Still on budget!

I still have my $25.00 bucks left in my bi-weekly spending budget. I promised the kids that if I could fit it in our budget we would get pizza for dinner friday night plus some soda.

I think that is the liberating part of having a budget. I no longer feel bad for splurges like pizza. If I am within our budget....then no problem! I have really become better at planning our meals and budgeting for excursions based on our schedules. When I made our menu out last Sunday, I left Friday blank in hopes that nothing would prevent us from affording some pizza. We almost never buy soda so a couple two liters and 2 $5.00 pizzas from Little Ceasars and we will be set!

We will probably watch a movie on netflix too! I love easy, fun, cheap family nights! Who knows....we may pull out some board games as well!

So what are you doing for fun this week?

Husband screaming for us to go GREEN.

We got some lovely bills over the past few week. An especially large gas bill about made my husband go nuts. It was for $288. We are not on the budget and in the summer our gas bills are like $30.00. We thought last months bill was bad..it was around $160.

But since we are on a budgeting system with our money we need to change this. We have had some really cold weather this year with record low temps, so I am sure that is part of it. Our furnace is only 2 years old and we have a digital thermostat. It is set at 70 during the day, but drops to 65 at night. We have new windows in our home as well. Except the basement. We also have a door that leads into our garage that is quite flimsy and I am sure we are losing heat through it as well as under it. It should be an insulated metal door, but it is an interior door. We have insulation in our attic, but could use more.

But all of these fixes take a good bit of money. Rather than pouring any more money into the house we are going to go the conservative route. We are lowering our thermostat to 68 during the day. We have told the kids to layer up. We have wood floors and I swear they make our house feel colder than if we had carpet down. We are limiting the showers and really getting skimpy on the amount of water in our tubs. Things must really smell before the get dumped in the washing pile. We are really trying to conserve electricity as well. My husband constantly walks around the house and tries to unplug anything not being used. Kind of funny to see him on this go green kick.

The other thing he decided to do was to call the gas company and get us on the budget. I think they set it a bit high but it should lower eventually. They are making our monthly bills go to $134.00 This will definitely help, but I will miss the $34 bills that we had last summer.

So do you budget or just pay what is owed?

Fun time Canceling our Phone Plan

I am sure others have had this experience, but it was a first for us! My husband called AT&T to cancel our cell phone plan. We wanted to keep our numbers and go to go phone method. Our contracts ended last week. If we had canceled prior to that we would have been charged over $200.

So with our contract up he gave them a call. The call lasted for nearly 2 hours! He had to be transferred from person to person. It was really ridiculous. Two different people tried to tell him he could not switch the phone to as we put it "go mode."

My husband was very firm and knew it was possible so he kept demanding to speak to a person higher up. Finally he got someone who knew what they were doing.

After two hours the plan was in place. We had to spend $15.00 for each phone. We plan to deduct it from our personal spending money areas of the budget.

It was very apparent that their true goal was to tell us we could not change and to keep us in their contractual type plans. They tried to woo my husband into another contract as well. The person who knew how to switch us understood why we did not need this plan......we had over 4,000 minutes in our rollover bank!

It may have taken a few hours, but it feels great to no longer have an $80 a month cell phone bill.

Two Week Budget

Here Goes!

Salary--minus our autopay of our house and two car payments= $1165

Household budgeted expenses:
Wife $ for food and spend money=$300
Husband $ food/gas for his car and spend money $200
Kids Allowances= $50.00
Gift for neice baby shower= $25.00
Van Gas- $50.00
_____________________________________________________
Total Houshold expenses for this two week period= 625.00

Bills:
Electric Bill= $110
Parking for husband at work= $35.00 (this is a must)
Auto Insurance= $103.00
Vonage phone bill= $29
Misc. Medical bill= $15
Cell phone=====THIS IS GONE! It was around $85 a month! Our contract ended this month....we are going go phone method and using our spend money to buy our cards. We plan to get simple $25.00 ones for right now....eventually we plan to buy the $100 cards that have exp. dates of 1 year. We don't really use them much except to call one another.
_____________________________________________________
Total Bills= $292Total of all expenses/bills= 917

Money left to snowball= $248
We sent payment of $160 to the credit card and the rest went to our savings.
Our Credit Card debt is now at $4700
Our EF is at $470

Our credit card debt looks like it went up, but when I wrote my New Years Goals I was looking at our December statements. We did use the card this year for Christmas. Of course, we did what most people do and spent more than we planned too. But oh well, I am not going to get too upset over it. The point is we do not intend to use it again at all. We tend to pay it off with tax money and then to get our EF up to $2000. Once the ef is up to $2000 we plan to cut it up. I love the idea of making a plastectomy Video! But until the ef is up I feel better having it in case an emergency does hit. Or as some say, in case murphy stops by.

You may notice the amount my husband gets is up. The last billing he only took $100 but feels more comfotable with $200. He takes out $100 a week and uses it for his gas/food and simple blow money. This week he intends to spend some money replacing some needed parts on our printer. He is really good about putting our needs first. He wanted to kick the khols card out with the last paycheck, so he took out less. But we both feel better about him having it at $100 a week.

I will try an update my bars to the right this week. Be sure and check back!


UPDATE! You may notice I removed the ticker thing....I could not get it to work and gave up with it. I have decided just use this pie chart intstead. Pehaps after we get our tax refund I will get a little more detailed with the debt repayment. Right now this seems easier. I don't know how some people keeps these updated when they have a lot to plug in each month! I am all about simple...so to me this is simple! Please cheer us on!

Ugh, Medical bills

Medical bills seem to always trash our budgets. We recently had our youngest allergy tested. I just got the EOB(explanation of benefits) statement. I noticed our insurance raised our copay and our deductibles!

Our copays have gone from $15.00 to $20.0 and our deductible went from $200 individual to $300! So we will be getting a bill shortly for $310.00. We have had two visits and I paid only $15.00 each time for the copay, so $10.00 will be for the shortage on the copay.

This means we will not be paying much on the credit card till we pay this off. You won't see our debt go down much till we get our tax refund. My older kids get shots every week. So we will be getting hit with huge bills for their copays as well as their deductibles.

When we become debt free. We intend to have a nice $2000.00 cushion set aside each year for just medical bills. Our children are thankfully quite healthy. One year our 3rd son had some major surgery. He was born without a soft spot so this surgery was quite extensive on a 6 month old. They had to "create" a soft spot. The surgery and care ran around $180,000.00. However, we paid around $12,000 of it. I know that sounds like great insurance and it is, but no matter how you cut it 12,000 out of anyone in one year is tough!

I just wish they spread these over the year instead of just slamming us with them right after the holidays and into the New Year. It makes for a depressing beginning!

Cipl Clip Clipping Away!

I spent most of the afternoon clipping a zillion coupons, taking out expired coupons, and putting in my coupon box my new ones. The papers this week have about 5 inserts in them. Two papers were given to me and I bought one for $2.12. We got our menu done for the week and managed to get the shopping done. Here is the run down what I spent today!

CVS:
I spent $7.23
I received some great coupons via email from CVS that expired today. I bought 2 tubes of Colgate toothpaste and 2 good size bottles of Aveeno lotion. Our youngest son suffers from severe excema and Aveeno is the best products for his skin. Unfortunately it is ridiculously expensive. So I was psyched when I got a $3.00 off $15.00 purchase of Aveeno product coupon from CVS. I combined this with 2 $2.00 off coupons from Aveeno. I printed two $1.50 off colgate coupons from CVS and I had $1.00 off manufacture coupons....making the toothpaste free! So for the price of one bottle of Aveeno I got two bottles plus 2 tubes of toothpaste. Oh, and $2.00 in ECBS

Krogers:spent $38.42 and my reciept says I saved $38.05 with my coupons! That is a 50% savings!

If you live in my area (WV) then watch for these coupon deals.

Softsoap $1.00 minus .35 cents doubled to .70 cents off----final price .30 cents

Cottenell Bath tissue--4 pack is .99 cents. If you have the 50 cents from last weeks paper--they will double..you get some free tp!

They also have their Campell Chunky Healthy Request soups on sale for $1.25 a can and there are 50/off 2 coupons out there--making your soup .75 cents a can. Not bad when you make one of your meals this week Soup/Grilled cheese night!

I bought lots of poultry and had some special coupons from Krogers off my meat purchases. I also picked up some milk, bread, and fresh fruit.

I will need to make a return later this week to Walmart(returning a gift) and then plan to purchase some juice and snack foods from Aldi's which is near Walmart.

I withdrew $250.00 last week on pay day for our groceries. I feel confident in saying I am nearly done till next pay day and I have $47.00 dollars left! I could easily see 25 being snowflaked---barring no unforseen issues.

If I have money left over before the next paycheck...it will be snowflaked!

Here is our Menu just so you know we are actually eating!

Mon- Meatloaf/mashed potatoes/broccoli
Tue- Sweet/n/Sour chicken/rice and veggies
Wed- Pork Roast/potatoes/carrots/rolls
Thur--dinner at grandparents --turkey
Friday-soup/grilled cheese
Saturday-Lasagna/salad
Sunday-leftovers

And one more "Ooooo Yah!" Our water bill came and it is $10.00 less than usual! I guess our tightening up on shower times and baths is paying off!

What was your Sunday like?? Did you clip away too?

Stay out of stores and save some dough!

I have read many tips saying that if you simply stay home you save. I have to agree with this.

We are still staying within our budgeted money, but I started out on Monday with $250 in cash in my pocket and I am down to $98 and I have 12 days to go with this budget for our food.

I actually think I can do it. I bought a great deal of meat that was on sale and some staples for our pantry. I make menus and I generally stick to them quite well. I will likely need to buy more milk, bread, cheese.

However, I made the suggestion that we hit Ollies a discount store next to the food store. We walked out with 2 books, 3 small toys (a water gun my husband thought was cool, a truck that as you push draws with sidewalk chalk attached, a special nightlight for our 6 year old) The books are educational ones for our homeschooling. All in all I spent $23.00. I would have bought none of that had I not been in the store at all. Just shows that staying out of stores will save ya some dough! I am thinking of recording my no spend days, but honestly being a stay at home mom means I have a lot of those.

Christmas Expenses

We paid our bills last Sunday, so I won't bother posting our numbers until we have our next money meeting in two weeks. In the meantime, I will explain what we did for Christmas expenses this year.

In the past we use to set a monatary amount per child, but our kids really range in age from 13 to 1. Spending $100-$150 might be easy to to on the 13 year old it is a little silly on the 1 year old.

A dear friend of mine who also has 4 sons said they buy their kids 3 gifts each....one from dad, one from mom, and one from Santa. With no monatary amount necessarily stuck to it. I liked that idea so that is what we went with. Here is what we got the boys and the rough costs.

13- A gigantic nerf gun that he wanted--on sale for $25
A new Go Phone--his was a brick and he wanted a flip phone--$50
Hollister clothing---there stuff is outrageous so this is the only time of the year I will pay for it! I got him 3 t-shirts and a jacket--total was $55.00
Total on him---$130

10-A bigger nerfgun --looks like an automatic weapon $39.00
A smaller 2 pack of nerf guns--$10.00
A new bike---$85.00---His was stolen this year and this is what he wanted more than anything.
total= $134.00

6 yrold--Batman cave--30.00
Batmobile--$20.00
Giant nerf gun -same as big brother--$25.00
Total=$75.00

18 month old---ok don't laugh, but we probably spent in most eyes a ridiculous amount on our youngest--but here is the thing----HE LOVES TO PLAY WITH CARS/TRAINS. Honestly, we do not have many cars....none of the older boys were into them much..we have maybe 10 match box cars in this house right now and a couple of trains. We found this cool table from Step 2---it holds both cars and trains....18 month old spends all his time pushing cars around everywhere so I know he will love it....but it cost $95.00! We then bought two little cars that totaled $10.00 So those are his three gifts= $110

A lot of nerf stuff is coming there way from other relatives as well..my house will be covered in nerf bullets very soon!

Now as for their stockings I have been buying little things from my leftover grocery money for the past 2 months.

I am ashamed to admit how we paid for this Christmas, may it be the last year we have to do this!
We signed up for skip pay at our credit union. OH THE SHAME OF IT! I KNOW! This gave us about $750 in the month of December---we have 3 paychecks this December. So we charged everything and have been sending in the skip payments to the credit card as we get them.

We did pull back alot on what we would normally spend on other relatives. We also have decided not to mail out Christmas cards this year. I refuse to feel guilty about it. We took our family portrait ourselves in front of our fireplace and at the Christmas get togethers we will hand them out. My husband and I are not really exchanging any big gifts..we are giving stocking stuffer gifts to one another bought from our personal allowances (more on that later) So there is the rundown on our expenses for Christmas...what about you?? Did you go overboard?