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Archive for August, 2006

First Month's Totals

September 1st, 2006 at 04:49 am

I feel very confident I wrote down everything spent this month.

Totals:
Groceries: $451.41
Eating out: 166.80
Household: $402.64
Auto exp: $1,875.73
Personal Care: $88.52
Pet: $64.97
Gifts: 472.88
Family Fun $141.44

The family fun was high due to high school reunion costs. The Household was high due to a new vacuum and new crockpot and the auto was high due to new tired, alignment and radiator on the old truck and air condtioning work on Volvo.

I did an enventory of my pantry and have so much food I could probably feed us dinners for 3 months from our pantry/freezer... well maybe not three months, but 2! So I will be doing a personal pantry challenge.

I was a bit surprised at our eating out. We had two dinners out and the rest was crap lunches and coffee. Definetely need to work on this. Our anniversary and Dh's birthday is next week, so this will be a challenge.

Need to consider goals for September.

It's My Turn!

August 31st, 2006 at 10:25 pm

I read about people finding money and think why not me?? Well today I am cleaning off my desk and find a Christmas card from my mother with $25.00 in it! I think I am going to hide it in my drawer!

Another ER visit/Coupon Capitulation!

August 29th, 2006 at 04:34 am

Yes YD's throat was even worse yesterday so DH came home from work and off to the ER we went again. This time they ordered antibiotics finally. Her throat was one big mass in the back....

Didn't bring her insurance card and off we went to the pharmacy to find out the difference was $50.00 without insurance and her copay of $3.00. I went home and got her card and dropped her and DH off.

Of course the prescription did not get processed until I came back with the card. So I starated wandering around the drug store and found a coupon book with a coupon for $1.00 off Aquafresh. Wait didn't I just see Aquafresh on sale for 99 cents this morning in their Sunday ad??

Now before finding this site, I would not have even been looking for coupons or coupons books. Well indeed I was right, except the toothpaste is on sale Thursday through Saturday... so anyone with a Long's Drug Store, look for the in store coupon book and head over to get your free toothpaste.

Then I had DH pick up a SF Chronicle so I could check out if it would be worth it to buy the Sunday paper.

So tonight I am cutting all the coupons out and figuring out what I will actually use and will send the rest on to Flash. I may be capitulating soon.....now how does the train sork???

An Actual No Spend Day/Crockpot died!

August 26th, 2006 at 03:40 pm

Yesterday was a no spend day finally. This morning started out with no half and half (a necessity in our house), so DH ran to expensive Safeway and bought a half gallon $3.79! It's way cheaper at Costco or Winco where we usually buy it.

After reading Diva Jen's latest blog entry, I think her idea of planned spending would work better for us. We don't buy a lot of food at once and it seems like we always need something. Town is 15 miles away and so DH does a lot of shopping for us.

Today our planned spending includes a new crockpot that happens to be on sale at the local department store with a 10% off coupon. For $29.99 (-10%) we will get a 5 quart, plus a little tiny crockpot free.

The lentil soup on Wednesday was not done after "cooking" all day so I think it is time. Having thought about it, I think our crockpot has got to be at least 15 years old!

I'm looking forward to some easy, yummy crockpot meals in the fall/winter.

I entered all the past 10 days of spending into Quicken. It will be interesting to see how the first month's spending will turn out. We did have several purchases this month that were unusual including new tires and radiator for our 89 Chevy truck, a new vacuum and now the crockpot.

Another Day, Another ER visit.

August 25th, 2006 at 04:46 am

Today is YD's birthday and she woke up with such swollen tonsils she was having real trouble. So off to the ER we go again. Thank goodness she has good insurance through her husband. Her two presriptions, steroids and pain pills were $3.00 each.

Spending:
08/21-
$1.00 coffee
$8.10 post office (mailed pkg to Iraq)
$44.51 Winco for groceries

08/22
$11.70 to Walgreens for a big bottle of Advil Migraine.
$3.21 to local movie rental for 3 movies for sick YD.

08/23
$19.70 to Safewday

Today:
$9.50 for cake for YD (What happened to me baking cakes??)
$32.00 carry out Chinese food (what YD wanted and let's face it she is sick as a dog so whatever she will eat, we'll get).

Advil Migraine Geltabs are expensive, but they really do work better than anything else I have tried and FAST!

Plenty of leftover take-out for lunch tomorrow. DH ate his carnitas that he brought home from hunting since he didn't want it to go to waste.

DH made lentil soup in the crockpot yesterday, unfortunately it did not cook all the way through, even though part of the day it was on high. It was definitely hot, but not hot enough to cook so I guess this means I need a new one.

Local dept store has a big one with matching little one on sale for $29.99. May end up getting that tomorrow when I take YD in to town for yet another doctor's appointment. Her pediatrician office kicked her out when she got married. Then came the ER visits and she needed followup liver tests, etc since they were elevated from the mono.

I guess I better make a list of errands to run in town since I don't go that often.

Weekend spending

August 21st, 2006 at 05:40 am

We ended up spending Saturday afternoon in the emergency room with YD who turns out to have mononucleosis of all things. That ends her soccer season and brings into question her semester of college starting in another week.

Luckily she is covered with military insurance now so the ER didn't cost us anything, but DH ran to get her a bagel during the ordeal and then stopped to get her a sandwich on the way home since we were going to our high school reunion.

We spent $30.00 on drinks at the open bar and had a good time catching up with old friends. I went to the reunion breakfast this morning that was $11.00. DH got up at 5:00 to go back up into the mountains to hunt.

I worked all afternoon and fried zucchini from mom's garden and had leftover chicken thighs DH brought home from his first few days out hunting.

So total for the weekend: %54.50 plus whatever DH's gas fill-up was.

No wonder it was in the clearance bowl!

August 19th, 2006 at 05:00 pm

With my high school reunion tonight I have been on the lookout for something to make my hair look thicker.

I was at a salon and found Nioxin Niogel "for fine and thin looking hair" in the clearance bowl of stuff.

I tried it out this morning and it STINKS! I don't think I have ever smelled any hair stuff so stinky other than T-gel shampoo maybe. I paid $5.00 for it. I wonder how much it really costs?? I have to admit it did fluff up my hair pretty well though.

Crazy Day!

August 19th, 2006 at 06:30 am

Okay I have a hair appt for a trim. I work hard to get my work done before I run into town.

I stop work at 3:00, get ready to go, stop and pick up my paycheck and pick up a coffee. I get to the hair salon about 15 minutes early for my 4:30 appt. Well no my appointment was at 9:30, not 4:30. I wanted to cry. This is the second time I have missed my appointment becaus

Crazy Day!

August 19th, 2006 at 06:29 am

Okay I have a hair appt for a trim. I work hard to get my work done before I run into town.

I stop work at 3:00, get ready to go, stop and pick up my paycheck and pick up a coffee. I get to the hair salon about 15 minutes early for my 4:30 appt. Well no my appointment was at 9:30, not 4:30. I wanted to cry. This is the second time I have missed my appointment because I didn't have the correct time. In this case I think my 9:30 looked like 4:30 to me!! I swear my hairdresser is going to fire me.

So I am desperate and run down to Master Cuts at the mail. It takes the young hairesser about 3 minutes to trim my very thin hair. How much I ask?? She says $5.00. I gave her a $9.00, a $5.00 bill and 4 $1.00 bills.

Then I go get Nexus shampoo, then onto Costco where I purchased a new vacuum cleaner and two of their chicken cesaer salads. Oh and picked up my first Costo downloaded photos. We downloaded a picture of YD and new husband made into wallet sizes to put into their thank you cards.

I totaled my 1/2 month purchases and am a little shocked!

Groceries $263.72!
Eating out $31.39
Car expenses $963.33!!! 4 new tires for truck, air conditioning fixed in YD's car.
Personal care $69.00 (Bare Essentuals)
Household $54.50 (pets and miscellaneous)
Movies $15.00 (Not going to do that again anytime soon.)

Anyway today's spending certainly didn't help the end of the month totals!

Oh well, this is why I stared writing things down to see where it all went. I guess I'm finding out!

Spend day

August 18th, 2006 at 06:41 am

After two no spend days, I needed to go to the grocery store.

YD has not been feeling well so I wanted to make something she would like for dinner and I decided on tortolini soup.

All I needed was the tortolini and spinach. I also purchased 3 bananas, and Safeway croutons that were 2/$3.00.

So spending today;
Safeway $13.45
Dollar Store $8.07
Video Store $3.22

Our locally owned video store offers older movies 3 for $3.00, 4 for $4.00, etc. I picked up three movies I knew my husband would not enjoy since he is gone hunting.

I went to the Dollar Store to pick up a couple of birthday cards and ended up finding three new toys for my dog and a couple of nice picture frames.

I am surprised I have only had two no spend days this month. Between myself and my husband we have spent money every day except August 15 and 16 and that is probably because DH is up in the mountains somewhere!

This was my fourth day of a headache, from migraine to nagging. Hopefully tomorrow I will wake up with no head pain.

My First Blog!

August 17th, 2006 at 12:44 am

Well I've been opening my big mouth replying to everyone else's blogs. So I guess it's time to start my own.

First of all I want to thank everyone who participates in the blogs and forums. The blogs are very helpful in keeping me on track and giving me new ideas to save money.

My original reason for wanting to start the blog is to keep track of my spending.

DH and I are at life crossroads with our last little moocher moving out in December across the country from California to North Carolina to set up housekeeping and wait for her DH to come home from Iraq. We are moving her as soon as her college semester is over so she can start the Spring semester in NC.

The last year has been an expensive one for us buying a house with OD, loaning MD $15,000 to buy a house and paying for YD's wedding that we had 13 days to plan!!

My husband and I are both self-employed. It's easy to work too much because I get paid by what I produce (medical transcription).

My goals are to be more organized with finances (and life in general) and actually have dinner ready when DH gets home once in a while.

It goes without saying, I want to get the most for my money based on my values and our "codependent" family's needs.