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.

$135.00 for an electric bill?? And you don't have internet at home, are you serious?

Being on this new budget, Shane and I (Mostly me), had one week where we were freaking out about not having enough money that month to eat out or go out because of the bills that were lining up.
In week 2 of our course we had to fill out a quickie budget sheet which is a guess-timate of how much money we spend every month like tithing, housing, utilities, transportation, clothing, personal, and other.
Our electric bill that month was $135.00 and we had switched phone companys having to pay an "early termination" fee of $225.00. The sheet of paper looked back at us shaking its head like, tis tis.
We looked at our electric bill and immediately turned off the A.C. as if it was going to decrease the amount we owed on the bill.
That whole week we sat right in front of our tower fan moving it from room to room depending on where we were, or we went to the library, or our friends house for longer periods of time because it felt so good to be in the air condition. Finally we were like, "well what if we just kept the temperature at 78/79?" "Ok, let's try it hopefully our bill next month will be under $100."

Along with our electric bill, I canceled our Netflix and I have very good reasons why.
1. The only provider of internet that we have out here is super slow, too slow to play any of Netflix watch instantly movies. So we weren't getting our full money's worth there.
2. School started and we just didn't have time to watch enough movies to get our money's worth.

We save ourselves money on cable and internet by not having it. When we first moved here we were using the neighbors free un-locked wi-fi, so when we hooked up our internet it wasn't any faster and we thought "What a rip-off". So we canceled it and just used whosever un-locked wi-fi until one day it was gone. We were like, NOOOOOOOO!! and we thought, "you know what? it's not worth paying for internet and let me list why.
1.When we use it at the library we are more likely to do our work (not browse) and get home
2. It's less distracting at home to not have it so Shane and I really spend more time together.
3. We have internet on our phones if we really need to look something up
4. We have 2 places where we can easily access it, at the library and at school.
So living without internet at home is not so bad. Sometimes we'll get lucky and catch the un-locked wi-fi

Tons to Write about.. This one is about the Sexy wheels we bought

Because I am now 5 weeks into the course and have just started to write about it I have so much to talk about and I don't want to leave anything out!!!!

Let's start with a major financial decision #1 that we made before taking the course. 

Dave is really funny and mostly everybody on the his radio show who call in for advice about their delinguent finances do so because they bought a car that is bigger than they can chew (you know what I mean). Dave is like, "Sell the car, sell the car, sell the car," So I've learned that the average car payment in the U.S. is $464.00 per month and Dave teaches why not save that money for 10 months and you can buy yourself a $4,600 car in CASH! No loans, no financing, no INTEREST payments. 

Then why doesn't everyone do that?? It's because no one wants to drive a $4,600.00 dollar car! Ok but what if you took that "risk" of paying for a car in cash, not borrwoing from the bank or financing with the dealer and drove around debt free for 10 more months still putting away that $464.00? Well what would happen is you'd be able to trade in or sell your $4,600.00 car for almost the same amount of cash and upgrade to a $9,000.00 car and you're still debt free! Then you do it again for another 10 months and again and again until you get the car you want. 

If you did this for 3 years and 10 months you could buy a $26,000 car in CASH!! DEBT FREE! Only if you're willing to sacrifice driving around for 10 months in an ugly $4,600.00 car. Knowing us southern shallow californians it is a sacrifice to be seen in an ugly car. 

(A little Side note: I thought of all this before I took the Dave Ramsey class just FYI)

In Virginia Shane and I couldn't survive on just one car. We had about 6,000 saved up and Shane earned a 10,000 bonus for graduating from A-School and we planned to use that money to buy us a brand new '09 Honda Pilot.
But, we needed a car right now, and we still had to wait for the bonus to come in. So then I thought.... "well, we'd only be driving it for 8 months, until we move from Virginia, and In San Diego it's just going to be sitting there while the insurance company collects free money since we wouldn't be driving it because San Diego's transportation system rocks! Yeah, it really doesn't make sense to purchase something that does not increase in value and will drain us of our hard earned savings.

So why don't we buy a really cheap car to have really cheap insurance and then get our money back by selling it when we leave Virginia? It's like renting a car for 8 months except we get 80% of our money back and then we can spend the 16,000 on VACATIONS!!! WHOOOO HOOO" 

Lucky us we found our beauty, a '98 Hyundai Accent that goes from 0-55 in like 45 seconds. We love to see everyone drive around us with a ticked off look on their faces because they think we're driving that slow on purpose. It's loaded with MANUAL windows and MANUAL car locks. 

Starting Over

Ok, so I have already posted two posts about my financial journey on my life blog that I share with my husband Shane so I don't really want to repeat what I've said but I need this blog to have an origin.
So.

I am taking this 13 week Dave Ramsey Course with Shane at the local Christian Church down the street all because of the show Dancing with the Stars. At our last station I was glued to the couch during the day watching anything I thought was interesting and I began liking Dancing with the Stars.
Then when we moved here the Christian church down the street from us had a sign saying, "Free Ballroom Dance lessons" So I drag my willing husband to one of these classes and we meet really cool people who told us that they had a financial class on Wednesday nights about Dave Ramsey.


We knew of Dave Ramsey before the course, Shane had read the book a little bit and coincidently at the same time my sister, Shane's dad, and my brother and sister-in-law were all reading Dave Ramsey. It was so wierd. So we canceled our real estate class we were going to take at the J.C. and signed up for this one.

This is us in class with our fill-in-the-blank work book

We attended the first class and it was really awesome! We got so pumped up about it we really believe that we can build enough wealth to do what ever we want. In the classes we watch DVD's of the seminars that Dave Ramsey does live. We bought the kit that includes our follow-along-as-we-watch-the-dvd-fill-in-the-blanks workbook, one of his books "Financial Peace Revisited", an envelope system book, and audio c.d.s of the seminars. He is really funny in the seminars which makes it easy to sit through it.

We love it and are really gung ho about this new chapter in our lives.