Staying motivated.

You know how when you have a large goal it is so easy to get discouraged or fall off the wagon. There is just so much time and effort needed to get there and it is so easy to slip after a while. I think most of us know this is especially true with things like weight loss and money. To help keep my husband and I a motivated to save, save, save we have put up a motivational chart. The chart is lined and with each $200 we put into savings we color another line in. We taped it to our fridge and I have to admit it sounds silly but it really is motivating, I really want to color in those lines! Man I sound like my 6 year old now ;)

You can get your own right here!

Starting a Price Book

I have been toying with the idea of starting a price book over the last few days. Although it wasn't till a friend commented on my last entry about how hard it was to know what the prices of items where at 2 different stores that I really started thinking about how to put one together. A price book for those who don't haunt the frugal websites like I do is a book in which the normal prices of an item as well as the units are listed for all suppliers.

Take that can of green beans for example say it is normally $0.50 a can and I have this listed in my little book, then one day I see it has gone down to $0.40 but I don't buy because I know from my little book that the prices always go down even further at Thanksgiving and sure enough I am able to buy that can for $0.20! Now that is quite a savings that I wouldn't have gotten if I didn't have a price comparison book,

The same philosophy holds true for comparing competing stores prices, although it gets trickier when dealing with very different sizes of containers. Say I know that a can of diced tomatoes is $0.99 for 14.5oz at one store but $2.78 for 102oz at another store. Now just doing the rough math on this one it is clear where the better deal lays but what about those items that are right on the line? Say a 5lb bag of flour for $1.99 or the 25lb bag for $8.73. That one is a little harder to do in your head. Although if I had the normal prices of each type of flour recorded in my little book there could also be a cutoff column. A column that shows when the price of the 25lb bag is too high versus the 5lb bag. Say that 25lb bag of flour went up to $9.99 and the 5lb bag stayed the same? Well then I would know that it is not a good deal and time to walk away from that particular bulk purchase.

All of this gets very confusing and I am in no way saying it is fool proof, there are times when you know you are going to goof and spend a little more because you though you had a good deal. Luckily though I am talking goofs in the $0.72 range like the lemonade from the last post and not $5.00 goofs like I would have if I tried to buy my produce or dairy at a bulk store. Those things I have done some comparison shopping on in the past and know that the commissary is always cheaper on those items. The commissary in my opinion is almost always cheaper except in the situation of the HUGE containers of items that would normally have to be pared down into the smaller containers. In this case you are saving money only because the company selling them has to spend a lot less to package and handle the large containers over the smaller ones. It is only these products that I will even consider buying at a large box store such as Sam's.

Another example on the commissary versus Sam's.....The other day while at Sam's I took a look at their laundry soap. Amazingly it was the exact same size and brand that I buy on base except it was marked $20. while I am able to buy it on base for $11. Now that is why you have to know the base prices at each store!

Another great resource if shopping on base is www.militarylife.com once you register for the site you can see ALL the sales current sales at your local commissary without ever leaving your house! So if you know the base price of an item at the bulk store and the base price at the commissary but see that the commissary price is cheaper that week (again before you leave for your shopping trip) you can compare and see if the bulk purchase is still cheaper! Very cool! There is also a option for the commissary specials that are only on sale for a certain time frame, such as the buy 5 for $5 and such, again another great resource.

All of this takes a great deal of patience to work through and even more to keep it going. After all wouldn't it just be so much easier just to go to one store and get everything you need and say that was the best price you were able to get? Well yeah that is easier and I have been doing that for years, the problem is that my grocery bill was getting out of control. I am talking $1,000 a month! That is outrageous! Now with checking the prices and doing one bulk shopping trip a month I am down to $500 a month. That is a huge savings but I still think I could be doing better after all I hear many a tail of a family of 14 living off of $400 a month! Now I may not be THAT frugal or be that inventive when it comes to the shopping trips but I certainly think that if they can do it for 14 I should be able to spend the same amount with 4 people! Especially important since we have twins on the way and money is getting ready to become even tighter, better to tighten my belt now and put the extra money into savings than have to figure all this out with 2 newborns and no money!

Grocery Challenge Update!

As you may remember I have taken on the challenge of only shopping once every two weeks in the hopes of cutting back our grocery bill. I was sceptical at first because it sounded like a lot of work and I couldn't for the life of me see how it was going to save any money. I mean you are still eating 3-4 times a day and making the same things that you would have to begin with so how could this save anything? Well today was shopping day for my second 2 weeks on the program and I have to say that I am loving it! This last weekend it was SO nice not to have to worry about what to make the next week (I made up a calender of the entire months meals when I started) and to not have to brave the grocery store. So how did I do on the money front??

Weeks 1-2 Grocery Store: $170
Weeks 1-4 Sam's Club Bulk Shopping: $180
Weeks 3-4 Grocery Store: $190
Random odds and ends needed throughout: $50
TOTAL: $590 for one month

Usual total for one month shopping every week: $680

That makes a savings of.....$90! OK now that is nothing to sneeze at! This was my first month on the program and the trip to Sam's club is a every couple of months trip. I got things such as a 25lb bag of flour (will last about 3 mths), bulk trash bags (again about 3 mths), bulk Ziploc bags, HUGE container of animal crackers, bulk pop tarts, etc.

Next month our goal will be for a total spend of $400 giving us a savings of $280 a mth.....OK so I am officially on board with this program. Anyone game to try with me????

Getting Back on the Wagon!

OK so I have taken some major hits over the last few months and I am trying to get back my sanity and my life. Today is day one back on my diet and I am determined that this is going to be my last time having to rededicate myself. I am done with feeling like a big ole tub of lard! So back to working out and eating healthy again. It is hard when you are trying to conceive because every month after I ovulate I keep thinking well I am probably pregnant so I don't need to lose any weight....then I won't be and I have lost 2 weeks, just to do it all over again the next month. But I know that I want to be active during my next pregnancy and eat healthily so this is really something that I need to keep doing no matter where I am in my cycle.

As you may or may not know I took the last month off of work to recover from the loss and to just give my body a break. This resulted in our emergency fund getting cleaned out and less being paid on our debts. So here I am back at square one all over again! I went back to work yesterday so we are on our way back to where we need to be. This has been a real wake-up call for me, we were supposed to be surviving on Bry's income for all our monthly needs and my income was supposed to be just paying off the debt. Once we cut out my income though it was clear that we were using some of my income for our monthly needs as well. I am looking at our monthly expenses seeing what we can cut out to get everything in balance again. This is going to be especially important since I am only working part-time right now and don't plan on going back to full time until at least August maybe later.

The thought pattern with all these changes is that my weight and my stress levels are affecting my ability to get pregnant and then stay pregnant. So by working on my weight and my health and cutting back on my working maybe this will result in a pregnancy that will make it.....we shall see!

Curbing my inner shopaholic

I love to shop....not just that I like to but it has gotten to a compulsion with me...I LOVE TO SHOP! I had a real wake up call about a year ago that shocked me into becoming more responsible with my spending, but even knowing that I still have to smack myself sometimes for buying needless things. Even though I have drastically reduced my shopping habit I still buy things without thinking about the long term effects on my debt repayment schedule. This week for example I have bought a number of things that I really didn't "need" but that I got anyways because....well...when I figure that one out I will let you know!

*Fetal Heart rate monitor $35
*Gender Predictor test $55
*Easter Dress for Sara (she had dresses she could have worn) $18
*Book $6

For a grand total of $114 in random spending for stuff that I really didn't need in the first place. Does this stop me from thinking about the next thing I could buy? No not for an instant. Take for example my DVD/VCR on Monday the remote died and I couldn't change the channels on the tv without getting up and manually doing it (Yes I know a real hardship but with morning sickness it got real old real fast). I changed the batteries and did some very colorful swearing while smacking the remote on the floor...surprisingly this didn't fix it. What is a frugal girl going to do....why buy a new remote of course and if I couldn't find one I was going to buy an all new DVD player. Yes I know not at all frugal but that little voice was screaming in my head "buy a new one!" Well after thinking and thinking about it I finally talked myself out of buying a new one and decided we would just live with having to get up and change the channel (I am a huge channel surfer so this was a big deal for me). After I made the decision not to buy a new one I started wondering why the stupid thing stopped working in the first place. After a little investigating I found that a certain button got pushed on the remote rendering it useless....press the button again and boom it works again! Now if I hadn't talked myself out of buying the new one I never would have found the solution to the problem. Just goes to show you that sometimes you have to investigate all the options before you run out to the store to buy a replacement.

Now I have a new challenge Bry did the vacuuming last night and tells me that there is something wrong with my 1yr old vacuum. The brush apparently is not spinning now even after he cleaned it off. So what does my inner voice scream "Go buy that $600 one that you have been wanting forever" but I have learned from my DVD player that that is not going to be the solution until I have tried everything else. So I am going to do whatever it takes including taking the darn thing apart if I have to before I will be convinced that I need a new one.

So apparently I have my compulsion for shopping semi under control, big items are out but I am still a sucker for the little items through out the week. Not sure how I am going to get that under control as well....baby steps I guess.

False Economy anyone?

Here I was thinking I had hit the jackpot the last time I was at the store, turns out the old adage is true if it sounds to good to be true it is. I needed to get some shampoo and conditioner and instead of buying my usual products at $4 per bottle I decided to look around and see what better deals there were. I found a brand name product for $0.89 per bottle and thought SOLD! Yeah can we say false economy anyone? This stuff leaves my hair feeling worse than if I hadn't washed it at all and looking like a grease trap. I just want to throw the crap away and go get my usual bottle of shampoo and conditioner. So instead of saving myself $3.11 I ended up wasting $0.89 Lesson learned even if it is a brand name product at a cheap price watch out and defiantly try it out before you decide to stock up.....can you imagine if I had bought 4-5 bottles of the stuff then to find out that it didn't work for crap?!

Bye Bye Emergency Fund

Well I just got an email from my college saying that the amount not covered by my student loan must be paid within the next 10 days. I am not happy about having to use my emergency fund but then that is what it is there for right? If I didn't have it I would be putting the balance on my credit card and paying out the butt with interest. But then again it is a big chunk of my debt that will be going bye bye as well so there is a bright side! So Bye Bye emergency fund it was nice knowing you....looks like I am back on the long road of saving again.

Maternity Shopping

There was a time not to long ago that when if I was told I needed an entire new wardrobe I would have been ecstatically headed out to the stores with my credit card firmly in my hand. Those days though are so far gone it never occurred to me to do so this time. One would think that since this is my third child I would already have quite the maternity wardrobe already formed, but sadly that is not the case. We recently PCSed from England to Hawaii and we were so worried about our household goods not making weight (especially since they were coming over on a plane and not a ship as usual) that we got rid of anything that we didn't absolutely need. That included all my maternity stuff as well as all the baby stuff Sara had outgrown so that would be from 0-12 mths. To many of you this may sound very extreme but when faced with the possibility of THOUSANDS of dollars in fees we were determined not to go over our weight!

Anyways all this rambling does have a point! Now that I am knocked up again I am faced with the fact that I have NO maternity stuff! So what is a newly frugal mama to do? Hit up eBay of course! I managed to get an entire wardrobe of maternity clothes including several pairs of jeans, shorts, capri's, belly band, dresses, and about 15 shirts for the grand total of $190 and that includes shipping! Now if you add all that up at retail costs of about $20 per item it would have cost me $400 without shipping costs! Not bad if I do say so myself :D

The Good Ideas and the What was I thinking moments

So I have been doing this frugal thing for a few months and I have had some really great finds and some that were a total waste of my time. I thought I would share my experiences so maybe I can save someone from a total waste of time and money.

Great Ideas:
*Homemade Laundry Soap. Cleans just as well as the pre-packaged stuff but for only a few bucks
* Homemade Dishwasher powder. Again works just as well and you can use some of the same stuff that you bought for the laundry soap.
* Homemade All-purpose spray. A little vinegar and water and bam there you go, cuts grease and dirt and is really cheap to make.
*Homemade floor cleaner. I used to buy the Clorox mop refills and that was getting really expensive, instead I use warm water and vinegar in the refill bottle and it works wonders with no vinegar smell.
* Dishrags instead of the Clorox pads on the mop. I just use the big dish towels on my mop, works wonders and since it is just vinegar in the mop no need to worry about washing the cloth with the other clothes.
*No more paper towels. Honestly I though this was going to be harder but I don't even notice there gone now.
*Cutting out all the pre-packaged meals. I thought this one would be harder as well but after the initial shock it was pretty easy to do, especially since there is always leftovers from dinner for lunch.
* Cutting the meat in our meals in half and going veggie a few nights a week. Bry is the only one to complain about this one, but since he isn't here for 75% of the dinners who cares! ;D
* Growing my own veggies. This one is taking FOREVER to come to fruition but when it does it will be wonderful. I plan on canning some of the stuff so that will really help out down the line.


What was I thinking?
* Homemade napkins for the dinning room table. Yeah this one was wonderful in theory but took forever to cut down the cloth and then it wasn't cotton but some other material so it wasn't absorbent at all. BIG waste of time!
*Making my own body care stuff. Again great in theory but all of the ingredients in the book I bought on the topic were really expensive and a royal pain to put together. Just buy the cheap stuff and call it a day.
*Homemade bread for the entire week, even bought a bread maker for this. Um, yeah I don't really have the time for this one....actually I don't think anyone does! I do make all of our specialty breads from scratch (French, pizza dough, etc) but when it comes to sandwiches we buy the cheapest loaf at the store and say good enough!
*Making my own cat litter. It wasn't hard and was almost free since I have tons of free newspapers delivered every week but it was SO time consuming I would have had to make 3-4 batches a week and then let them dry for a week or more before using. OK I love my cat but come on! We are back on the store bought stuff and couldn't be happier.
*Making my own diapers. I love my cloth diapers but making them is a pain in the rear and they were never as absorbent as the pre-made ones, plus after I bought all the stuff and paid for shipping it wasn't any cheaper! No thanks I will just buy mine!

OK so there is my list for now. I will be sure to add some more as we go along, if you have any to add feel free!

Feeling Thankful

So I have spent a lot of time recently searching blogs related to family finances to try and get some ideas for how to temper our spending and I have to say that there is some very depressing things out there! I watch the news so I know that massive amounts of people are getting laid off and that there are record numbers of foreclosures I just have no personal experience with it so it is hard to relate to. I am so thankful that both of our jobs are rock solid and we do not have to worry about losing our jobs or our house. The military may be many things and I have had my moments when I wish he would get out and have a "normal" job but I am extremely thankful for it at this time in our economy. A set paycheck that will never go away, a free house, free medical/prescription (even if I do complain about it), free utilities, college funds for our kids (thanks to the Montgomery GI bill being transferable), and an unending supply of military kids for me to watch......yeah this is defiantly the only time since the war started that it pays to be in the military!

I also have to say that I am thankful that we have been slackers and have not invested very much in our retirement fund (TSP). We just upped our allotment to 10% (up from 5%) I figure stocks are cheap right now and we don't make very much to start with so there really isn't much of a risk for us so why not up our investment? I did move 40% to the G bill which is very little risk but left the rest in the L section which has its risk based on the amount of time till retirement, we still have 30yrs so it is a more aggressive fund. Hopefully when the tide starts to turn in the stockmarket we will get a nice little boost :D

Dave Ramsey and going debt free!

So I have decided to start working with the Dave Ramsey Steps for debt reduction. He has these baby steps that if you do them in order you will be out of debt and able to retire before you hit 80, so what the heck here it goes!

Baby step #1: $1,000 to start an emergency fund
OK, so I have over a $1,000 saved in a trip fund but my emergency fund is currently only $100.....so....yeah....need to start funding that again.

Baby step #2: Pay off all debt using the debt snowball
We have already paid off our credit card so that is one thing less on the list. I just went through and added up all of our debt and came to the grand total of $26,230. That includes a car loan, student loans, outstanding balance that student loan didn't cover, and yearly insurance on car and renters insurance. Other than that we are sitting pretty ;D So according to the snowball theory we are supposed to pay off the smallest debt first and then add that payment with the regular payment on the next biggest loan the next month and so on. Following this method we should pay off the insurance, the school bill, the student loan, and then the car loan. I would do this BUT right now I don't owe any interest on the student loan as long as it is paid off before the grace period ends and their is no interest on the insurance or the school bill. So to me it just makes more sense to pay off the student loan first before the interest kicks in then move on to the smaller bills that don't have any interest. So that is the plan, if we stick to the budget the student loan should be paid off in 3-4 months right before the grace period ends!

The rest of these steps will begin one at a time after the debt is paid off.
Baby Step #3: 3-4 months of expenses in savings
Baby Step #4: Invest 15% of household income into TSP
Baby Step #5: College Funding for kids
Baby Step# 6: Pay off home early
**Obviously don't have to worry about this one, I think I will change it to save for a down payment on a house! **
Baby Step #7: Build wealth and give! Invest in mutual funds and real estate

So that is the plan to get debt free, it has worked for so many other people that I am sure we will be there in no time at all! I will be sure to update as the months go by so I can keep track of how well we are doing!

Our Budget Update

I am proud to say that after working VERY hard on our debt and budgeting like a mad woman we are officially out of credit card debt! WOO HOO! Doing a little happy dance over here! :D We still have another 2 months to go on my student loans and about another 12 months on the car loan (which still has another 3yrs before it would be paid if we stuck with the standard payment), but we are well on our way to now owing anyone anything but love :) We have started a savings account for our upcoming trip home in July and will soon be able to pay for the entire trip in cash, that is defiantly the first time that has happened! Plus with the new baby on the way I have worked out the total 1st year expenses and as soon as our trip fund is filled we will be moving the allotment to the baby fund. I have to thank the Duggar family for their very inspiring book that has taught me that it IS possible to live debt free no matter what the situation. If they can do it with 18 kids I can do it with 2! Looking forward to being 100% debt free!!

What's new with us...

I have been sitting here trying to think of what I have done this week that is worthy of a post and I can't really think of anything! Lets see for my going green goal....well....hmm....I am continuing to make my own cleaning supplies and am going to be making a batch of laundry soap tomorrow. I guess you could say that on this front I am holding steady, not really sure where to take it from here but I am sure it will come to me.

Last week was a wonderful week for my budget and I only spent $74 on groceries for the week and we managed not to eat out the entire week. This week I have spent $163 and they way I have been eating I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't last 3 days. The majority of this weeks grocery bill went to buying fresh veggies and fruit so I am going to have to look at that for next week. Not really sure at this point how to balance nutrition and money but I am going to work on it so we shall see what I spend next week.

I am happy to say that I am still pregnant and doing well. I am STARVING all day and while I am also very sleepy I am actually waking myself up because I am so hungry! I have made the appointment for my blood test and will be going in on Monday to get the official conformation. I am scared of actually doing it but I know that this is going to be a sticky baby and I am going to have to face my fears and get on with it.

My garden is doing really well. The snails came back and had done some major damage to my zucchini but I think I caught it in time and they are going to survive. The cucumbers are growing like wildfire and the tomatoes are actually starting to look like tomato plants. The onions are still small but getting there, and I think I have 2 bell pepper plants but we will have to wait and see as they get larger.

OK, I think that is it from here. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will keep you updated on all the new gossip from my end!

My budget results

Well after one whole month on my new budget I have to say that I am doing pretty well considering it was Christmas and all! I was able to cut our grocery bill from $1,100 a month to $633....still $33 higher than I was aiming for BUT that does include a trip to Sam's Club for all the bulk products we will need for next month (25lb bag of flour, 25lb bag of sugar, case of soy milk, etc.). So I am shooting for a grocery budget of $500 next month.

I also have been keeping a notebook of categories for our spending and I have found some areas that need to be put into the budget so I will be going over the numbers again and re-jigging it all for a more accurate budget.

So I am happy to say that it IS possible to cut $500 from your grocery budget and live to tell about it, and I am not done yet!