Our Electric Bill Went Down

 "You have received an eBill from Dominion Electric for account 0000000000 in the amount of $45.35. This bill is due on 11/09/2010. The due date stated is for your current charges only. If the amount due includes a previous balance, those charges may now be past due. If you pay by automatic bank draft, your payment will be made on your scheduled draft date. Please use the link below to sign in to view your bill for additional information."

Can you believe it???!!! Our electric bill was at $135.00 in August of 2010, then $119.00 in September, and now it is $45.35!!! I am so excited. We didn't suffer too much. We would bump the A.C. lower than 78 degrees when we had guests over. Beside that, we kept the A.C. at a constant 77/78 degrees Fahrenheit, I had the fan following me everywhere. We never turned on the lights in the day. We stuck to the natural sunlight that flowed through my windows. I had stopped using the dishwasher. period! I quit using the dryer except for drying blankets. I somehow found time to hang up the laundry and wash the dishes.
I unplugged everything in the household especially every kitchen appliance. I  unplugged our phone chargers every single minute they weren't charging our phones.

I put a power strip in our entertainment center.

Every single cord from the T.V., the X-box, to the radio was plugged into the power strip. Every time we finished using the entertainment center we turned off the power strip. Yes it re-set our clock on the radio and what not but we didn't care.






As well as the office, every single cord was plugged into the power strip and once we finished printing or using the computer, we turned off the power strip and every time we need to use it we dive under the desk to turn it on. Hey, a $90.00 savings does not make this ritual a hassle to me.

You Have a Right to Splurge... (NOT)

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I love love love Desperate housewives.  Marc Cherry wrote this episode especially for me. It's episode 3 of this new season called Truly Content. Teri Thatcher plays Susan, and last season ended with her finding out that her husband was $50,000 into debt. As a team they made the decision to rent out their house and move into a crummy apartment and live off of scraps in order to pay back his debt. At their apartment complex Susan's neighbor runs a cleaning business, but not the average kind. The maids in her business wear lingerie while they clean their own apartment as they are streamed live through a web cam. When Susan got a job offer she turned it down, but once she learned how much money it pays she was on board. As time goes by she is making a lot of money and getting really good at the job. Later on she wins a bonus for having the highest ratings out of all the girls. The Madam (business owner) tells her how hardworking she is and that she should treat herself to something nice, after all, she has the extra cash.
Coincidentally Susan and Mike's anniversary is that weekend and she asks him to take her to that really fancy place to celebrate and she assures him they have enough to pay for it.
Then in the laundry room she meets one of the other girls who works for the Madam. This competitive girl threatens Susan for winning the bonus and accuses her of stealing her signature move. Susan breaks into the woman's house to toy with her vacuum cleaner so that it will blow up in her face the next time she uses it. They get into a fight and the Madam makes them apologize. Once they apologize the competitive girl tells her she wanted the bonus so badly because she's trying to save up enough money to move back home to Virginia, (where I currently live) and she feels like she barely makes enough to get by. Then Susan said, "When I broke into your house I saw that you had a really nice things like a new flat screen t.v., a closet full of new clothes, it doesn't look like you're barely scraping by" the competitive girl replies, "I know, I just like to splurge every once in a while" and Susan says, "Yeah I get that" thinking of the plans she made to go to the fancy restaurant. Then they talked about their determination to save up enough for their goals by the end of the year and be finished with the lingerie cleaning business.
So then Susan asks the competition girl "How long have you been doing this" the girl thinks about it, and says she's going on 6 years and she didn't even realize. That's when it clicked for Susan. She doesn't want six years to go by and still be stuck in that scandalous cleaning business and not out of debt all because it's nice to splurge every once in a while.
When she gets home she tells her husband Mike that she prefers to order in Chinese for their anniversary rather than going out to the expensive French Restaurant.
Lately  I've lost my focus on our goals to save and getting to baby step #7 which is building wealth. I have to remember that once I reach Baby Step #7 then I can splurge every once in a while. I really liked this comment my most beautiful sister left that summed up my blog.
"We truly live in an entitled society when it is engrained in us that splurging every now and again is not only our reward but our RIGHT for working so hard. And what does it get us? It just puts us another step back into debt." -Irene Pacheco

We Broke into the Emergency Fund

This is a picture of our Baby Step 1 the $1000.00 dollar emergency fund. The stack on the right is going to pay the mechanic and the other stack is the remaining total.
It all started with our friend Jack who borrowed our car to go to D.C. for the last time.
We got a call when he was about 50 miles away when something happened to the car and it began to slow down on its own. We called our road side assistance had the car towed back to our apartment. We don't blame Jack  because the car would have broken down eventually since it's 14 years old. We're just glad that we weren't the ones stranded in the middle of a trip. For example we had plans to go to D.C. this past weekend and if Jack hadn't taken the car it would have happened to us on our way there which would have been a stressful experience.
Monday came and Shane took it to a shop one of our friends recommended. They diagnosed the car and said that the spark plugs were out which caused the ignition coil to blow up. We were thinking that it sounded like an expensive job to replace an ignition coil. Total cost of everything was $342.00. According to my sister she said that was cheap. According to me who hasn't had much experience with car repair, I thought it was expensive. It killed us to have to turn in 17 Andrew Jacksons ($20 dollar bills) of hard cold cash, but we're thankful that we had an emergency fund for cases like this.

There's Something About Millionaires

We've made more friends!! This particular friend of Shane's has a bachelors in economy and he sent us a cool version of a budget system he made up plus some millionaire facts. He and his wife haven't heard of Dave Ramsey but they are on the road to repaying debt.

A couple of lesser known facts I think you'll find interesting: (answers down below)

1-The type of car the average millionaire drives?

2-How much does the average millionaire make a year?

3-How do rich people get rich?

Answers:

1- a used car

2- $50,000/year (remember, being a millionaire means someone has $1 million dollars)

3- rich people pay themselves first, meaning they put money aside for their savings, retirement, Roth IRA's, etc, as soon as they get paid, instead of paying bills first then putting whatever little left into savings as most people do. Often times what is left is not much if anything at all, and people will spend that amount., never building wealth for their future. 

It's so Aweful to be the Flake

I feel absolutely terrible for letting some people down because I had made all kinds of plans for the month without realizing "hello!! You kind of have a budget to take into account"
First of all in the month of September we gave ourselves $150.00 for entertainment but only spent about $100.00. For October we lowered our fund to $100.00.
The local amusement park hosts a halloween fest just like Knotts Scary Farm in southern CA which is an anual tradition I love to do with friends. We decided to go to the fest for home-sick sake and we were so lucky to be friends with someone who works there who gave us a major discount on our tickets about $17.00 cheaper, plus she took work off to be able to go so those plans were set in stone totaling up to $92.00, leaving $8.00 leftover in the entertainment envelope.
Next on the list was a pumpkin party we had already planned for about 2 weeks in advance with our close friends the Dayrits.
At school I joined the Ballroom dance club and we're always encouraged to go to the Mambo Room a dance studio/club on Friday nights which is $10.00 per person. I began getting a group together and planning for us all to meet at my house and carpool together. But then I went home and calculated that our $100.00 dollars in our entertainment envelope was not going to cover our halloween fest tickets $92.00, our pumpkins for the party $5.00 and $10.00 cover charge for the Mambo Room multiplied by 2 is $20.00. Man! Why didn't we keep the same budget from last month $150.00?
In order to stay under our budget I had to cancel on the Mambo Room because it wasn't a pre-planned event and what made it worse was because I was the coordinator the one organizing the function. Oh well, i texted the 3 girls and said that I was really really sorry for being a flake and I told them the truth which was I didn't have enough money to afford it. Luckily 2 out of the 3 girls said they weren't going to make it anyway.
Shane was really happy I canceled because it had been a while since we stayed home on a Friday night and watched movies. Yup, we rented from redbox and used our coupon we recieved on account of being new Virginia residents to order a free medium pizza. Friday night = $2.12
Saturday night: $5.00

Sunday=$0.00
Invited friends from church over to play games
Total for the Entertainment Envelope:
$100.00
- 92.00 - halloween fest
- 5.00- pumpkins
- 2.12-redbox
__
$0.88 leftover

Our Second Budget meeting

For some reason our first budget meeting was quicker than the last. We started Saturday morning at 10:30am then I went to work and left Shane continuing the budget. When I got back at around 4:30 he was still there and we finished up the budget together at 5:30. It took us 7 hours, but now that we made up rules about our budget and figured out some confusing details, this will save us some time next month.
 In our picture we are at the business office of our apartment complex using its free wi-fi internet.

What also made our budget take forever was calculating how much money was leftover from the month of September which is the first month we started our envelope system and Dave Ramsey's Zero Balance budget. Don't let the "Zero" scare you. The "Zero" doesn't mean that the budget is like one of those diets where you just have to starve yourself till you're crippled. It doesn't mean that you don't have to buy milk because water is good enough. NO! The "Zero" means that at the end of the budget you know exactly where all your money is supposed to go. "Every dollar has a name." as Dave Ramsey suggests. The point is to have a spot for each dollar so they don't get lost in the "black hole of spending". (See the link at the end of the post to get the budget sheet).

I am pleased to report our left over amount was about $220.00 dollars. Our budget is organized in 3 columns over three pages, so while we were punching in the numbers into the calculator from the different pages it seemed to give us a different answer every time making us re-calculate over and over again. It was pretty frustrating because it was all on human error. But now we have an excel spreadsheet that we will begin using next month which will calculate the math for us. In the picture the book in front of me is our Dave Ramsey work book that has the budget worksheets we use to make our budget. The book between Shane and I is a calender book my sister-in-law Debbie gave me for free. We use that calender to keep track of the bills that come in. Every single bill we get in the mail we immediately record it in the book in red. On the correct date that it's due we write in the name of the company and how much is due.With a blue or black ink pen we write notes or our account numbers and passwords we have for each company like Sprint, Electricity, etc. As we pay our bills we use a highlighter to highlight the ones payed so that we keep track of what has been payed and what has not. This calendar book has also helped keep a record of how much our bills average out to so that we can keep track of anyone ripping us off and calculate our 3-6 month emergency savings. The orange box is a file book where we file all off our receipts by month.

Since we payed off our debt last month we now get to put the $300.00 dollars that were assigned to the debt columns in September toward our baby step #3 which is making a 3-6 month emergency fund in case we were to be out of work. But wait..... since we decided to take a trip to D.C. in April we re-directed some of the $300.00 dollars to save up money for that, and we also had to use some of that money for our other envelopes. In the end we are putting $200.00 dollars away for Baby Step 3.

Click here to get the Zero Balance Budget spreadsheet

We're too cheap to buy text books. Shane checks out his math book from the library and sneaks pictures of his homework assignments.

Fun Weekend = $0.00

This last weekend was wonderful. We've found that being involved in clubs and sports and making friends has given us things to do on weekends that cost less compared to our boring expensive weekends in the past.

Well this past Friday we went out to dinner with our friends at TGI Fridays then we had a fun game night playing Famous People (thank you Laura for teaching us that game). Shane and I scored on a free dinner at TGI Friday's because we had let our friend Jack use our car the past weekends and he wanted to pay for our dinner in return.
After dinner we played a couple of rounds of a game called Famous People at our friends' house. Famous People is a really fun charades type of game that Shane's sister in law Laura taught us. We had so much fun. We spent a total of $0.00 dollars last Friday.

Saturday we decided to buckle down and make our budget for the month of October. 
Saturday night the girls got together and gamed it up totaling $0.00 dollars again.
On Sunday we had an amazing conference. I got up early to prep for our dinner that evening because we were having the missionaries and our neighbors over. Then, since we don't have internet at our place, we watched the first session of conference at the church building. We went from there to have lunch with a family from church who'd invited us over for food and the last session of conference. We had a whole Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing, rolls. Very delicious food and amazing company. There were two families, another couple our age with no kids, and us. We had so much fun chit chatting, making jokes, hanging out, it was really awesome getting to know our new friends. We watched the 2nd session of conference and we were off to our house to get ready for our dinner. When our guests came over we ate and played games afterward.
 Over all our weekend didn't cost very much. We played a lot of the same games and the environment was someone's home, but what made it so much fun is that we got to hang out with different groups of people  every time and had good conversations. I always think about the conversation in "Eat Pray Love" when some Italian is explaining to the main character Elizabeth how Americans pass time always looking or wanting entertainment. We as Americans can't sit still. Apparently the Italian lifestyle is to sit and do nothing, just talk, eat, and stay local. This has helped me to realize that if I'm not spending my weekends traveling, site seeing, going to shows, eating out at restaurants, doing something different to identify that it's a weekend, well, it's OK because I can relax and enjoy life with simple activities, good company, and of course my husband.

Way to Go Mom!

In a previous post called "The Crazy Ideas You Get When You're Penny Pinching"

I talked about thinking creatively for times when there isn't enough funds to buy what you need. For example in my situation I ran out of conditioner and the conditioner in Costco's coupon book was out of stock. So instead of buying a different brand at regular price I went home and looked through my travel bag and found a bottle filled with a good amount of conditioner to get us by until Costco got a new shipment.
SO.....when I got this e-mail from Mom this week I was so excited I wanted to share it on my blog.

"I tried to post this on your blog but it wouldn't post.  I just wanted to thank you guys sooo much for your inspiration.  I ran out of contact lens solution and I remembered your blog about being out of shampoo.  I went straight to my travel bag... problem solved.  I don't have to use money I don't have for this month and I'll get by for the next few days.  (Plus I won't buy the extra things I might have also picked up while purchasing my solution.. I have a long way to go).  Keep it up guys!!!

xoxo

Mom

Yay! So proud of you Mom. On this note, Shane and I are still newly married. We don't have every house hold item. I wanted a soap dish and a spoon thing where you rest your spoons while you're cooking. I could have gone to the Goodwill but I took a look around at what I had and I found my old Tea Set. I took this little boat that holds the sugar and the cream to use as a soap dish and I took the cookie plate to use as a spoon dish. I loved to play with that Tea Set as a little girl so everyday when I look at my items, it brings back good memories of my Tea Set.
here are some of our updates:
Our electricity bill last month was a shocking $135.00, this month it went down to $119.00, we're hoping it will continue to go down to under $100.00
I haven't made fresh squeezed orange juice since that last post, I bought $  Simply Orange Juice from the Bottom Dollar.
We've decided to sell the MacMini which is an apple computer the size of a C.D. with the thickness of five stacked on top of each other. We bought it for about $700.00 in January and we're hoping to receive enough money from the sale to buy one of those professional cameras with the lens. Or road bikes.

There Will Be Disputes about the Envelopes

 This week I wanted so bad to eat at Panera. I was really sick last Tuesday and I was talking to Shane about whether or not it was ok to use money from the Entertainment Envelope to eat at Panera because we were at ZERO dollars in our restaurant envelope. He said NO. I was like, “but I’m really sick and it would make me feel better.” He said NO. I tried again, “But there’s only one more weekend left in the month and we’re not doing anything expensive so I know there will be money leftover in the envelope.” He said NO. Then I do what my 4 year old niece did when she was 2. I put on a face of painful desperation and whined “PLEASE” When Shane said No again I said please right after that and again and again. I lost that battle but I understand why Shane was holding his ground and I knew he was right. We had spent all that there was in the restaurant envelope, and we’re not going to be successful if we give into any temptation we have. This little tantrum took place Tuesday and Shane knew that I was going to Panera on Saturday with the women from church so that’s another reason why he didn’t cave in.
I didn't do very well with the envelopes toward the end of the month. We went $17.71 dollars negative in the Groceries, and 6.33 dollars negative in the Blow Money Envelope. We had $41.84 dollars to spare in the Gas Envelope, and $56.02 in the Entertainment Envelope. Last night when we looked over all our envelopes we decided for the next month that we are going to have to add more to Restaurants and Groceries, less in Entertainment, less in toiletries, less in Gas, and add a new envelope called Personal Envelopes.         
Now this new idea is Shane's. He wants for each of us to have our own $20.00 to spend on anything guilt free. He is going to use that to save up for his video games, occasionally buy lunch at Subway or I could use it to get my nails done. As he was explaining this new concept I said..."But that's what the blow envelope is for, and that's what the restaurant envelope is for, or Entertainment." Then his logic was, our envelopes are for our family and video games are not entertainment for the whole family nor is going to the nail salon. We're going to try it. If this new envelope works out we will keep it. I still think it's considered Blow Money and maybe we can just say that the Blow Envelope should be split in half for each of us to do as we please with our own half of the money.
Dave guarantees that there's going to be fights when you first do the budget together and create your envelope system. When we didn't agree on certain details we began to bicker, and started speaking forcefully trying to push the words out through clenched teeth. One would say, "you're not on the same page as me," while the other would get frustrated because their logic was misunderstood.  Getting this envelope system straight was pretty tough on us. Luckily,our meeting didn't turn into a serious fight when we didn't see eye to eye because we're not stubborn with each other or too proud to say sorry. We had to be patient and realize that after one is done giving their suggestions then the other can layout ideas too. In the end we got every one of our concerns taken care of and we ended our heated discussion on a good note because we went to bed cuddling.

About My Blog in a Nutshell

Dave Ramsey is our man! He doesn't believe in debt. He was super wealthy at 26 years old,    

   net worth 4 million but he had loans, credit cards, everything that led him to bankruptcy. 

    He and his wife struggled so hard to get back on their feet they decided to never be at the 

    mercy of these debt providers, and loan suppliers. He says that credit scores should be called debt scores. It doesn't matter how much money you make, your FICO score and credit card report are all about how well you can manage debt. These credit card companies have gotten so good at brainwashing you to think that it's normal to have debt making you want their debt cards. Everyone thinks it's normal to take out student loans, loans for cars, but it's not true. YOU MUST BE IN DEBT IN ORDER TO BE APPROVED in this world. We say, NO THANK-YOU!! Shane and Ericka will not PLAY THEIR GAME!! It's a major scam and we are so grateful to be taught by Dave Ramsey not to owe these people money because when you do, you are a SLAVE TO THE LENDER. We are practicing to buy absolutely everything in cash, how to save up money to make it grow through investments and mutual funds in order to purchase everything we could ever want in CASH!

     Our goal is not anything extravagant or charitable, we just want to be rich and take vacations, live in a nice house, drive nice cars, take care of our parents, retire early, and just live a comfortable life in San Diego, CA.       THE END

Spendy Sally vs. Savey Susie

This week was pretty hard, I had difficult battles with my spending and saving angels. Spendy Sally was like, “just buy it, who cares if the envelope is empty borrow from the entertainment envelope.” Or she’ll say “Don’t worry about it, you’ll make it up next time you get paid.” It’s just so hard to ignore her and listen to Savey Susie because she says, “Don’t buy it, yes the item can be handy to have, but you don’t need it today.” Or she’ll say, “If you don’t listen to me you’ll never be able to learn how to save and get rid of your bad habit to buy on impulse, which leads to debt.”

Dave’s Five Keys to Gaining Power Over Your Purchases is:

1.     Waiting OVERNIGHT before making a purchase

2.     Carefully considering your buying MOTIVES. No amount of STUFF equals contentment or fulfillment.

3.     Never buying anything you do not UNDERSTAND

4.     Considering the “OPPORTUNITY COST” of your money

5.     Seeking the COUNSEL of your spouse. (If you’re single ask someone to hold you accountable for your expenses)

Today I decided to run errands again. On my list I had to pick up dry cleaning, mosquito repellent burners, and I thought I’ll just get some bread from the grocery store but that’s it. That is all I’m buying I shouldn’t spend more then $10.00. I head over to the dollar tree and that store is AWESOME!!! Now that I’m thinking cheap there’s all kinds of good stuff in there. As I’m looking for the mosquito things I pass by the Halloween decoration and grab this, this, and that. Then I go down every single isle and I grab a fruit cutting board which is on my list. Chips, cookies, 3 gifts for my dog, a napkin holder (also on my list), I manage to get everything else except what I came there for. So my Spending Angel, Spendy Sally is telling me to get all this stuff but Savey Susie says, “STOP, Take a look at what you have and how much is left in the envelopes. You have things that can wait to be purchased when you re-fill the envelopes on pay-day.” “So take half of the 15 items in your cart, put them back and I will only allow you to get what you need for the party tonight which can be purchased from the entertainment envelope since it is a weekend entertainment.” I ended up spending $4.63 for everything rather than $15.00 and Savey Susie wins that round! Ding Ding Ding Ding Dingggg. Next I needed to buy 1 loaf of bread. When I go into the grocery store on my way to the bread I pass by cans of sloppy Joe, I pass by the chips, and the ice cream, I see the hamburger buns I need for sloppy Joes, I also buy Mexican cookies, orange juice, eggs, until finally at the very back of the store where they hide the bread on purpose, I got the bread I wanted and went to pay. This time Savey Susie lost. I didn’t need the sloppy Joe because I had hamburger helper at home, I didn’t need hamburger buns I could have used loaf bread, I didn’t need Mexican cookies, and looking back on what I bought, I really regret not thinking it through this time like I did at the dollar store.                                          Advice for next time: Do not shop when you’re rushed and go straight to the item you’re looking for.                                                                                                 

Answer to Questions

 Our beautiful sister Azure had some really good questions 

1.     How do you budget for the items on the right? Do You just carry over the envelope amounts from the previous months?

a.     Yes, we do carry over the envelopes amount. For example clothes. When we sat down to think about how much money we were going to give each envelope we looked at clothes and tried to remember how often we shop for clothes and we also took into account our budget to see how much money we had leftover after paying tithing, savings, rent, utilities. Lets say we had $1,000.00 leftover so we divided that up into Entertainment, Gas, Groceries, clothes, housewares, gifts, cosmetics, haircuts. Ok, after we got that divided up, we gave ourselves $77.00 dollars for clothes, each getting about $38.00 a month. The list on the right under CLOTHES/SHOES has more items then $38.00 worth, so if I want to buy my $89.99 Steve Madden shoes I’ll have to save my share of the clothes envelope for 3 months in order to afford them. Which is pretty ridiculous because I need other things and I can’t wait a whole year to buy all that stuff if I took that route. My purpose of listing the expensive Steve Madden Shoes is so I can find them cheaper on-line or at Marshalls, Ross, T.J. Max and post the cheaper price compared to the $89.99 price.

b.     Another example, we need free-on and a new window motor for our civic but we only budget $58.00 a month for Car Repair/Tires. So the motor costs $75.00 dollars at a junk yard (note: we’re buying it used)  and we have to add in the labor costs so we’re thinking $150.00 total max. We’ll have to save 3 months worth to pay for the total.

c. With the digital camera we'll have to take whatever is left from the blow envelop every month until we've saved up the correct amount.

2.     What is the title of the Dave Ramsey CD/book? Are you still attending a class or 
just doing the workbook and listening to the c.d.'s

a.     The books and c.d. titles are located on the right, along with his website link. We are still attending class, at the local Christian church down the street. It’s a 13 week course and we are on the 6^th week going onto the 7^th and the course will end some time in November. We meet at the church and they own the teaching kit which comes with DVDs of the seminars he gives live. We watch one seminar every Wednesday and it’s always a different lesson. This past Wednesday he gave a lesson on Insurance. He told us which kinds of Insurance are a bunch of bull and which kinds are smart to have and he explained that life insurance is not permanent like we all think it is. I do listen to the c.d.’s in the car so I can a very good comprehension of what he's talking about, and if anyone wants to borrow them and burn them, you’re welcomed to anytime.

3.     Are you guys vegetarian? (from Blog "Penny Pinching in the food dept.") 

a.     No, I picked out the meat from the soup so I could put it in the rice to have a meat with rice meal, because we didn’t want soup for dinner and we didn’t want rice by itself, and we didn’t want to go grocery shopping because of insufficient funds so we just picked out the meat to mix in with the rice to attempt to make a dish.

4.     The Cherry Blossom Festival:
That will be awesome if you come for the cherry blossom festival, and we’ll be able to budget that in somehow. I’m thinking we’re going to have to add a separate envelope for this and calculate how much we might spend on food, hotel, transportation, and souvenirs. Oh, and how can we forget? Tickets to see the different historical sites. So we’ll have to research prices for the attractions, and call Dave Keithly and ask if we can crash at his place for free! :) Hehe.

5.     Christmas budget: is a combined budget with gifts for all year round which means we’ve estimated how many gifts we give including: baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, Christmas gifts. Along with gifts we put Christmas in the same budget so we can budget for food, decorations, traveling, gifts, a Christmas tree, whatever. This year since we started to budget for Christmas in September we wont have enough to get us to CA or have spending money while we’re there. If we had budgeted for a Christmas trip since January then it would have been more of a possibility. SO you don’t have to plan your trip around us.

     

    

Goodwill Hunting

 I'm not talking about the movie, I'm talking about selectively looking for useful things at the Goodwill thrift store.
Today after work I ran some errands like going to the cleaners, grocery store, sewing store (to replace a piece on my machine), and I decided to stop at the Goodwill to see if I could find the items in my  list of short term stuff (located in the column I have over on the right). I was looking for loaf pans, pie slicer, or a fruit cutting board. TWO HOURS later....... I'm still at the store in the kitchen Isle talking myself out of buying things I know are not critically neccessary. I was thinking......."We need these little plates because ours are too big therefore not ideal to use for dessert". Although I bought all kinds of interesting stuff, I managed to find ONE item on my list which was the loaf pan.
Don't forget, I use the envelope system and I pulled out money that I had in my envelopes in order to purchase these items. Click Here to learn about the envelope system 
Envelope Houseware: I bought my loaf glass $2.25 and a magazine holder $2.25 (I'm really up-tight about having a place for everything, and now that Shane is recieving Surf magazines, they're everywhere making the house look unorganized. So I found a cute little basket to be their new home.)

Envelope Gifts (including Christmas): Oh yeah, we have an envelope for Christmas so it doesn't sneak up on us and wipe out our checking account. We estimated about $1,080.00 for gifts and christmas so about $90.00 a month. Plus how can we afford Christmas when around that same time of year the city wants their Property tax money? I say we should all move to Florida because I heard they don't pay city taxes. In the picture I have stocking hooks @ $.87 each, Christmas and Halloween wreaths at $2.25 each, snowmen candle holders @ $2.25

Envelope Blow Money: This envelope is for miscellaneous items that you don't prepare for in your budget. For some parents it could be soccor pictures. In our case it could be books for leisure  or Softball team fees. Today I just bought miscellaneous items for the house. Here I purchased a beautiful ceramic cream leaf vase @ $8.25 It wasn't something I needed but I wanted to replace this ugly green vase I was using before. 





I bought this cute serving platter $4.25 to replace my cheap yellow plastic one. 



I also bought this gold picture frame because most of the ones we have are the same style and colors. I plan to regift one of those picture frames.

Last I got this gift $2.25 for my friend Becky becuase she shops at Wal-mart and I thought it was really cute. Now if you're wondering why I didn't place this in the Gift Envelope it's because it's not for her birthday, or christmas gift it was a "being goofy" gift. It would be a great white elephant gift too.

Finally, The Baby Steps!

Click HERE to see the baby steps
In an earlier entry where I blog about the junker car we purchased instead of a brand new Honda, Pilot I also said that we had about $6,000.00 in savings, and a $10,000.00 bonus on the way. Is anybody wondering what we did with that money? Well guess what?
I will be giving you an insider's exclusive. We ended up only receiving $6,848.23 from the bonus because of government taxes (go figure! apparently we'll receive the rest of the bonus at the end of the year) SO, we now have roughly $12,848.23. Imagine that? What kinds of things would you have done with $12,848.23? We were thinking...... Ireland in July and New York City for New Years Eve. Yeah, that's what we WERE thinking before the Dave Ramsey class.
Here's the after math. Dave has 7 financial Baby steps to set you for life! We took that money and put it into  

Baby Step 1: $1,000.00 (has to be easily accessible) emergency fund. 

                        -The reason why you'll want this emergency fund is to prevent you from putting it on the credit card if an emergency were ever to occur. It makes complete sense, if you're already in debt and do not have the money to pay for this surprise emergency whether the car broke down again, or your refrigerator leaks and floods your house, then you're sinking yourself into more debt by having to put that expense on the credit card. SO, make sure the cash is easily accessible but not a temptation to grab for non-emergencies. Shane and I have ours in cash, not in the bank (in case we were to have any problems withdrawing it). Don't think you're getting the insider's exclusive as to where we hide it.
Baby Step 2: Pay off all your debt with the debt snow ball
           -This is what we mean by snow ball.
This was our debt: Master card 1: $343.00     @ 16% interest
                             Master card 2: $1,600.00   @8% interest
                             Student loan 1: $2,600.00   @34% interest
                             Student loan 2: $6,660.00   @0% (til 2012)
                                                             Visa 1: $100.00
                                              Visa 2:  $300.00
Many people would approach this by paying off the the bill with the most interest. Well that's wrong! (in the snowball method). You want to pay the lowest bill no matter what the interest is. If you can pay more than the minimum payment that is excellent too.

    

            Visa 2: $100.00                 minimum of  $15.00 a month
            Visa 1: $300.00                                          $15.00 a month

Master card 1: $343.00     @ 16% interest        $15.00 a month

Master card 2: $1,600.00   @8% interest          $25.00 a month

Student loan 1: $2,600.00   @34% interest        $232.00 a month

Student loan 2: $6,660.00   @0% (til 2012)            no payment until 2012 

In the snowball, you pay the minimum (or more) for each bill until the lowest bill Visa 2 $100.00 is paid off. We actually payed $50.00 a month for the Visa 2 bill. We carry that $50.00 over to Visa 1 $300.00 so our payment to that Visa 1 is $50.00 + $15.00 (min payment) = $65.00. Remember, you're still making the min payments to all the other bills too.

Then when Visa 1 was payed off next is Master card 1 $343.00 and we take the $65.00 we were paying on Visa 1 and put it toward Master card's min payment of $15.00 to = $80.00. Then we take out that bill faster. Then we take the $80.00 to Master Card 2's min payment of $25.00 a month and we have $105.00 to pay off  the $1,600.00. Does it make sense? the reason why you want to pay off the bills from least to greatest is because it boosts your hopes that it will be possible to pay off all your debt. 

That was a long explanation. Lucky for us we just payed off all those bills using the money we saved up. Now we've completed Baby step 2 we took the rest of our money and applied it to                                   

 Baby Step 3: 3-6 Months Expenses in Savings                                                                                                                 -If Shane and I were to be un-employed for anywhere from 3-6 months we do not want to rely on credit cards to bury us in more debt. We would need cash to hold us up through this tragedy if it ever were to happen. Looking at all our expenses, our rent, utilities, cell phone bill, clothes, groceries, transportation, we need about $23,000.00 to survive if we ever were to be un-employed for that long. After paying off our debt a total of $11,603.00 we were left with $1,245.23. We put that into Baby step 3, $23,000.00 - $1,245.23 = $21,754.77 more to save up in order to have our 6 month expenses in savings! And that is where we are right now. If we were to put away $500.00 every month it would take us 3 1/2 years to get the full $23,000.00. Listen, this process is not a get rich quick. You need to be patient!
Baby Step 4: Invest 15% Of Income Into Roth IRAs And Pre-Tax Retirement Plans
                -When I get to that class I'll tell you about it.
Baby Step 5: College Funding

Baby Step 6:  Pay Off Your Home Early
Baby Step 7: Build Wealth And Give!

Filtered Water Facets/Pitchers vs. Bottled water/Water delivery

According to our own personal calculations we bought the generic brand of about  < 3-4 boxes >   of bottled water a month estimating at around   <  $4.65  > a box.
Math: 3 (boxes) x $4.65 (per box) = $13.95 or 4(boxes) x $4.65 (per box) = $18.60 per month THEN $18.60 (per month) x 12 months = $223.20 a year

If you pay for delivery water for $35.00 a month the math is $35.00 x 12 months = $420.00 a year

But if you replaced this water for filtered facet or pitchers by PUR or Brita or whoever
Here's how much you can WIN!!
I bought my PUR water filter at Costco with a coupon for $28.99. Now, it's not a one time payment to own and maintain these water filters. Every 2-3 months depending on the # of people in your household you must change the filters on these things. At Costco your device comes with 2 filters for free. Then a regular package comes with 2 replaceable filters at $28.99.
The filters are to be replaced every three months. Since the device comes with 2 filters you're covered for 6 months. $28.99 = 6 months
Then you'll need to buy the replaceable filters (2 per box) which cost $28.99 at Costco and that will take care of another 6 months (3 months per filter).

So here's the MATH:


$28.99(every 6 months) x 2(x's per year) = $57.98 a year

Bottled Water Example:
So then I take $223.20  - $57.98 = $165.22 a year in savings!

Now if we take the Delivery water example at $420.00 a year
$420.00 - $57.98 = $362.02

That's an extra $362.02 you didn't know you had that you can put to something else!! YAY!
Switch to Water filters!! Now!

Dave Made Fun of Us Tonight

I look forward to wednesday nights every week because of the classes and because I get to share with the class some of the financial experiences we have that relates to the seminar.

Tonight Dave informed us about the strong influential Marketing companies who flash 1,000's of advertisements in our faces every single day. We learned about how kids at the store want things now! but they're not the only ones who act that way, we as adults do it too. 

We buy tons of things on impulse like

 I want this china cabinet for my china that we never use so it can take up space in my house. Or, Oh shoot Super Bowl is at our house this year hurry let's go get a flat screen real quick. People these days have more t.v.'s in their house than # of people. In our case we have more computers in our house than people.
We have .......
1.iMac (desktop)
2.Dell laptop
3. Mac Book Pro
4. Mac Mini (that we hook up to the T.V. and strictly use it to watch Netflix, Hulu, movies)

I know, who needs that many computers?

Company's spend billions of dollars on advertisements and images. For example Dave talked about Apple. He said that Apple has this image that it is "cool". 

Every product they have it's associated with "If I have apple I'm cool" He also said it's really sucking in the younger kids but not really the oldies because they don't care to look cool.

So Shane and I are watching this and we were like, ????? we feel pretty dumb right now because we own 8 apple products.  We are the best example of retards who fell for Apples superb marketing that imbeds in our brains that their products is holy grail and they lure us into their spider web and rape us of our money. 

Despite our wounded feelings he told a really cool story that I must share with you.

This kid in his 20's opened up a mutual fund and his goal was when he reached $100,000 he would take out $40,000 to buy his dream car, a 1986 4 door classic Mercedes Benz. So finally 4 years later he reached his goal, he withdrew $40,000 in cash and drives his 1985 diesel Rabbit to the Mercedes dealership. Arriving in that car none of the dealers even give him a 2nd glance. So the kid approaches one of them and says "I'm here to buy a car." Then the dealer says "How you gonna pay for it?" (boy)"In CASH" (Dealer) "Which car was it you wanted to test drive?"

So the dealer even says he could take it home to really test it out. (They use to do that with T.V;s in the 50's back when they were new. The salesmen got you because the neighbors will come over to oooh and aaaah the new T.V. and  your impulse kicks in and takes cash back to the store, instead of the T.V.)

When the kid got home with the Mercedes the family was really excited, the neighbors told him "way to go on your new dream car!" But he still tried to figure out the numbers and how much more the $40,000.00 could make. The next day he drove the car back to the lot and told the dealer he wasn't going to take it.

12 years later he's driving a rolls royce and he pulls up to a 1986 classic Mercedes at a stop light. He rolls down the window and tells the driver "hey, that's a sweet ride. how much did you buy it for?" The driver says "$4,000."

The boy who has grown into a man doesn't regret not buying that car because he returned the $40,000.00 into a mutual fund by itself, he didn't add any more money and over 12 years the $40,000.00 turned into $300,000.00. 

Can you imagine that? would you give up your dream car now so that later you can have more than 1 of your dream cars?

His $40,000.00 could have turned into $4,000.00 dollars. Instead he stayed  patient and it turned into $300,000 dollars.

I thought that was a great story to learn from. THis program is not about saving to take all the money to your grave. It's about living super cheap and saving your hard earned work now so that later in 12 years we will reap the rewards, buy a great house, or whatever else comes with the rewards of saving and investing all my hard earned dollars.

Penny Pinching in the Food Dept.

Dave's favorite method of payment is cash and along with that he teaches us to use the ancient Envelope System where you have an envelope for everything. We have an envelope for Haircuts, groceries, gas, clothing, entertainment, toiletries, cosmetics (for me), restaurants, car repair/tires, and BLOW MONEY (there is always going to be something that you didn't plan for). Most people put cash in each envelope and once the money is gone, then it is gone! 

Of course when you first set the $ amount for each envelope it's going to change the first couple of months depending on which envelope needed more money and which one could be cut back. Since we have these awesome new high-tech HTC Evo android phones we found an app that is an electronic envelope system. Using this app we record the expenses and assign it to the envelope it belongs to and it will subtract our total. This way we don't have to carry around hard cash in my purse when we go out for the day and plan on buying gas, eating out, or shopping for clothes all we need is our simple piece of plastic, our debit card. As our first month using the app it's been a little tight on the grocery allowance so we might have to add more money for the next month.
Click HERE for the envelope application app 

This week we were really low stocked on food and I cleaned out the pantry inventing weird dinners. I had some nasty old pot of beans with scrambled egg in a corn tortilla and I was gagging. Why didn't you go grocery shopping you might ask?? Well I'll tell you why... It's because the envelope app on our phone has this really cool tool. As you can see in the picture a bar with some green coloring, and there is a white vertical line that indicates where we are in the month. If the green is to the right of the line it means you're ahead of the month with money. If the green is to the left it means you're behind and the icon will say stop spending for # of days.

With the groceries I was behind anonymous # money it said "Stop spending for 4 days?" And I really tried to hold on for another 4 days with what we had in the pantry. The last breaking point was Tuesday night when we really had nothing so I made white rice, and got the last cans of soup and picked out the meat so that I could mix it in with the rice. I chopped up and cooked a sweet potato, and we cooked two ears of corn one for each of us. It was a strange mix starch and starch and starch. I couldn't take it and we went to the store that night. Now our envelope is behind 14 days according to where we are in the month. I'm thinking the groceries we got this week will last us until next week and we might have to pull out from another envelope like Entertainment if we need another grocery run.
I also made bread from scratch, but i still haven't calculated if it's cheaper than buying it. 

One Day Two years after we received this toaster oven as a wedding gift it just decided not to heat up. I was like "WHY??? Are you kidding me? I need you Mr. Toaster Oven, how are we going to toast bread, broil corn, or heat up food? You were so nice to bake cookies with because you saved me from having to turn on the energy-consumer-hunking oven which saved us on bills and kept our apartment cooler."

When Shane got home I told him what happened and I thought that we were going to target then and there to replace our close friend because he is so essential to our everyday lives, but apparently Shane didn't think so. Looking back I guess his logic was rational that we don't have the money to get a new toaster oven right now and we found out that we could substitute our griddle (which is what I'm toasting bread with down below) meanwhile we save up for our toaster oven. And now I don't even feel the importance of the Toaster Oven anymore.

Yes, Yes I did, I dug through someone's left overs, they left on the curb

On my way out taking the trash someone placed a box of stuff out on the curb and I went through it and found TREASURE
Some of the stuff this person was throwing out I found good use for, I was like, "SCORE!! Yeah!!"
I picked out a rice spoon, a champagne glass (I'm hoping to somehow get another one and do something special for shane.), (in the doorway in the picture on the right) these 2 silver poles that have hooks on each end so that you can secure them on something and at the other end the hooks hold another silver pole and I thought..."hello?? STORAGE! when we have a garage I can secure it from the ceiling and hang stuff on it like electrical cords."

Last, the best treasure of it all... a 48oz glass pitcher. It's not a regular pitcher with a handle it looks like a wine pitcher, you know? The kind that is shaped with a wide barrell at the bottom and a neck descending to the top. When I pulled it out of the box I thought to myself that it would be perfect for fresh squeezed orange juice.

So we went to Costco tonight and I buy a box of oranges (33 oranges) for $11.47 (I'm price conscious now) and i squeeze the first one and it was about .0004 of 1/4th of a cup. It's not much juice. So 30 oranges later I got a full 48oz's of organic fresh squeezed orange juice in my brand new used pitcher.

Honestly, my"bright" idea was not worth the time that I put into squeezing those stinking oranges plus the cost of the oranges.

 I was kinda bummbed because buying organic or buying from the corporations is a lose-lose deal. Either you spend a heck of a lot of money to buy something fresh and organic (these stupid oranges weren't even local, they were from South Africa. Stupid import/exports) Or you give in to the chemical producing corporations that put a bunch of sugar and crap in their orange juice in order to mass produce and make even more billions of dollars off of us little meager consumers. 
What can you do??

The crazy Ideas you get when you're penny pinching

As most know, Shane and I traveled to Europe for our honey moon. In Italy we got to stay with my family long enough to do our laundry there. One of the different things they do in this global practice is they hang their clothes to dry instead of using a dryer. Some of us Southern Californians (the only demographic I can bash about since I'm from there) would think Italy needs to update with the times and get the country some dryers. WRONG! There is nothing wrong with hanging out clothes to dry because....
1. Clothes last longer. The tumble and high heat of the dryer fades, and wears out your clothes faster. 
2. It saves energy especially in the summers to hang dry your clothes
3. The fact that Italians hang dry their clothes indicates that they possess a calm-paced lifestyle more stress free than us Americans
When we came home we took with us the habit of hanging our clothes to dry. 

I like to shop for my house supplies at Costco where it comes in bulk and saves me constant trips and budget calculations on shaving cream, hand soap, toilet paper, paper towels, chlorox disinfectant wipes, a-jax, stuff like that. Usually Costco has coupons for these items and this time around I was looking for hair conditioner. I go into the Costco with my coupon and to my convenience the conditioner in the coupon is out of stock!
"Ay yai yai! REALLY? But I need conditioner the next time I shower." 
Instead of buying another conditioner at regular price I decided to wait until the next coupon book comes out where there will be another coupon for a different conditioner. In the meanwhile I ransacked my travel bags looking for conditioner that I may have packed on previous trips. With luck I found a good 12oz bottle filled with conditioner and another .99 cent travel size. This should hold us up until the next coupon book comes in.
To my surprise when I went into the Costco last night I found out the new coupons will be arriving tomorrow, Thursday Oct 16th, so in perspective I waited less than a week for the conditioner using my spare travel bottles and it was totally worth the savings! ;)

For a while now when I take a beverage on the go I'll put in in one of the glass jars that i've been saving whether it's orange juice or water so that it's easy to wash out. I saved spaghetti sauce jars, pickle jars, peppercini jars. 

One of the things that we did to cut down on our grocery list was to buy a PUR water filter that attaches to the sink facet. It not only saves us money but it also saves the environment! :)

Since we no longer have water bottles to grab and go and we don't have Nalgene water bottles, we need something to carry our water throughout the day but we havn't budgeted for some of those cool new trendy aluminum bottles because there is so much stuff on the list that I want to buy that has priority over these water bottles such as a lunch pale for Shane, a book holder for my text books, a wedding album I made on blurb.com.

This is where that little jar thing that I do comes in. Shane and I now fill up a couple of our jars with our new PUR water filter and rotate them in fridge so we can grab one when we're heading out the door. Bring them home wash them, refill others , and we've got that holding us up while we wait to budget for our water bottles.