Short post, long weekend.

It was a busy holiday weekend. One of Naginata's younger brother's graduated from High School, so we packed up the Budget-mobile and went to celebrate. There was much festivity and we ended up dropping a little bit of cash in related expenses:

$8.99 camera battery
$2.49 card
$2.49 card
$7.99 gift

$23.50 total on what I would consider the first real non-essential items I've bought since the contest started. But graduation only happens once, so I don't feel bad about it at all. We would have easily dropped a larger sum on a gift if we hadn't tapped the bank already. We are waiting for my next check, reminding us once again about spending and saving and why we're on this crazy trip to begin with.

Fuel.

Some days it's a bit easier than others. I get a free lunch from in my office or donuts down in the breakroom make for a tasty snack. Other days it's a bit harder and I feel my belly grumble or hear people talk about meeting friends out for a nice dinner and I realize I still have many, many more days to go. It's not all about food, but I think we've definately handled our food by convenience and moving away from that model is proving to be aggravating.

I think once we get under 300 days left, I might feel like we've accomplished something bigger. As it stands, I think we've had some good luck and an initial adrenaline rush of starting something new. I fear what may happen around day 200 of the challenge when the thrill has gotten a bit stale. I'd make some comment about my attention span and our modern society, but I fear it lacks any fresh insight.

I am encouraged, however, by our continued string of tiny improvements for little or no money and how our friends seem supportive and understanding. I think maybe even a couple have gotten inspired to examine their own spending habits in light of our initial success. I also find the "thrill" of buying things has diminished somewhat. I'm more looking forward to some personal art projects than I am the next video game or DVD. I also feel like it's a good time to have a better connection with Naginata and Edamame, if for no other reason than to keep communication open on things that are working/not working and what things have made us happy during this time.

I'm sure I'll have something more to share soon. Until then:
$20.01 in gas on the Budget-Truck this past Tuesday (5/22/07).

A Google Spreadsheet!

As some of my friends know I am a sucker for any kind of spreadsheet or document program. So here is the Food, Gas, Treats spreadsheet for this experiment!

Click Here!

This should open in a new window. This is so it's easier for me to track the totals for the month of these items. :)

the daily spend 5 -18 to 5 - 21

First off I'd like to say there is a whole Lowe's Hardware saga that involves 4 receipts and too many explanations so there will just be a total that comprises all of the receipts. Second yay us for the cool "not losing our heads with the car handling crisis of 2007". Seriously, yay. Onto the spending...

5/18/07
Publix:
Potato chips $2
Hamburger buns $1
(2) OJ $4
Heavy Whipping Cream $3 (we're making some ice cream!!!)
Cheddar cheese $2
Ground beef $4
total = $15.44

Lowe's:
total = $27.67
+ untold amounts of gas for 2 trips + blood, sweat & tears for what eventually amounted to nothing. blegh. At least we have 2 ramps for the pickup truck in case we ever actually need them. *sigh

Chevron:
Gas $20.01

5/19/07
Dairy Queen @ the mall:
Smoothie $4.25
Again for the Edemame but damn. If there is one thing this challenge is doing for me it's making "small" purchases extremely difficult for me. And that's a good thing. This was a purchase that could have been avoided if I had been more diligent about making sure that a grandparent outing did not go too long. Eating lunch at 2:30pm is fine for adults but not so nice for toddlers.

5/20/07
Publix: (is it any surprise that Edemame recognizes this logo??)
(2) Seltzer $1
Peanuts $2
Tomatoes $2
Garlic .30
Cucumbers $1
Milk $3.50
(2) Bread $6.60 (Damnit. This bread was supposed to be 2 for $5 and I missed it at the cash register. This is the kind of thing that pisses me off to no end. And the kind of thing I wouldn't have cared about last year because I wouldn't know due to never looking at my receipts. Gah.)
Broccoli $1.25
Zucchini $1.25
Corn $2
Chicken (whole) $5
(4) Publix brand soft drinks $1 (I thought I'd try them out!)
Ground beef $4.25
Eggs $2.25
total = $34.66

5/21/07
Costco:
Blueberries $5
Blackberries $6.50
Diapers $25
total = $38.44

Costco:
Gas $31.12 (only $2.91 per gallon!)

The Neighborhood Coffee Shop:
Steamed milk w/Vanilla $3

Ok, here's an oddity. I got the above drink for E when we stopped in to get espresso for the house. (Sorry Ronin they were out.) The reason this drink is one dollar more than the Caribou drink seen in a previous post? The tip. At an anonymous big chain store I am not likely to plunk down any money for tip. Frankly if they are pleasant to me at ALL I am just counting myself lucky and I don't feel obligated to give them 20% of my $2. Now that is not the case at my neighborhood place. They know me, they know Edemame. They call us by name when we go in there and we know their names too. I hesitated when I added the tip on for our $2 milk today. Not because I don't think they deserve it but because I'm focusing so hard on where every $1 goes. I try hard to patronize the locals because they are fighting so hard for existence but sometimes it is harder to part with that extra $1 or so. It's a tough call but one that I felt ok about today.

Tired, but Enlightened

Our car has several problems that we neglect on a daily basis. We'd like to actually fix them, but because of our poor budgeting, we tend to let the problems slide, which tends to get us into trouble. Yes, I'm sure you saw that one coming. I saw it, too.

We'll call the first problem, Problem # 1: After a minor accident, one of the back taillights to the Budget-mobile was slightly broken. The light actually worked, but the mounting bracket that held it in place was broken to the point that it would not hold the light in place. Without getting into painstaking detail, we tried several lame solutions to keep it "good enough" until we could afford to fix it. I'm not sure what money bestowing fairy was going to wish up this money for us, but we were fine with thinking that we could use duct-tape and bailing twine to keep it sort of anchored. The dealership told us a whole new light assembly would be a crisp $186.00.

Yesterday, the Budget Naginata was pulled over by one of our friendly Highway Patrols to inform us that all of our brakelights were out. All of them. Naginata excaped with a warning, but upon arriving home, I immediately began my ritual wearing of sackcloth and pouring ashes on my head. I lamented a horrible (and more importantly, expensive) problem that we couldn't solve.

But we agreed to sleep on it and look at it freshly in the morning. Since all of the lights were out, we thought it might be a fuse, so we consulted all of our manuals and the terribly mysterious series of tubes known as the "Internets" for a solution. We found the offending fuse and pulled it free, finding out that we were dead wrong. I felt defeated again, lamenting the broken taillight and our luck. Naginata refused to give up as easily and decided to check the lights themselves. One... two... three. Sure enough. They may not have busted all at once, but we verified each one was broken.

I hopped into my truck with the one new tire and headed to our local auto parts store. I wasn't going to let a few dollars get in the way of my family's safety.

$14.81. New lights installed and working. I even got over myself enough to jury rig a fairly solid temporary bracket. It involves some screws and a segment of PVC piping. I didn't think I could make it work, but it's almost as good as the actual bracket, aside from looking like a piece of PVC stuck between the light and the body of the car. Thankfully, it's hidden underneath the trunk, visable only when the door is open.

I consider this a win for the Budget Clan. You are contractually obligated to also consider this a win. Compliments are not required, but appreciated. If I get enough, I'll actually show you photos.

the daily spend 5-16 & 5-17

Just a few items but 2 of the same one. We have said before that we are leaving Edemame out of a lot of our restrictions. Budget Ronin works right next door to a *bucks (blegh but that's a post for another day.) There is a parking deck to his building but it costs $8 (!!!! I could buy some freaking GRAPES for gods sake.) to park there. So when we go downtown to see him we usually pop in at the *bucks and grab a coffee and then cross the street to his office. Now of course we are not buying the coffee but Edemame has no real restriction. I do want to change attitudes and habits with this experiment and we have not been visiting any coffee houses since it started, but Edemame asks to go to the "coffee shop" ALL the time, showing you just what a part of our lives it was. SO, all that to say that I am still occasionally buying her the odd "coffee" (steamed milk with vanilla). It's cheaper than paying $8 for a parking space and still a nice treat at roughly $1 for her.
Wow, defensive much?? :) On to the numbers...

5-16-07
Haircut for Edemame
total = $21.55
Coffee for Edemame @ *bucks
total = $1.03

5-17-07
Coffee for Edemame @ *bucks
total = $1.03

been a long time gone! the daily spend 5-10 - 5-15 edition

Hey guys!
I've been absent the past couple of days, lots of family and personal disruption so I'll get right to the bare bones of it and hopefully get back into the swing of things.

I actually haven't spent much the past few days but here it is for the record:
5-10-07
Citgo:
$12.03 fuel

5-11-07
BJs:
$25.01 fuel

Costco:
64oz of Strawberries
16oz of Blackberries
total = $11.31
We ended up there and the fruit was so good I couldn't pass it up. We have really enjoyed it all this weekend.

Thrift Store:
Pillow .50
total .52

I needed stuffing to fill the dolls I was making and I was pretty happy with myself for finding a pillow at the thrift store for less than a $1 when a bag of polyfil would set me back $1.35. I know it doesn't sound like much but when you add in the fact that the thrift store is within walking distance of my house and I'd have to drive 15 miles to the nearest Michael's to buy a bag, I saved some gas money there. And as you can see above, I need to save that gas money!!

5-13-07
.73 for a QT drink that I got to mix myself. (for the record: 1/2 Fanta Strawberry, 1/2 Squirt + 2 shots of Fountain Vanilla = YUM!) For me this is a ton of fun for almost no cash so Ronin and I agreed that it was OK.

I did end up making 2 dolls for birthday presents for Saturday. It was a LOT of work but it was fun making them and the girls really loved them. For Mother's Day it was hand drawn cards by Edemame for each Grandma and we had done some photo books on QOOP from our Flickr stream earlier in the year for this express purpose. So the cost of the books doesn't count against our experiment since I bought them in February. Though frankly they only cost $5.95 each and BOTH Grandma's cried so I guess you could say they were cheap at any price. ;)

Cheating Inside the Rules

Last night I, the Budget Ronin, required comfort food. Twenty odd days ago (wow... I almost can't believe it's been 20 days) I would have given in and would have had take-out or pizza delivered. Naginata, who is always very supportive, would have been right there with me and we would have enjoyed it until we suffered some sort of gastral distress.

Instead of that, I stopped on the way home from work at the local grocery store to find something for a fraction of the price. So here's the tale of the tape:

$7 for Sodas
$8 for Beer
$10 for Wine (you know, because I'll run out of Beer at some point)
$12 for Deli stuff (sandwich makings for the next couple of weeks)
$5 for icecream sandwiches
$6 for frozen pizza (this was the original target)
$5 for Chicken Broth
$3 for potatoes.

$57.52 for the total. Most of it was "decadent" and I didn't have coupons and bought name brand things. But all in all, we could have easily dropped this if we went out for a single night's dinner for the three of us, so I feel better knowing I ate my comfort food, have one backup pizza for later, and have lunch for the next week or so, depending on how high I pile my sandwich each morning.

That's all for now.

The Weekend Update

It's been a long weekend. Here's a short weekend roundup: On Friday, I donated $5 to the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation. It was an office fund raiser and a very worthy cause. I should have dontated more, but the standard donation was $5, so I chipped in my Lincoln. It wasn't altogether altruistic. The $5 also bought us the privilege of wearing jeans to work. There was some personal comfort involved, but the result was charitable, so I excused myself.

Saturday found us at a Birthday party for one of Budget Edamame's friends. The talented Budget Naginata crafted presents for the kids celebrating. Sure, it's cheaper, you say, but she's extremely good and it's the kind of cool you just can't buy (in my opinion).

The party was held at a local fire station, which was a real treat for the kids. It was also a good learning experience for the adults. I don't know how it is in your town, but around here, the fire stations are not given a budget for furniture or entertainment, they have to fund it all themselves. So if you have something you were planning to throw out that still has a few miles on it, please think of our valliant civil servants and call your local firestation to see if they could use that slightly used item. We immediately earmarked some stuff to donate that we had picked up over the weekend that was just going to sit in our storage area back at the house. Ok, this ends your public service announcement segment of today's post.

On Sunday, I filled up the Budget-mobile with $32 of gas. I think Naginata spent less than a dollar on a drink. She was thirsty and we'd just dealt with two sets of mothers, so I am not going to give her any grief about that, and I suggest none of you follow suite.

I hope that everyone had a happy Mother's Day. We tried to make it non-commercial by having family over and enjoying each other's company. Most of that worked out pretty well.

the daily spend 5-9-07

Today was grocery day here at the Budget household. I have forgotten to get orange juice for the last 2 trips to the store and Edemame was insistent that we HAVE TO HAVE SOME. So off to the store we went. Obviously I needed other things but it's nice that Edemame got to think it was all HER idea. :)
Items marked (nol) are "Not On List". I always make a list before I go to the store to minimize problems with "Now what did I need?" type mistakes. My list always includes estimated prices (and frankly, I'm pretty spot on since I do the majority of the grocery shopping) and my total before I went to the store was $56. Tonight I neglected to put food for our cookout dinner on the list but I went ahead and bought it anyway and I was STILL under budget. 'Cause that's how I roll y'all.

ETA: In the sense of all fairness I have to say that I put the big thing of cat food on my list: $14 and I actually bought the smaller one: $8 so much of my under budgetness was because of that.

Publix:
Potato Chips: $2 (nol)
Hamburger Buns: $2 (nol)
Hot Dog Buns: $2 (nol)
Turkey Franks: $2 (nol)
(I feel like that kid in Better Off Dead, "TWO DOLLARS!")
Ground Beef: $4
Ground Chicken: $3
(4)Diced Tomatoes: $$2
Orange Juice: $4
Colby Jack Cheese: $2 (nol)
(2)Butter: $5
(2) Milk: $5
Oil: $3
Cat Food: $8
Cat Litter: $9
Total = $53.82

the daily spend 5-8-07

I'm running out of cutesy things to call the daily spend...oooh that's what I'll call it! Ok! Only one tiny item today and some might say it was unnecessary but I say, YOU take a toddler to a coffee shop so you can talk to your good friend who just graduated from law school so you haven't seen her in 6 months and try to tell the toddler that she can't have any "coffee" and see how well THAT goes over. whew. It was a nice treat for her since we have cut the weekly coffee binges down to never. All that to say:

Caribou Coffee:
$2.21

How was YOUR day?

All pumped up.

The saga of the Hot Tub continues. We will not be making a princely sum off of it, as we hoped, but we will be making something. The repairman told us the pump is shot, meaning we would have to drop a good 60% of our asking price for the whole set to get it repaired. Meaning, we won't repair it. The only good to come of this is that we have a sympathetic buyer. A relative of this blog's own Budget Naginata wants to not only buy the tub, but buy the broken motor unit. We've left it up to him whether or not he'll repair the unit or get a new one, but we can get maybe 30% of our asking price on the tub from him for just the tub alone, which is money we previously didn't have. So a bit of cash and a big unused eyesore out of our back yard equals happier Budget Clan. Again, I was hoping to get more and do something more along the lines of a treat for us, but I'll take what I can get and look forward to getting some needed home repairs done.

We are reviewing some ideas, some plans to get keep us on track. At this point we have 358 days left and it's already not easy, but talking about it and being vigilant has keep us motivated and strong.

I'm probably going to post some urls that have given me pause to think about better ways to do and try things. I'm hoping that we can beg, borrow and/or modify some of these to our own challenge in a way that proves beneficial to the whole Clan.

5-7-07 bought

I know it's early in the day to have bought something but there it is. :)

Gas : $20
Butter : $4.27 (Yes I know I paid $1 more than I could have if I had gone to Publix but I bought it at the Farmers Market around the block.)

I have been cleaning out our house with the help of Ronin. It's been a dusty mess of a clean out but I am feeling good about it. I think once we get a little further in we'll see some progress on the decorating front. Instead of the cleaning out from under front. Yay! Part of this whole process for me is pulling out what I don't use and making sure I have enough of what I do use. This can be tough when you save every damn thing. My pack rat tendencies are getting better but they are still there. Sometimes it takes two or three purges for me to get rid of something but I usually do it. And if it stays then I obviously really wanted it.

Off to bake cookies! Yum!

5-04-07 more boughten things...

It's interesting now writing down spending. I feel like we are buying things all the time. They are all needed, groceries, health items, shoes for Budget Edemame, but still it feels like I'm in the store all the time. Poor Edemame doesn't understand the new emphasis on things we already have. I have noticed that we, ok I, am bad about buying her a "little thing" whenever we are in a store somewhere. In the drugstore on Friday she wanted a little brush and it was only a $1 but I just said "We already have one at home" (which we do of course due to me buying one in a similar situation before) and I think she was really confused by the attitude switch. Which just points out to me that we have already started letting her know that shopping is fun and I'm glad that we are doing this experiment so that maybe we can break some of that attitude now. It's much harder when you are 36. (I just looked back over this post and dang, run on sentences much??? Sorry guys!)

Sprong (www.sprongshoes.com)
Budget Edemame has outgrown all her shoes. :(
1 pair of Keen shoes, size 10 (40% off!!!!!) $50
total = $32.40

I know some of you might think that is way too much for kids shoes and truthfully I don't usually pay that much but my daughter has feet much like mine (no arch, insanely wide, narrow heel) and it's hard to find shoes that fit her at all much less ones that are made well enough that they won't fall apart after she uses them once. Not to mention ones that are comfortable enough that she actually wants to wear them which I have always had a problem with as well. So it's an expense that we budget for.

Walgreens
Suave Shampoo $2.50
Medicated Shampoo $9.00 (So freaking expensive. But we have to have it. *sigh)
total = $12.17

Not doing too bad so far. I am working on putting together projects that have long been neglected. I'm also trying to teach myself some new skills. Anyone got any embroidery tips?? I tried some the other night and I agreed with Budget Ronin that "deranged monkeys" is not good for a kids pillow. "Can't sleep monkeys will eat me!"
Back to the grindstone!

A lot of hot water...

So, in the spirit of keeping with the Naginata, I'm listing $26.37 for gas for my truck and about $15 for fuses for our fusebox. Yes, our house is old enough to have a fusebox. I blew them after hooking back up our hot tub in order to test it before selling it. Here's the story on that...

Naginata and I have been working on cleaning, streamlining and fixing up the house. It's a good pursuit, and there is plenty to keep us busy since we've decided to curtail extraneous consumption. It's a nice change of focus to make us thankful for what we already have and to give us the chance to get it in better shape. I have complained for some time that it feels like we "don't have anything," when in fact we're quite blessed to have a lot. It's time to take stock of it and leverage things we don't need/use in productive ways.

Out hot tub came with the house. We've used it only a handful of times. In fact, it has been drained empty for the better part of two years, now, and it occurred to me that we could sell it for some extra income and to help us in the clean up of our house. But before we can sell it, I wanted to make sure it worked, so I filled it back up and ran the system overnight. I figured if it was in good condition, we could make a fair amount off of the sale.

Well, we had arranged some of our appliances differently since we last ran the tub, so the resulting addition of 30+ amps to that circuit blew out the fuse. I went through two before I realized what was going on. I unplugged some things and got it back on, but we had to get some new fuses to replace those lost in the line of duty. The next morning, even though the system looks to be running, we still don't have warm water. We look at the options of either repairing the motor and sell the full working system (which we think will still net us a better price, even though we would have to invest something up front) or we sell it as is and expect to recoup less. We decide that the small hassle is better for more money. We also discuss putting a ceiling on how much we think its worth to repair vs. how much we think it's worth to junk and just sell the tub. It's not worth our time to repair the motor for 50-60% of our total asking price when the remaining 40% is what we'd sell the broken tub for anyway. But a repair that's 10-20% would give us a better price and overall improve our cash return.

The repairman now has our motor and is supposed to return an estimate soon. I'm planning on calling him in a bit to see if it is worth our money. Naginata and I talked about what this means and ways that we should look at income like this. We don't have a stack of hot tubs to sell, so we shouldn't expect this as steady income. In the past we would have split it up and had fun with it. We probably would have eaten a lot of take out or go to a few good restaurants. Under our new, self-imposed restrictions, those options are off the table, making us really examine how money like this should be best applied.

We came up with home repair. There are a couple of things that we need fixed around the house that require the touch of a professional. Assuming we can come close to what we're looking to list the tub for, it would give us more than enough to get that fixed up. This is the kind of thing we should have been doing all along. If we had figured out a better savings schema, we wouldn't have had to sell our hot tub just to get these things fixed. Mind you, we don't need the tub. We're selling it because we don't need it. The cash is an exceptionally nice fringe benefit that lets us do things we should have been responsible enough to tackle anyways.

I may sound like a broken record, but I say these things because I need to reinforce in my own mind that it shouldn't take selling off my possessions at a fraction of cost to supplement my income. We have the resources already, we just manage them badly. Inasmuch as I'd like to save as much money as possible between now and next Mayday, I'm taking this time to rewire my brain into handling this money better when it is given to me the first time around. I'm going to go back to the food analogy I started way back when. I read something this week that talked about not using exercise as either a punishment or reward for food you had eaten recently. I'd like to draw the parallel back to finance. I don't think the budget or the budgetary restriction should be viewed like a punishment. When you do that, you tend to see temporary cash gains as a means to grant yourself with a reward. But once you've sold the hot tub and spent the cash on comic books and penny whistles, what have you gained? I'm thinking on that quite a bit while I wait for the call of the repairman.

05-02-2007 Groceries

Well I went to 2 different stores, Whole Foods & Publix. It's interesting to me that there is a financial component to eating well. Or at least eating organically. I had to choose today between 2 gallons of milk or 1 gallon of organic milk for the same price. Sadly I went financial and bought the 2 gallons which of course were not organic.

I did buy a muffin at Whole Foods which technically I probably shouldn't have bought. I excuse myself by saying that I bought it for Budget Edemame (who did eat most of it) but really I should not be buying expensive ($1.69) muffins when I could just as easily make them at home for a fraction of the price and then she gets to make them WITH me. So.

I'm not sure what my "punishment" is for stuff like that, other than to tell you guys so that if I continue at least I have the open shame of admitting it to others. Let's go to the lists!

Whole Foods:
2 Greek Yogurts $4
Muffin $2
Grapefruit (3) $2.25
2 Dr. Bronner's Soap $16
total = $25
I only went to Whole Foods to get the soap. The yogurt was not on my list though the grapefruit was on my Publix list. So $6 is a bit wayward. I need to get in and get out. If it's not on the list DO NOT BUY IT.

Publix:
Laughing Cow cheese $3
Chedder cheese $3
mushrooms $2
roast beef $5.50
zucchini $1.50
carrots $1.50
eggs $2
romaine lettuce $3
(2) milk $5
sugar $2.50
celery $1.50
drinks $10 (We went back on the soda. As a friend says, "hey at least it's not crack")
grapes $8 (DAMN!!! I didn't even look at this one until I was typing this. That is hella costly. Smaller bag of grapes next time. 2.34lbs @ 2.99 per, sheesh.)
snow peas $2.50
(2) juice $4
cauliflower $1.50
(3) jello $2.50
(2 pkgs) chicken $5.50
total = $66.01
Everything I bought was on my list except for the drinks. I got the juice because I like it when they do the Adam & Eve or Northlands 100% cranberry juices 2 for 1. Then I stock up. The Ronin can attest that we never run out of "red juice" as Edemame likes to call it. The grapes were a shock but not until I got home. I need to be careful of grabbing things and NOT WEIGHING them before I decide which bag I'm getting. That may very well be a good price for grapes but I don't want to spend my frugal grocery money on grapes when I could get 2 things for $4 with that money. I could have gotten lemons or oranges or tomatoes, (none of these things looked good today at the store but the point remains) or just spent 4 less dollars. So lesson for next time. :)

5-01-07 boughten things...

Gas $31.06 (OMG. That's only 3/4 of a tank.)
$1 - juice box for my kid (the adorable Budget Edemame) at a (shudder) McDonald's so that she had a drink and we could use the bathroom without me feeling guilty. Damn if they haven't jacked all the prices up in there. A bottle of water was $1.35???? jeez.

So far so good. Any advice on avoiding the juice buying in the future? I am going to stock a small cooler in the car with stuff and I always appreciate tips. Goldfish and water are obvious. Anything you love that's shelf stable and not full of disgusting chemicals?