Unexpected expenses

Just when I think I'm getting us back on track, unexpected expenses come up. While some of these expenses truly shouldn't be "unexpected", they aren't monthly expenses. Thus, they haven't made their way into the budget yet. For example, we have life insurance policies through my husband's work. We pay those premiums on a quarterly basis. So, that's an extra $50 we need to come up with next month. I do budget for "insurance", but I only budgeted enough for car insurance. I had forgotten about the life insurance. Drat.

Some of the expenses truly are "unexpected." A good example is the notice we got from Brady's school today. They have a 3 year old preschool program. The notice today was to sign up Reed. Great. No problem. We were planning on doing that. Except, that they wanted a $50 registration fee. That fee is due February 3. Oooooooooookay. That's another $50 we need to come up with in the next couple weeks.

I really need to start a printing press in my basement. It would really be more handy than budgeting for these things.

Frugal Tip for Cards

I don't know about you, but it chaps my hiney to buy cards. Gosh, they want so much money for them! You can easily spend $4-5 for a card. Seems like such a waste. Maybe I'm cold, but when I receive a card, I read it and then throw it. Okay, I'll admit it. I also shake it for money. But honestly, someone just spent $4 on something that went right into my garbage can. What a waste of money!!

I discovered that those party outlets or paper outlets are terrific!! We have one here and I just went the other day and purchased 6 cards. And I spent $4.62 for 6 cards. The most expensive ones were $0.99 and some were even $0.49. Yes, I could make cards for free. Better yet I could have the kids make cards, but that seems a little too cheap for me.

The great thing about these card outlets is their cards aren't cheap looking. They are just like the ones you'd buy at any other retail store. And they aren't all dumb or boring cards. I've been very pleasantly suprised. I've found some very witty cards that I've not been embarassed to give.

I'd recommend that you give it a try. What do you have to lose? And you might just save some money while you're there.

Monthly Budget

So, for the first time I sat down and actually did a budget. Yes, I know. How have I been operating up until now?! I have no idea. I had no idea how much more than our income we were spending. Yes, I just admitted we spent more than we made. Kinda. My bonuses actually kept us afloat. We spent all of my bonuses as well. My new goal is to spend significantly less and just live on our income in order to save my bonuses and any other extra money that comes in (like tax return).

Well, now that I've done a budget, it's really tough to stick to!! I budget us really thin as you can tell. We save a good sum into our retirement and the boys college accounts every month. Aside from our usual monthly bills, I get $200 for gas (which might be a bit high), $300 for food and $164 for extras.

Well, unexpected expenses come up and can blow a budget very easily. This month it just happened to be a $200 insurance bill. We decided to purchase an umbrella policy. We hadn't had one before. Here is a relatively easy read on what an umbrella policy is and why they are important. http://http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/Insureyourhome/P35349.asp

So now I'm trying to come up with an extra $200 in our budget. We only spent $140 on gas this month and I have some money coming from a garage sale my sister held earlier this year. These two things give me around $110. It's interesting to see where you can get a bit of extra money if needed.

My new years resolution this year was to not use my credit card except for certain things that require a credit card (I have one membership that charges my credit card each month). I'm proud to say that I've charged a whopping $2 this year. For parking when I had no cash on me. That will be reimbursed by work though. So far so good!!

2 Week Meal Plan

I made my two week meal plan. I planned 13 meals (we have a holiday party this weekend so we don't need a meal). The meals are:
Fish
Crockpot Pork Chops
Brats
Lasagna
Burritos
Chicken Fried Rice
Eggs
Beef Roast
Grilled Chicken
Tacos
Pizza
Ham

I put vegtables and potatos with the meat meals. I broke this shopping up into a shop on Wednesday (to take advantage of double coupons) and today. I spent $24. I saved something like $18 dollars between coupons and discounts. I went today and finished my big shop. I spent $45 today. For $70, I got all the food I need for 2 weeks. I'm sure I'll have to go back for milk and fruit, but otherwise I'm set. Yay!

December Financial Recap

Well, the month of December was a bomb. Of course, I knew it would be with a trip to Texas involved. I came in at $47.67 over my grocery budget. Not bad. Especially considering I stocked up on enough chicken to last us all year and laundry detergent to last a decade.

My miscellaneous budget was blown by $597.33. About $200 of this was for hotel rooms for 2 nights. About $150 was fast food on our trip and about $142.00 was Sea World admission. So, actually we didn't do bad. Especially since Christmas was mixed in there too. Of course we hadn't saved for the vacation. So, I'll be trying to figure out how to pay for it for the next couple months!! We did pay cash for a substantial portion of it. It was our Christmas money.

Hopefully January will be better. Especially since it is my New Year's resolution to stop using my credit card. It's hard to spend money when you're out of cash!!

Long time- no post!

Well, we're back after having been gone visiting family for about a week now. Needless to say, my tracking has gone by the wayside. I'll have to estimate the costs for the beginning of January.

So far I've made good on my goal to not use my credit card in 2009. Of course, we have some Christmas money laying around. That makes it easy. It makes it hard on the budget though.

Another challenge is that diapers are on sale at Walgreens. Over the summer I've become a Walgreens diaper convert. I always used Target diapers because they were so cheap. But, I really like the Walgreens diapers. They are $5.99 per package. Size 3 has 40 diapers and size 4 has 34 diapers. Not too bad. Normally they are $8.99 per package. Naturally I have the urge to stock up which always blows my budget.

Again, I'm going to try to budget $300 for groceries for the month. I've got to work out the rest of our budget yet.