack. I also use my coke points to add to this any time I can.
12 2 L Diet Cokes. I have been enjoying these that I purchased at $0.88 in August but I know that I will soon need to add to this.
Our meal list is currently at 14 dinners. After these are used up, I will be stocking back up the freezers. First with a 120# order of chicken from Zaycon and then with a trip to the local meat butcher/market.

Lastly our veggie freezer is almost full, I have been slowly adding diced/stewed tomatoes this summer. Otherwise I have several packages of plums from last year. I also have an abidance of frozen zucchini and squash from 2 years ago. I did add to the freezer with frozen broccoli and corn purchased again on the brand sale at Food Lion. I know that Food Lion usually has the brand sale in January so I purchased what I thought would last till then.

Can anyone give me an idea what their stock pile looks like?

Monday Vacation

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Sheila

We finished up today by eating at PF Changs which was my birthday dinner. As we were walking out the kids ask if they could have their picture made with the horse. Matt told me that the waitress had commented that ours were the best behavior children she had ever waited on! Wow does that make a Mom feel good!This is a sign that is hanging in the condo, today it said it all. We only got around 2 hours on the beach early this morning, but we are still have an awesome time.This was the sky this morning right before we went for a walk on the beach to find some seashells.