Tuesday, December 29, 2009

New Year Goals

I've never been one on resolutions. I try to accomplish what I can and not beat myself up over it(too much!) Here's some of things I hope to accomplish this year.

Reduce our grocery bill to around $450 a month.(currently $500)


Reduce household to $100(currently $150)


Get Baby Girl potty trained(this will definitely help with reducing the household expenses!)


Continue on my decluttering mission. I realize this won't happened overnight because it took us years to accumulate so much stuff.


Find ways to make money. I've tossed around babysitting on drop in basis to bring in some extra cash. I really want to continue writing and would like to find more opportunities to get paid for it.


Make more time for my hobbies.


Exercise more. I was starting to walk laps before the weather turned cold. There's really no inside place here that is free so it's kind of got put on hold.


Do a bigger garden this year


Start paying down on old bills. I got copies of my credit reports and yikes
!


Reduce, reuse, recycle. I do pretty good about reusing but the whole recycling thing seems to overwhelm me. My goal is to recycle one thing at a time(like newspapers)until I get into the groove of it and then add another item.


Go back to cooking from scratch more. I started off the beginning of last year really good, then once summer hit, I started relying on prepackaged snacks and stuff. I'll definitely be using once a month cooking to my advantage.

Monthly Review

Sorry for my absence. We've had some issues this month. Hopefully I'll get back online soon. We ahad a light spending month. Thankfully. Well, aside from gas. Here's some numbers


Groceries $375.49, $24,51 under my self imposed budget of $400. Not bad. It was kind of hard. $18 of that is cupcake's for Thing 2's Christmas party at school(since we can't send anything homemade)


Household $35.86 Not bad. Due to lack of funds, a friend bought a bag of dog food and a pack of diapers, then I managed to scrape up some gift cards and use them for diapers the rest of the month


Gas $151, yikes. due to an issue we are not staying at our house. This means extra gas to drive across town 2 times a day(even on weekends) to check on our pets. Hopefully, we'll be back at our house soon!


Money made
$50 from car payment
$75 for a magazine article
$6 from Pinecone research
total $131

Friday, December 11, 2009

Super Savings Saturday

I came across way too many deals this week! I especially went nuts at Dillons.



Walmart


4 boxes Snuggle dryer sheets $1.87, used 4 $2/1=FREE!




Walgreens


3 All Laundry soap, $3.50 each, used 3 $2/1=$1.50 each



CVS


Huggies diapers, $8.97, used $5 ECB from CVS Advisor Panel=$3.97 plus will get back $1.50 from Upromise and $0.75 from Cargivers Marketplace. Final price=$1.72



Dillons:

I went NUTS at Dillons this week. Just nuts!

trip #1

Bisquick $4.65-$0.60 cf-$0.60 SC- $1 coupon=$2.45

Duracell batteries(5 packs) $1.88 each-$1 P&G-5 $1/1=$3.40 for 5 packs

Warm Delights (3) $2 each-$1sc-$.50CF-3 $1/1=$1.50 for 3

Pet Fur Fighter $9.89-$4CF-$4 coupon=$1.89

Reames frozen Noodles 2@$1.50 each-2 $1/1 coupons=$0.50 each

Progresso Lentil Soup (2) $1 each-$0.50 SC- $1 coupn= $0.50/2

Pantene $3.99-$1P&G-$2 coupon=$0.99

Parkay $1-$1 coupon= FREE

Organic salad mix $3-$1 coupon=$2

Organic frozen berries $2.99-$1=$1.99

Organic carrots $1.89-$1 coupon= $0.89

I bought an insane amount of things. Almost everything I had coupons for, minus spaghetti sauce and pasta that were on sale for $1 each. My receipt is somewhere in the truck so I dont have and extact amount on how much I saved but it was 53%.

OOP $77.98

Trip 2

This was for a couple things I forgot from the day before

Thera-flu $4.99-$3 coupon-$2 ecoupon=FREE!

2 Chex mix $2.85 each-$.50 sc-$0.50CF- $1coupon=$3.70/2

Ronzini pasta2 $1.67 each- $1 Upromise= $1.17 each

Karo Syrup $2.49-$80 coupon-$0.40 Upromise=$1.29

Fleishmann Jar Yeast($5.99) and King Arthur Flour($4.29)-$3.50 WYB KAF and FY-$.40 FY from UPromise-$0.50 KAF Upromise=$5.88 for both

OOP $20.69, saved $19.02 or 47%



Im keeping my budget for the month set at $400. So far I have spent $200.36

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

November Review

I'm so glad November is over...we had one disaster after another!
Here's some of the numbers:


Groceries
$388.81. I actually managed to keep it under my $400 imposed budget! Partially because the Things stayed most of Thanksgiving break at their grandmothers but that's ok! I'm setting the same budget for December!


Gas
$116, yikes! $20 of that was to go to my mil's for Thanksgiving, so technically, it's about what it usually is


Library fines
, paid $3.80, still owe $1.50.


Money made
$50 from car payment
$10 from My Survey
$21 from Panel Polls
$75 from magazine article
$156 total