Monthly Archives: August 2008

August budget round up

After budgeting for just one month, I am amazed at how empowering it is! I suddenly feel this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Now that I’m monitoring where each dollar goes, I feel like we have so much more money than we did before.

At the beginning of the month, we looked over our past spending habits (we’d been tracking our spending with Mint.com for almost a year). Based on that data, we budgeted for all of our fixed expenses and set limits for ourselves for discretionary spending like groceries, pet expenses, cleaning supplies and toiletries, etc.

We came in $200 under budget for the month! That’s mostly due to the fact that we paid Tony’s health insurance for August when we signed him up back in July. But, hey, we didn’t go over our budget, so I’ll take it. :)

In all seriousness, we didn’t go over budget in ANY of our categories. It is so encouraging to look at our budget graph and see all of that green! In the past, it’s been a big mess of bright red alerts. We came in $46 under budget in groceries, $13 under budget in our miscellaneous “shopping” category, and $31 under budget in the pet expenses category.

I could probably lower the pet budget from $50 to $25 a month since we began putting money aside for Howie’s vet expenses, but I think I’m going to leave it at $50 for now since he has some vaccinations and a yearly physical coming up. We’ve only been putting vet money aside for a month, so we might need that extra money in the months ahead. In a few months, I’ll average out our monthly pet expenses and use that number for future budgets.

We were able to painlessly send $325 toward our last little bit of credit card debt and throw a total of $300 into our savings accounts.

I’ve only been doing this for a month, but I already can’t imagine life without a budget. Even when we were making twice as much money as we are now, I felt so helpless when I thought about our finances. I felt like we had no control over our spending, no matter how hard we tried to “cut back.” Sticking to a budget was surprisingly easy once we spelled it all out for ourselves.

I’m also looking forward to making changes to our budget coming up. For instance, winters are mild in North Carolina, so we’re expecting our energy costs to cut in half this fall and winter. (Keeping the apartment cool in the high summer temperatures is way more expensive than staying warm in the winter.) We’ll probably pay $40-$70 a month for electricity November through April, compared to $100-$140 during the summer months.

I have no clue what we did with that extra $60-$100 a month last winter. For the first time ever, I feel like we’ll be able to put that extra money to work and make some headway on our debt and savings instead of spending it mindlessly.

Our goal for next month is to lower our grocery budget. This month I set it at a super high $400. Yikes. Now that we’re spending between $50 and $60 a week, I want to lower it to $350. Yes, I realize that’s still super high, but I’m shooting for baby steps here. If we can hit $350 or lower next month, then it won’t be so hard to hit $300 in October. The plan is to keep lowering that until we hit our threshold for savings.

Woo hoo! Budgeting is fun! :)

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Menu Plan Monday & Weekly grocery round up

Woo hoo! We stayed within our budget this week!! Our grand total was $57! It seems like it was easier this week, too. I felt like we were buying a lot of extra stuff (the hubby has been missing snacks, so we picked up some crackers and pretzels even though they’re not technically part of a meal). We also bought the ingredients for homemade ice cream for a special Labor Day treat. Even with all those extras, we made it!

Thanks again to everyone who offered tips and advice! :)

And now on to the meal plan for this week:

Sunday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry
Monday: Burgers and oven fries (in honor of Labor Day!)
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Pasta with meat sauce
Thursday: BLT sandwiches
Friday: Homemade pizza

For breakfast we bought cereal and eggs. Lunches will be leftovers, salads, and sandwiches, as usual. We decided to keep things very simple this week. I’m sure that’s part of why it was easy to stay within budget. But hey, I’m all about simplicity!

Be sure to check out more meal plans at www.orgjunkie.com!

Sometimes saving money can cost you money

Update: Um. I just replaced the ink cartridges at Costco. I paid $50 for two black cartridges and a color. They’re slightly smaller, but $10 cheaper than what I paid for the ones that didn’t work. Doh. Now I really feel stupid. But the good news is my printer is working fine with the new cartridges. Whew. Now I just have to fight with 123InkJets to get my refund …

In June, our printer ran out of ink for the first time. Since Tony is a grad student and teacher, he does quite a bit of printing, and he pays 8 cents a page on campus. Obviously, it’s cheaper for him to print at home, so we needed to replace the cartridges as quickly as possible.

Because ink jet cartridges cost somewhere between an arm and a leg and your firstborn, I decided to go through 123InkJets, which sells remanufactured printer cartridges. I was also interested in the green aspect of cartridge recycling. I had a MyPoints offer that earned me 10% off my order and 350 points. My total for two black cartridges and a color one was $60 with free shipping. I thought it was a steal.

I was a little nervous because I’d read conflicting reports about remanufactured ink cartridges online, but it seemed like the reviews were 50/50. Many people were happy with their experiences and convinced that the warnings about remanufactured ink cartridges were part of a grand conspiracy by printer companies to rip off the consumer.

When reading reviews, I usually follow the mantra that the majority of reviews are written by unhappy customers. Unless the company has somehow gone WAY above and beyond the call of duty, satisfied customers generally don’t bother to write reviews. Since there were a number of positive reviews, I decided to go for it.

Sigh.

About a month later, the first cartridge stopped working. The error message says, “Cannot recognize cartridge.” It won’t let me do anything. It won’t print, clean the nozzles, or do anything beyond a frustrating beep and a flashing “alarm” light when I press any buttons.

I thought maybe it was out of ink, which was disappointing since I’d used it for such a short time, but I figured I’d gotten what I paid for. I changed the cartridges. The brand new one doesn’t work, either.

After over a week of troubleshooting, attempting to make it work, and coming thisclose to taking a baseball bat to the thing “Office Space”-style, I’ve given up. I contacted 123InkJets for a refund, but the biggest customer complaint seems to be poor customer service when it comes to refund requests. My chances at actually getting a refund are slim to none.

The worst part? Costco currently sells brand new ink cartridges for about $5 more than what I paid online for the defective remanufactured ones. They’re a little smaller, but since they probably work, it’s a better deal.

Now I’m afraid the remanufactured cartridge has somehow damaged my printer and voided my manufacturer warranty. I can chalk the $60 for the printer cartridges up to a stupid mistake and file it under “live and learn,” but I’ll be pretty depressed if I’ve broken my printer, too.

The moral of the story: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sometimes it’s not worth it to save $5.

Has anyone else had a bad experience with remanufactured cartridges? Is my printer damaged?!

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Make eating out the exception, not the rule

Who doesn’t love going out to dinner? Unfortunately, frequent dinners out are not part of a frugal lifestyle. It’s expensive and usually leads to weight gain.

Before I found a full-time job, we avoided restaurants for months. We just couldn’t afford to eat out. Only on very special occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries, did we opt to eat at a restaurant. The rest of the time, we cooked our meals at home.

When I was hired and we found ourselves with more wiggle room in the budget, we decided to cut ourselves some slack. However, I still didn’t want to make it a habit. In the past we ate at restaurants at least once a week. That was costing us over $100 a month!

Our compromise? We eat at restaurants only once a month. On the last weekend of the month, we look at our budget, and if we have room for a restaurant meal, we treat ourselves.

This weekend will be the third month that we’ve followed this rule. So far it’s worked out well, and it’s been a lot of fun. We can afford to fit $30 into our monthly budget for a meal out, and I enjoy it a lot more now that we don’t go out frequently. It’s a fun way to celebrate a successful month and a great incentive to stay on track to make sure there’s room in our budget for it.

We carefully select a local restaurant that we’ve never tried before instead of settling on a chain. In fact, I think we’re more likely to try new things now that we only go out once a month. We were more likely to be complacent about our restaurant choices when we ate out frequently. After all, why not make things easy and pick a chain when we know we’ll have the opportunity to try something new later? Now that we only get to pick one restaurant a month, we choose carefully and try something new.

It’s also a lot easier for us to choose an expensive restaurant if there’s room in the budget, because it’s only a once-a-month expense.

The best part? It’s a lot easier to manage a $30 restaurant budget than $100+.

Rescuing a pet is frugal

In honor of the 1-year anniversary of the day we adopted our dog, Howie, I’d like to share a few reasons why pet adoption is the frugal way to get a new pet.

We knew we wanted to adopt a dog when we moved in together, and we searched for one for a long time. It took us some time because we wanted a puppy. Tony had never had a dog before, and I was afraid that an older rescue might come with behavioral problems that would be difficult to train. Someday we’d like to rescue an older dog, but for Tony’s first pet, I wanted to make sure that we were beginning the training process from scratch.

I also didn’t want anything to do with commercial pet stores. I’ve heard too much about the practice of puppy milling, and I wanted to make sure that we weren’t participating in it. If you’re considering adopting a pet from a store, please research the practice of puppy milling, and see if you can ensure that the store you’re considering doesn’t work with puppy mills.

After visiting animal shelters, looking at PetFinder.com for hours a day, and visiting the PetSmart adoption fairs, we finally found Howie at a humane society about an hour away. The picture above is the one that was displayed on PetFinder.com when we found him. Pretty hard to say no to that face, isn’t it?

We paid a $150 adoption fee which included neutering, three rounds of shots, and extensive veterinary care to ensure that the puppies were healthy before they were adopted. The adoption fee barely covered what the humane society had already paid for his vet bills. If we had found Howie on the streets and paid no adoption fee, we still would have shelled out the money for neutering, shots, and a physical exam to ensure his health.

Humane societies are non-profit organizations, so even if you choose an older dog that doesn’t have the high pre-adoption puppy vet bills that Howie did, your adoption fee is a charitable donation to an organization that is fostering unwanted animals. So you get a lovable, healthy new family member, and you get to donate to a good cause. It’s win-win.

If your heart is set on purchasing a pure-bred puppy, keep this in mind: pure-bred dogs are often prone to genetic defects and medical problems that could eventually be costly, such as joint disorders, blindness, and epilepsy. I grew up with pure-bred Great Danes, and they were wonderful pets. Unfortunately, they also suffered extensive joint pain and none lived longer than 9 years.

The mixed breeds that you’ll find at the humane society are not only free to adopt, but they are typically less prone to the medical issues of pure breeds. So in the long run, a mixed breed could cost you less in vet bills, too.

If you’re thinking about welcoming a new pet into your family, I hope you’ll consider the humane society. Not only does it make sense financially, but it’s good karma.

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TGIF link round up: Labor Day Weekend Edition!

Is it really Labor Day already? I’m not complaining … the sooner we say goodbye to summer, the sooner my electric bill goes back to normal. Unfortunately, here in North Carolina, we’ve got another six weeks of summer temperatures and humidity (at least). Ugh. Hopefully September will fly by as quickly as August did!

This weekend also marks the end of our first month of budgeting! I’ll be posting an end-of-month budget round up on Sunday, but here’s a little spoiler: I think it’s been a success! More to come on that later.

We also found out that my husband is getting a raise for his teaching assistantship. Yay! More to come on that later, too.

I participated in two blog carnivals this week. My post on saying ‘no’ to the birthday lunch was featured in the Festival of Frugality hosted by FIRE Finance, and my post on being frugal when temptation strikes was featured in the Money Hacks Carnival. I hope you’ll head over and check them out if you haven’t already.

And now here are the posts that inspired me this week! Enjoy!

  • Kelly at Almost Frugal asked what frugal habit would you give up if you could? I enjoy most of our frugal habits. I am much happier and feel like I have way more control over our money and our future now that we’re frugal. The only thing I’d give up is the bare-bones grocery shopping. I would love to buy exclusively organic produce, fancy cuts of meat, and other expensive specialty items. Maybe someday we’ll be able to budget for higher grocery costs, though. Kelly also posted some frugal gift ideas that you don’t want to miss.
  • Christina at Northern Cheapskate asks the question: to Wii or not to Wii? I think we can all relate to this. We scrimp and save so much, then sometimes it’s hard to decide if it’s time to reward ourselves.

I’ve got lost of posts planned for the three-day weekend, so I hope you’ll stop by again before the holiday is over. For those of you heading out of town, have a great holiday!

Freebies are starting to arrive

I’m struggling for ideas this evening (and I’m more than a little distracted by the Democratic National Convention, I must admit), but I wanted to write a quick post anyway.

I didn’t start signing up for freebies until about a month ago. Now that they’re finally starting to fill up my mailbox, it’s really fun!

This week I received a sample of True Lemon (quite a tasty, calorie-free way to flavor unsweetened iced tea!), a Pond’s Clean Sweep facial cloth, and a coupon for $4 off Purina ONE dog food (the only brand we buy … frequently switching dog food by buying what’s on sale can upset your dog’s stomach). The Purina coupon was supposed to be printable, but I just couldn’t get the coupon-printing program to cooperate with my Mac. (That happens to me with printable coupons all the time … Does anybody else have that problem?)

Before I started receiving freebies, the mail was more of a hassle than a cause for excitement. It was mostly junk mail since I’ve opted to go “paperless” for most of my bills and statements. We do receive a number of magazines every month, but for the most part the mail was boring.

I love having something to look forward to now that I’m receiving freebies! It’s never much, usually just enough for one use, but it’s still a fun way to perk up the day!

Planning an elegant wedding reception without spending a fortune

In the past two Wedding Wednesday posts, I discussed getting started on the right track and planning a stunning ceremony on a budget. This week I’m sharing some tips for an elegant reception without spending a fortune.

The reception is usually the most expensive part of any wedding. With catering, entertainment, and venue costs, a typical reception can cost as much as $20,000. My total budget was only $5,000 for the whole wedding, so obviously I had to get a little creative.

The reception is your only opportunity all day to spend time with your guests and thank them for joining you at the wedding, so I wanted to find a balance between frugality and elegance. I didn’t want a wild and crazy party; I wanted a simple, intimate affair where I could spend some quality time with my guests.

Here are some tips for finding that balance yourself:

Look into unconventional reception venues.

I called many places in my rush to book a reception venue before we moved. I was shocked at the prices. Most of them charged a facility fee of $500-$2000 for the space. They also required a minimum catering bill of $1000-$2000, which wasn’t tough to reach with catering packages that started at $20 per person. Yikes. I did the math, and even for my small guest list, I was looking at a minimum of $3,000 for the food and venue alone. That wasn’t going to work on my $5,000 budget.

Out of curiosity, I called a classy little restaurant and art gallery where Tony and I used to eat Sunday brunch. With a gourmet menu and table linens even for brunch, I was pretty sure it would be out of our price range. To my surprise, it was exactly what we wanted.

For $13 per person and no facility charge, we chose 5 of their gourmet appetizers with non-alcoholic beverages included for our guests. We had chicken, steak and cheese quesadillas; artichoke and kalamata spread with fresh bread; mozzarella crostini; Thai-style chicken wings; and chicken sate with peanut sauce. The presentation was gorgeous. The appetizers were replenished throughout the night, so even though we opted to do appetizers instead of a sit-down meal, there was plenty of food.

The best part? There was no down-payment to book the date. This was a huge relief for us since we’d only been engaged for a few weeks and hadn’t had time to save the money for the wedding yet. All of our savings was going to the move, so we were relieved to have extra time to get the money together for the reception.

Part of the reason this restaurant was so affordable and elegant is because it was super tiny. The absolute limit was 50 people with no room for dancing, so they probably don’t host a lot of weddings there. My number 1 priority was elegance, not a dance floor, so this was perfect for me. Holding your reception at a small restaurant is a sure way to save money if you’re willing to sacrifice space for a DJ and a dance floor.

A bonus tip: When you call, don’t tell them upfront that it’s a wedding. Just tell them you’re planning a party for X amount of people. When people hear the word “wedding,” they’re inclined to charge you more.

Skip the sit-down dinner.

This is becoming an increasingly popular option. Many couples are opting for trendy cocktail parties with champagne and appetizers instead of traditional sit-down dinners. I chose to do it this way not only to save money, but because I liked the idea of spending the whole night mingling and sipping champagne instead of spending part of the reception tied to a table for dinner.

If you choose this route, just be sure to order enough appetizers that your guests won’t be starving when the food is gone. We had an unlimited supply, so there was plenty of food.

Don’t let the crazy wedding culture pressure you into paying thousands for an open bar.

I never even considered an open bar. It’s just too expensive. I also didn’t want a bunch of sloppy drunk people killing the elegant mood of my reception. I doubt anyone on my guest list would have been “that guy” anyway, but I wanted a classy affair … not a college kegger.

I was appalled when I read wedding books that said that cash bars are downright tacky. The thought of couples putting themselves into thousands of dollars of debt for liquor just to avoid being deemed “tacky” really upsets me.

Obviously, if an open bar for your guests is a priority for you, then by all means work it into your budget. But I’ve known too many people who say, “I don’t really want an open bar, but I don’t want people to think we’re tacky.”

If you’re not really into it, then don’t spend the money just because you’re worried about what people will think. This is a good rule of thumb for all of your wedding planning. If you spend money just because the etiquette tyrants say it’s tacky not to, your wedding will end up costing about $30,000 (the national average).

The fact is nobody that cares about you is coming for the free booze. Sure, people like to have a good time at weddings, but the people who matter most (the only ones who should be there, in my opinion) don’t care a bit about what beverages you’re serving. Besides, if they’re only coming for the free booze, do you really want them there?

The restaurant that hosted our reception had a full list of beers and wines that our guests could order in a cash bar system. We bought enough champagne for all of our guests to have a glass at the toast. If they wanted more alcohol, they picked up their own tab.

It worked out beautifully. There was an extensive wine list sold by the glass or by the bottle, so the tables that wanted wine with dinner just ordered a bottle. The wines were reasonably priced and quite good.

Another option is to do a partial open bar by supplying beer and house wine for your guests. Personally, I’m not that into that idea, either. My honest opinion is that the wine and beer served is usually not very good. Most of the time I’d rather shell out the extra money to get a glass of good wine, but the only option is the cheap house wine. I love cash bars, and I think they work out well for everyone involved.

As for full open liquor bars … well, in my opinion asking your guests to buy their own drinks isn’t as tacky as a reception hall full of sloppy drunk people who eventually end up behind the wheel. It’s also not as painful as a $5,000 bar tab at the end of the night.

Make your own centerpieces or decorations (if you have them at all) and keep it simple.

We didn’t have floral centerpieces at our reception. The restaurant supplied elegant white linens and pretty candles for each table. Roses were the only flowers at the wedding, so I bought some rose-scented votive candles and some fancy candle holders for each table. The room smelled like flowers, but the whole thing only cost about $30 with no labor beyond dropping the candles into the candle holders. Simple.

We skipped additional decoration because our reception venue doubled as an art gallery. Paintings and photographs by local artists adorned the walls, and I thought that was much prettier than any decoration I could come up with.

Be your own DJ.

DJs and bands are fun, but they’re also expensive. Because there was no room for dancing at our reception, we didn’t care much about the entertainment factor. Music is important to both of us, though, so we knew we wanted a special playlist for the reception.

We carefully combed through our music collections and uploaded a list of meaningful songs onto my iPod. We chose songs that symbolized different times in our lives and our relationship. At the reception, we hooked the iPod up to some speakers and pressed “play.” It was a personalized playlist for next to nothing.

Find a freelance baker for your cake.

When I started calling around for cake prices, I was disheartened. Since practically everyone was traveling a couple hours to come, even us, we knew that nobody would even be able to take home leftover cake. I didn’t want to pay hundreds for something that was ultimately going to be wasted.

I wanted a traditional cake, though. So I contacted Kacie at Sense to Save to ask who baked her cake, because she was also married in Bloomington. She recommended a friend of a family member who bakes cakes out of her home. She made us a beautiful cake that was exactly what we wanted for half the price of professional bakeries. She also delivered it and set it up for free.

It’s important to get referrals if you’re not going with a professional business, because you really never know what you’re getting when you hire a freelancer. Kacie was pleased with her work, so I trusted that it would be fine even though I paid her before the wedding and never even met her. If she hadn’t been recommended by a friend, I would have requested references so I could speak with other couples who had hired her to bake their cakes.

The grand total for our entire reception including food, champagne, entertainment, decorations, cake, and gratuity was $800. Not too bad for a beautiful evening of food and fun for 50 people.

I’m the world’s worst couponer

When I started this blog about a month ago, I also decided to adopt a new habit in addition to writing about my financial progress: clipping and using coupons.

Even though I’d been living fairly frugally for about a year, I never clipped coupons. To be honest, I doubted that they would help me much because 95% of the foods we buy are produce, meats, and other fresh foods.

When I started this blog, though, I wanted to try new approaches to saving money and try to become even more frugal. Most of the other frugal bloggers I read clip coupons, and many people suggested that I try it to reduce our grocery spending. So I’m giving it a shot.

For the past three weeks, I’ve bought a Sunday paper every week and clipped the coupons that caught my interest. I’ve also been checking out some of the printable coupon sites, but I’ve been having trouble printing at some of them because I use a Mac and Firefox. Ultimately, after fighting with it for 20 minutes, I get frustrated, decide all the frustration isn’t worth the 50 cents I’ll save, and give up.

As I suspected, most of the coupons don’t really interest me, anyway. But I have found some good ones for toiletries, cleaning supplies, and other non-food items that I buy.

For the most part, I really haven’t been impressed with the savings-to-work ratio. However, most of the deals I’ve been reading about in the frugal blog world include coupons that were clipped weeks ago, so I’m thinking it might be a few weeks before the coupons I’m clipping now really pay off.

I’ve only used a handful of the coupons I’ve clipped. However, I’m having a hard time getting into the habit of redeeming them. I keep forgetting to bring the coupons I have, or only remembering that I have a coupon at all when I see an item on sale for which I also have a coupon. The problem is, the coupon is at home and I’m in the store. Oops.

The one time I did remember my coupons, I brought a list that included the items I planned to use the coupons on. Then after browsing a while and picking up other things, I actually forgot to hand over my coupons at the register. I had to take them up to customer service to get a $1.30 refund for my coupons. How embarrassing. Looking at the $1.30 in cash that I’d saved after all that hassle also didn’t do much for my lack of enthusiasm about coupon clipping.

Despite my skepticism, I’m determined to give this a real shot before I dismiss it. I feel like I need to get organized before I can really know if coupon clipping is going to work for me.

There’s been a lot of buzz in the frugal blogs about coupon organization systems, but I honestly don’t want to spend any money on this. I am, however, looking for tips on frugal or free ways to get my coupons organized.

So I’m asking you: What methods do you use to organize your coupons?