New Year, New Post

So I failed miserably last year at keeping up this blog. I decided to make it private for now, since I am not sure if I'll keep posting this year on a regular basis. Anyways, today I am posting about a specific goal that I have for this year. This past Christmas was hectic and expensive. Due to some things that happened last year, we really didn't have any money saved up for gifts, and a lot of our Christmas was put on credit cards ;( =\. Sad and mad at myself as this the opposite direction of what I was hoping for. But there is nothing to be done but to move on and keep plugging away.

This year I have decided I am going to make a plan. My goal is to have saved at least $500 for Christmas this coming year. This does not have to be $500 in cash..it can include gift certificates, gift cards, etc. I am starting out well so far:

$15 in cash
$10 Walmart gift card
$20 Discover gift card (should be credited and received in the next month)
=$45 so far, as of January 7th, 2012

That leaves me with $455 to go. I plan to save $10 in cash a month, put $10 on the Walmart gift card each month, earn a $20 every 4 months on average from Discover (by paying for things with my card and then immediately paying them off). That will take care of another $300 off my total, leaving me with $155 to come up with. I am saving my points on MyPoints.com. I am halfway to a $50 gift card to Walmart and if all goes well I should be able to redeem that in time for Christmas. I should be able to make up the remaining $105 through rebates, extra saving, etc.

I think this plan is do-able and hope to update this blog once a month with my progress.

Swagbucks

Tax Rebate

Tax time has come and gone for our family. As of yesterday, our tax rebate from the govt. has arrived. I have paid off one medical bill, we will pay off a small loan, and possibly another bill, though I am trying to find a way to pay it through our regular monthly budget. I will be going to the bank and putting $1,000 into a savings account, and another almost $2000 has gone into our home equity line of credit, and that has pretty much taken care of the rebates we have received. Hubby gets paid this Friday and I am planning on finding someplace nice and quiet (library maybe?) where I can work on getting our budget and bills under control so that we can start climbing our way our of this hole we are in. I just need to "keep my eye on the prize" and not let little temptations get in my way.

I screwed up :( Or, How NOT to be frugal...Lesson #1

Not intentionally, but I made a major goof this past week. I pay pretty much all of my bills online, and I have a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of what I paid, how much, and when. Apparently I must have gotten distracted while paying bills last time, and though I marked that I paid a couple of items, I either did not copy down the confirmation numbers, or something happened and my file did not save properly. As usual, I checked my bank account, and could not find record of my payments clearing (because they usually don't take more than a day or two to clear), checked the websites I used to pay these items, and nothing was showing up...so what did I do? Yep, I paid them again. Imagine how horrified I was to check the bank a day or so later to find 2 sets of double charges to my account to the tune of about $240!!! This in turn did cause me to go into overdraft to the tune of $30 in fees. Thank God it was only that one item though...otherwise it could have been drastically different. Unfortunately because I was not expecting to pay an extra $240 in bills, I have had to do some scrounging around and making changes to what is getting paid and when. We should be all caught up by next pay period, and nothing will be paid late, but it still irks me. Also to add to this, DH needed new glasses and unfortunately he couldn't wait. So there is another $300 that I will have to pay off. *sigh* We did try Zenni Optical online for his last set, and while we liked the look and the price, we found out that they could not be repaired. The screws that they used rusted and no place we tried could get them out :( Plus, DH's prescription is really strong, so it takes more than 3 weeks to get them because they have to have them made specially..and he couldn't wait that long due to the drastic change in his prescription.

Now, I do have a bit of good news in all of this. Rather unexpectedly, a loan that I thought we still had to pay on for another year was paid off in December. I had called the bank to find out if they had received my payment (another one of those missing payments I was checking into), only to be told that our check had either been returned to the bank it was issued from, or they had shredded it, because our account was paid in full! So that is $200 more a month that I can use. My plan is to give myself an extra $50 which goes towards gas, food, all those extras that come with having kids in school, etc. $25 will go to DH for some hobby plane of his that he wants to build, and the extra $125 will go to savings. I would love to put it towards bills, but as we currently have NO savings, I would feel much better getting that started. As the bills get paid down/off, I can split more between the two.

Just a couple of random things

This month has been really rough. Thankfully my DH gets paid tomorrow but there have been some extra unexpected bills or bills that were higher than normal, and after my trip to the store this morning to pick up a few items we are down to pennies in the bank account. It seems to be at times like this that I really miss having extra money to do with as I please. But I think I've found a solution. It all came about when I got a $5 gift card to Panera in the mail this week. I received it as a survey reward, and of course my first instinct was to hurry up and spend it *blush*.

But I didn't.

I know that in order to get out of the debt we are in, there are going to be many more months like this, and that it is going to be a while before I am going to have any $ that isn't going towards bills or other expenses. In looking forward and planning ahead, I'm choosing to save my gift card (and my Borders gift card I got from my dad for Christmas) for those times that I know are coming. Those times when I am bound to be down and depressed over not being able to splurge on myself. Maybe it sounds selfish, but I do think that everyone needs to treat themselves to something now and then..it doesn't have to be anything expensive, but sometimes a $5 pick-me-up is necessary. Sure, I could probably save something for those times, and I will probably try to do that, but I since I'm still feeling energized over slaying this debt dragon, I'd rather use it on the times when I just need that little extra push to keep me going!

One other thing I am doing today to help curb the "buy buy buy"s is to make my own flavored coffee mix. Now, I love me some Starbucks just like most people tend to do. But let's face it..it's expensive. And as much as I wanted to hit that drive thru for a cafe mocha (my favorite), instead I have decided to make up a batch of Fireside Coffee Mix. I made this before Christmas for my sons' teachers at school and I tried it myself. To my immense happiness, I found I really liked it. Sure, it cost a little bit more to make up the batch, but I can get at least 10x more from this mix than I could get at Starbucks, and the price for the mix is about the same as a venti-sized drink. Since one of my goals this year is to depend less on convenience foods and to make more from scratch, I'd say this falls into that category as well!

Menu Plan 1/22-1/28

I'm sure people have heard about this time and time again, but one thing that really helps us to save money is to plan a weekly (or however long) menu plan. I happened to look at our finances this mornining and I have approximately $30 left for the next week and that has to somehow cover gas for DH's car. Hopefully I will not need any $ for anything. We had some unexpected bills this pay period and some bills were a bit higher as well.

So my goal is to plan a menu that will get us through this next week:

Friday-
Breakfast: pancakes
Lunch: grilled cheese sandwiches
Dinner: Beef stir fry w/rice

Saturday-
Breakfast: eggs and sausage
Lunch: homemade pizza
Dinner: steaks w/sauteed mushrooms and onions, mashed potatoes, veggie

Sunday-
Breakfast: pancakes or muffins
Lunch: Mac & cheese
Dinner: hamburgers with homemade oven fries

Monday-
Breakfast: muffins
Lunch:
Dinner: Pork roast w/veggies

Tuesday-
Breakfast: sausage "mc"muffins
Lunch:
Dinner: Texas Hash

Wednesday-
Breakfast: pancakes or muffinsjavascript:void(0)
Lunch: leftover Texas Hash
Dinner: Spaghetti

Thursday-
Breakfast: whatever is here
Lunch: leftover spaghetti
Dinner: pork chops, couscous, veggies

First debt to pay off

in the amount of $459.75 is my account with LensCrafters. I opened this account well over a year ago..my glasses broke and there was no way to possibly save them. We had no funds to replace them and this was the only way I knew to be able to purchase new ones. Unfortunately I never made much headway and have only been paying the minimum payments. My goal is to have it paid off within the next 6 months.