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?
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, May 7, 2007
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!
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!
Sunday, May 6, 2007
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!
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!
Friday, May 4, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
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. :)
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. :)
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
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?
$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?
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