So, my pantry challenge is coming along nicely. Ethan had soup for lunch today and I had chicken salad. Between the two of us we removed two more cans from the pantry and one container (of veggies) from the frig. Now granted, there was some soup left over, but he's only 20 months old I can't expect him to eat an entire can of soup, half a can of veggies, and half a can of chicken!
So I did buy some groceries today to make spaghetti sauce with the meat that I defrosted from my freezer. I plan on now for the next two weeks focusing on only buying one or two ingredients for each recipe I want to make so that I can continue to widdle down our stock pile.
In the meantime I have gotten serious about shopping for sales! My friend Betsy showed me last week how to look up sale flyers from our local grocery stores online. I don't have time to clip coupons, but I am always online and it just takes a few seconds to pull each store's ads up and plan my menu from there. I even pulled up Walmart's flyer this morning and found Gala apples on sale for .99 a pound!
She also sent me cool blog sites where these SAHMs write about their serious coupon habits! One of the best ones was about this family who was living on $1500 a year for groceries, medical co-pays, and one other category. Sadly thier blog has been removed from the internet because of threats to the family. How weird is that? Anyway, one of the cool things she had on her blog was a maximum price list for things she often bought at the grocery store. You could tell she was really intense because a lot of the maximum prices were $0.00. She acheived those prices through sales, coupons, and stores that double your coupons (who knew?).
I tried to start my own price book to get an idea what normal, sale, and over priced prices look like, but since I lean towards the technology end in all areas of my life I've decided to start my own price book in an excel spread sheet. The neat thing is that it will show me the max price, min price, and average price for the things I buy most often at the grocery store. You can even have a look at what I have so far.
Let me know if you find some good deals in the Knoxville area and I'll add them to my sheet.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Pantry Challenge!
Recently the Flylady inspired me to de-clutter my life and I'm starting with my pantry. In a few weeks I'm going out of town and I want to make sure Philip has plenty of meals in the freezer before I go. To do this I'm going to do a bit of power cooking on Friday. This just means that I will spend the day cooking, assembling and prepping for 10-20 meals for our family and then freezing them until later in the month.
Part of my plan for having enough money to buy all the groceries I need for these meals (and for decluttering my pantry) is that I am taking a pantry challenge. I am a hoarder of food and I can't remember the last time I could see the back of my pantry. So this week I have challenged myself to feed the family only from what I have in the pantry and freezer. Surprisingly this is way easier than I thought it would be, and I might be able to go for two weeks!
So far I have these meals planned:
Other than milk, tea, and pastry for the chicken pot pie I have not spent any of our grocery money yet this week. Yeah!
Part of my plan for having enough money to buy all the groceries I need for these meals (and for decluttering my pantry) is that I am taking a pantry challenge. I am a hoarder of food and I can't remember the last time I could see the back of my pantry. So this week I have challenged myself to feed the family only from what I have in the pantry and freezer. Surprisingly this is way easier than I thought it would be, and I might be able to go for two weeks!
So far I have these meals planned:
- Today I made muffins for Ethan's snack and lunches
- I also made Jello jigglers to use up some of the Jello I had in the pantry
- Tonight we will have Breakfast for dinner (waffles, pancakes, etc.)
- Tuesday will be spaghetti from the pantry with garlic toast (made from bread we have already)
- Wednesday will be chicken pot pie from the freezer
- Thursday we will have leftovers
Other than milk, tea, and pastry for the chicken pot pie I have not spent any of our grocery money yet this week. Yeah!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Happy Mardi Gras!!
Happy Mardi Gras everyone!
On Saturday we threw our first annual Mardi Gras bash and it was a blast. In anticipation of the big day we made red beans and rice on Thursday, chicken and sausage gumbo and chicken fricasse on Friday and crawfish etoufee on Saturday right before the party. Here is a picture of Ethan shoveling down his first bowl of gumbo!
After we ate all of the good food (including a tipsy cake and hurricane punch) we played Rock Band.
Our friends Betsy and Ethan couldn't come on Saturday night so they came over on Sunday with all of their kidllets:
Here they all are watching Cinderella. Don't worry about the boys, they only sat there for a few minutes.
I promised to post all of our recipes up here, so I've just made a new post called Cajun recipes. I also tried my hand tonight at my first King Cake. Meche's no longer delivers anymore and this was going to be my first year with out any! My grandfather emailed me a recipe that inspired me and I tried to make it Saturday. Unfortuneatly I forgot to set a timer and ended up with a burnt cake :( Tonight I tried my hand at a more traditional recipe:
I'll let you if it tastes as good as it looks!
On Saturday we threw our first annual Mardi Gras bash and it was a blast. In anticipation of the big day we made red beans and rice on Thursday, chicken and sausage gumbo and chicken fricasse on Friday and crawfish etoufee on Saturday right before the party. Here is a picture of Ethan shoveling down his first bowl of gumbo!
After we ate all of the good food (including a tipsy cake and hurricane punch) we played Rock Band.
Our friends Betsy and Ethan couldn't come on Saturday night so they came over on Sunday with all of their kidllets:
Here they all are watching Cinderella. Don't worry about the boys, they only sat there for a few minutes.I promised to post all of our recipes up here, so I've just made a new post called Cajun recipes. I also tried my hand tonight at my first King Cake. Meche's no longer delivers anymore and this was going to be my first year with out any! My grandfather emailed me a recipe that inspired me and I tried to make it Saturday. Unfortuneatly I forgot to set a timer and ended up with a burnt cake :( Tonight I tried my hand at a more traditional recipe:
I'll let you if it tastes as good as it looks!
Friday, February 20, 2009
Bills, Budget, and Cash, Oh My!
Since our debt-free scream two weeks ago quite a few people have asked us, "How did you do it?" People have not been asking in awe so much as the are curious about the details of becoming debt free. I thought I'd share our methods with all of you out there in blogger land.
Baby Steps: We did follow Dave's baby step plan:
No credit cards: After attending Dave's live show we saved up $1,000, cut up our credit cards and have not had one since. Well, I did have one that I got from Amazon because of a "deal", but that one ended up biting me in the butt. I got the card when I purchased something online and a couple of months later still had not received a statement. Little did I know the "Amazon" card was really a Chase card and anything we were receiving from Chase at the time went straight in the garbage. Yeah... I canceled that card and haven't been tempted by "special offers" since! Philip still has a credit card that is through his employer, and it is only used for travel expenses.
Budget: We do live by a budget that we set up in an excel Google Doc so that Philip and I can both view and edit it. This budget has looked different over the last four years, but currently we are working from one that is my creation because I do most of the updating. I do set up a new worksheet for every month because our budget changes a little each month (you only buy a Christmas tree once a year). I have Philip's income listed on the left and all of our bills under that. My income is listed off to the side because we don't use it on bills and it use to go straight to (after tithe) pay off our debt. I've posted a sample here with some FAKE numbers so you can get the idea. I haven't run the percentages in a while, but I may do that soon and share that info too.
Once a month I transfer a set amount of money to my USAA account (the "bills" line item) and I pay all of our monthly bills online through thier free service. It is way cool because I only write one check a month, the rest comes straight from them and I never have to buy stamps!
The envelope system: We do use the super cool envelope wallet that Dave sells. Once a month I go to the ATM to get out cash for the following envelopes:
Why use cash? I know most people don't see the point in using cash instead of a debit card, but here are a few of my thoughts. Research shows that you spend 15% more when you use a debit card. Counting out cash and handing it to someone has emotional consequences, swiping a card just doesn't have the same effect. A new study that just came out even showed that people spend 50% more with credit cards that have point programs.
I love using cash because I don't have to keep up with how much I've been spent so far in a month. When I look into an envelope I know exactly how much I have left and at the end of the month there are no surprises! It really is a passive way of controlling your spending.
Other expenses: For gas, pets, and medical needs we use our debit cards. We have found that in these areas we are never tempted to spend above what is needed and I base my budget on what the need has been over the last few months. Just recently I got to cut down our gas line item because I realized I was over budgeting since gas prices have fallen. I'm sure over the summer I'll have to tweak that a little as prices start to rise again.
I hope this sheds some light on the nitty-gritty of how we handle our finances and defeated our debt. I am more than willing to answer anyone's questions, so if you have any please send them to me! Another thing that we do that is a lot of fun is that we don't spend any change. Well, I do think Philip does, but I don't when I'm shopping and such. Then every couple of months we have about $80 or so that we can "give away". Lots of fun!
Baby Steps: We did follow Dave's baby step plan:
- Save $1,000 to use for emergencies after you cut up your credit cards. (For single men or women this amount is lowered to $500.)
- Get out of debt using the "snow ball" method. Focus on paying off the smaller balance first and don't worry about which one has the higher interest rate. We know the math doesn't work, but after all debt usually isn't about math, it's about behavior!
- Have a 3-6 month emergency fund in place. This needs to be in an "easy to get to" place i.e. not the stock market!
- Save for retirement. Dave says 15% of your income should go here.
- Save for college. We are still working on how much money we want to save here and there are several ways of doing this.
- Pay off the house. We are planning on making extra payments monthly.
- Build wealth and give!
No credit cards: After attending Dave's live show we saved up $1,000, cut up our credit cards and have not had one since. Well, I did have one that I got from Amazon because of a "deal", but that one ended up biting me in the butt. I got the card when I purchased something online and a couple of months later still had not received a statement. Little did I know the "Amazon" card was really a Chase card and anything we were receiving from Chase at the time went straight in the garbage. Yeah... I canceled that card and haven't been tempted by "special offers" since! Philip still has a credit card that is through his employer, and it is only used for travel expenses.
Budget: We do live by a budget that we set up in an excel Google Doc so that Philip and I can both view and edit it. This budget has looked different over the last four years, but currently we are working from one that is my creation because I do most of the updating. I do set up a new worksheet for every month because our budget changes a little each month (you only buy a Christmas tree once a year). I have Philip's income listed on the left and all of our bills under that. My income is listed off to the side because we don't use it on bills and it use to go straight to (after tithe) pay off our debt. I've posted a sample here with some FAKE numbers so you can get the idea. I haven't run the percentages in a while, but I may do that soon and share that info too.
Once a month I transfer a set amount of money to my USAA account (the "bills" line item) and I pay all of our monthly bills online through thier free service. It is way cool because I only write one check a month, the rest comes straight from them and I never have to buy stamps!
The envelope system: We do use the super cool envelope wallet that Dave sells. Once a month I go to the ATM to get out cash for the following envelopes:
- "Us" - used to eat out
- "Allowance" - Philip and I's burn money
- "Ethan"- this is used for diapers, clothes, toys, new cups, etc.
- "Babysitter" - this one is self explanatory
- "Clothes" - this if for Philip and I to buy shoes, clothes, or haircuts!
Why use cash? I know most people don't see the point in using cash instead of a debit card, but here are a few of my thoughts. Research shows that you spend 15% more when you use a debit card. Counting out cash and handing it to someone has emotional consequences, swiping a card just doesn't have the same effect. A new study that just came out even showed that people spend 50% more with credit cards that have point programs.
I love using cash because I don't have to keep up with how much I've been spent so far in a month. When I look into an envelope I know exactly how much I have left and at the end of the month there are no surprises! It really is a passive way of controlling your spending.
Other expenses: For gas, pets, and medical needs we use our debit cards. We have found that in these areas we are never tempted to spend above what is needed and I base my budget on what the need has been over the last few months. Just recently I got to cut down our gas line item because I realized I was over budgeting since gas prices have fallen. I'm sure over the summer I'll have to tweak that a little as prices start to rise again.
I hope this sheds some light on the nitty-gritty of how we handle our finances and defeated our debt. I am more than willing to answer anyone's questions, so if you have any please send them to me! Another thing that we do that is a lot of fun is that we don't spend any change. Well, I do think Philip does, but I don't when I'm shopping and such. Then every couple of months we have about $80 or so that we can "give away". Lots of fun!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Greeee!
Last Thursday Ethan wandered into our sun room and a few minutes later I heard, "Greeee!", "Greeee!" What is he into I thought. Then he turned the corner and I saw that he found a piece of art from preschool where they had done green finger paint. "Greeee!" he squealed as he held up the paper plate. "That's right, it's green!"
Since then Ethan has identified some "Wed" balloons and he even pointed out that one balloon was "Whiiii" (white). His pronunciations are still a little off but it is so much fun to hear him say something other than "Bluuuu" or "Blaaaack". Yay colors!
Phone Calls
Ethan use to ask for Dada every time I got a phone call or made one. Well, that has all changed. Last weekend Ethan got a chance to talk to his Mimi and then Mawmaw on my cell phone. Now everytime I make a phonce call he asks for "Mimi?" and when I say it's not Mimi, she is at work, he asks for "MawMaw?" Even yesterday he talked to Pop for a little while and this afternoon he added "Pop?" to his list of names.
Since then Ethan has identified some "Wed" balloons and he even pointed out that one balloon was "Whiiii" (white). His pronunciations are still a little off but it is so much fun to hear him say something other than "Bluuuu" or "Blaaaack". Yay colors!
Phone Calls
Ethan use to ask for Dada every time I got a phone call or made one. Well, that has all changed. Last weekend Ethan got a chance to talk to his Mimi and then Mawmaw on my cell phone. Now everytime I make a phonce call he asks for "Mimi?" and when I say it's not Mimi, she is at work, he asks for "MawMaw?" Even yesterday he talked to Pop for a little while and this afternoon he added "Pop?" to his list of names.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Funny Things
I don't have a whole lot to share but I thought I would share Ethan's favorite new word: No! Or more precisely "No, Noooooooo!" If his cars roll of the couch he tells them "No." If I come to pick him up at preschool the first words out of his mouth are "No." He has gotten in trouble for saying "No" to mommy or daddy in the wrong situation, but mostly it is just funny that he has this newly discovered power. I'll try to get a video of him saying it soon.
Here is a video of him dancing back in December:
A couple of weeks ago we had a warm Saturday so we brought him out to a park near our house. Here he is playing with his soccer ball.
I have another video that I want to post, I just need to figure out how to edit it.
Here is a video of him dancing back in December:
A couple of weeks ago we had a warm Saturday so we brought him out to a park near our house. Here he is playing with his soccer ball.
I have another video that I want to post, I just need to figure out how to edit it.
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