money-saving-in-the-works

My Albertson’s is having another BOGO sale this week, and I still don’t have that great an idea on how much anything costs there normally. I usually just buy only sale stuff. But I’m going to give it my best try for a Budget Meal today, it will take a little longer than usual though since I have to figure out what each item actually costs. On the back page, they have a lot of items on sale for Cinco de Mayo, with prices! I’ll use those items for my meal today.

In fact, I think I will make my dinner in celebration of Cinco de Mayo. I think I will make Soft Tacos & Spanish Rice. Items needed are:

• 1lb ground beef - $1.38/lb (sold in 5lb chubs)
• 2t chili powder - $0.05
• 1 tomato - $0.35 (4 pk hothouse tomatoes are BOGO this week, I’m guessing they are about $3 normally, they may be cheaper)
• lettuce - 1.29 (not on sale, so not necessary, but I like it)
• 1 package Mission Flour Tortillas - 0.99 (sale price 1.99 - $1 printable)
• 1 can Ro-Tel -$1
• 1 cup long grain rice - 0.30 (BOGO this week, I guesstimate they are about 2.50 each normally)

My grand total is $5.36, not bad for a celebration dinner. Although, I have no idea why many Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I understand Mexicans & their families, but not people who have nothing to do with Mexico.

I’ve done some thinking about our debts. I’ve realized the only real way to completely get rid of them is to pay them off. LOL. But seriously, that’s the only way to truly get rid of them quickly. You could wait the 7-10 years for them to drop off your credit report, but in the meantime you won’t be able to get credit anywhere. Well except maybe one of those rent-to-own stores, like Aaron’s or Rent-a-Center.

There are tons of debt elimination plans out there by people more famous than me, like Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman & countless others, I’m sure. I’m going to give you my steps here:

1. You have to know who you owe money to & how much. Interest rates & due dates are good things to know too. My suggestion is to get your credit reports every year, collect all those bills (including the bill collectors), then organize them all. Many times, a bill is sold from one bill collector to another so you get bills from 3-4 different collection agencies for the same bill. After collecting & organizing them (by who you owe, not the collection company), then sit down & enjoy a cup of coffee or some ice cream or something that will make you feel better. I know that seeing how much you owe other people is a big shock to the system, I’ve done this step 2-3 times because things happen & I have to reassess our situation on debt.
2. After you’ve gathered it all up, you can do 1 of 2 things. You can start calling & negotiating for better terms to pay them, or you can prioritize the debts first. Personally, I skipped the negotiations for a simple (& some might say, stupid) reason; I hate talking to people on the phone. If you prioritize first, you will have to re-prioritize the list after the negotiations. If you do like me & skip the negotiations, then you don’t have to worry about re-prioritizing. You can prioritize by interest rate, or by amount owed, or somewhere in the middle. Like right now, our priorities are Aaron’s (we are still in the 90 days same as cash period on the bed), the car, & Snap-On. The car & Snap-On, I have current payment plans in place so I don’t want to screw them up & have to start all over.

There are more steps, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with it all right now. I’ll be back next week with steps 3 & 4, maybe even 5, if there’s room.

I found this blog, can’t really remember how I found it either. Its called MoneySavingMethods & its pretty informative. I haven’t looked over all the information yet, but it looks like it might be a good addition to my other daily reads. Definitely going to add it to my Blog Roll on the side there. It will take me several days to digest all the information on this site. There are about 12+ different sections to read, not including the page for other linked blogs. I think it will definitely help with my goal of saving money & paying down debt.

I used to work at Wal-Mart. I liked it, at first. Then I began to realize how truly horrible Wal-Mart is to their employees. I’ve actually worked at 3 different Wal-marts, never for more than 6 months. I actually quit the second WM because I was so tired of their practices towards female employees vs male employees & because I was going on the truck with Hubby. But my working at WM did have 1 good result - I don’t like not contributing financially to our household. Hubby says that what I do is enough, but I’ve never really been one to not work. I know, that seems kind of opposite what I say about being a stay-at-home mom, that its hard work & many people don’t realize how hard it really is. I never said that I made sense, now did I?

But to me, I went from earning an income to staying at home, being able to clean when I want, cook when I want, do whatever I want when I want but not earning any money. Hubby jokes that he works to pay me to take care of the house & him - The first time he said that I about blew a gasket, I took it totally wrong! I thought he was trying to make a snide comment about me pretty much being a prostitute.  We fought about that for nearly a week, I think. Eventually (18 or so months later), I realized that he wasn’t being mean about it, he actually felt proud that he was making enough for us to live on a single income in what most people consider a two-income world. That’s when I decided to show him that I can be responsible with the family money & set out on my mission to be as frugal as possible. But that’s another story.

Eventually though, things happened & our bills started being more than his checks were, not much more at first, but enough for me to worry. That’s when I started looking for work-at-home gigs. Most were phone jobs, which I couldn’t do because 1) we didn’t have a landline phone (still don’t) & 2) I didn’t have solid internet yet. I was using my mom’s router from 3 houses down. She knew about it, so its not like I was ’stealing’ her internet, & I did pay half of her monthly internet bill.  But it wasn’t reliable enough for most WAH positions. But I kept looking. At the time, I was doing alot of PTR’s & PTC’s (paid to read emails & paid to click sites) but they don’t really pay enough per click to make a decent monthly income. Maybe if I had more time to click, maybe if I had faster internet or computer, it might work. But at the time, it wasn’t doing much to help, just an occasional $2-10 dollars. Plus my survey sites, they were about $7/month average but again, nothing substantial.

I found this forum, WPLH , that listed tons of work at home jobs, many non-phone. There were other forums but that’s the one that I’ve stuck with from the beginning almost. My first try was MPAM, I told y’all about it in an earlier post. I spent more time trying to earn enough to cover the monthly membership fee than I did actually making money there. After nearly a year, I had to give up on it. It was costing too much time for the lack of income. Now, it needs some major updates, but if the owner can get things up & running again, I’ll give it another try. The idea behind it is solid & good, but it definitely needs updated. Before I gave up on MPAM, I found ChaCha. And that’s where I’m going to stop for today… Tune in next week for my ChaCha story.

So I’ve been trying to get back on schedule. My nights have gone completely crazy, I can’t even fall asleep at a decent hour anymore. So I had to throw out my old daily schedule. Now I’m back on a loose ‘as long as everything gets done, its good’ kinda schedule. As in, I say I need to get 3 or 4 different things done in a day & when I get them done, everything is all right. I hate that kind of schedule, but I know that when my insomnia kicks in, its the only one that works for me.

I’ve also decided to implement a weekly schedule, along with the loose daily schedule I have. My weekly schedule is a little on the unusual side. From Sunday to Saturday, it is: Coupons, Walgreen’s list, Bill Pay, To-Do List, Menu Plan, Crafts, & Shopping. Some of these make sense, coupons are taken care of on Sunday because that’s when they are in the newspaper, the shopping is done on Saturday because that’s the day Hubby is home most often. I’m working on a weekly post schedule for here too.  I don’t know what I’m gonna post each day yet, but I’ve got a few ideas. Like Wednesday would be the Albertson’s Budget Meal post, & Friday’s would have my United Budget Meal. Sunday could be used for just a general post, like an update on the monsters or something household related. Monday I might do something related to working at home, even if it’s just a post about how hard it is to work at home sometimes. Thursday will most likely have my awesome deals, in preparation for shopping on Saturday. I’m thinking of doing a debt elimination post on Tuesdays, & probably nothing on Saturdays, unless Hubby is at work.

I have no idea what to do for a monthly schedule, other than bills, ya know? I have one of those set up on those printable calendars you can find all over the internet. My calendar was getting too crowded to add the bills & their due dates, amounts, etc to.  Yearly schedules are more for birthdays, anniversaries, home maintenance, car maintenance, and anything else that only has to happen 4-6 times a year. Any more frequent than  that & it gets added to the monthly schedule.

I’m going to try to get a post up early tomorrow about beginning to work at home, probably going to tell you how I started working at home.

So I decided to read an article on Yahoo called “Pick Your Green Battles “. Boy was it disappointing. First the author said that 3 of the most common ‘going green’ habits were pretty much pointless. Then she said that the main thing was to change the way you do things & probably have done things for years. Doesn’t she realize that by doing the easy things first, a person is much more likely to start doing the big things that require a HUGE change of habits? Oh, and the comments to the article are hilarious, I was laughing before the end of the first page.

• The first habit the author attacked was the cloth diaper vs disposable diaper debate. I have 3 children, I only used cloth on my youngest. I KNOW that our finances weren’t so strained once I switched over to cloth diapers. I did the really cheap thing too, & made my own cloth diapers out of an old flannel sheet that was just taking up room in the hall cabinet. I’m proud to say that my daughter is 2 1/2 now & the cloth diapers are still here. She’s out of them now, working on potty training with regular panties, but the old cloth diapers are still being used. Either as ‘quick get something to clean this spill up’ rags or ‘grab me a towel to put the dish drainer on’ towels. The point is, its been 2 years since I converted to cloth diapers & they are still here. Where are the disposable diapers I used prior to that? Oh, they are still around too, but they are sitting in a landfill. They aren’t even rotting away! They are just sitting there, forever preserving the messes of my youngest daughter.
• Paper vs Plastic: This shouldn’t even be a debate. There are pros & cons to using each when it comes to taking home your groceries. To me, the pros for paper outweigh the cons. But I don’t even use that. I have 4 reusable bags that I use when I go grocery shopping. I can fit double in my reusable bags than plastic bags. IE, 2 gallons of milk compared to 1, or 3 5lb bags of flour compared to 1! Plus one of my stores gives you a discount for using reusable bags. So its a win-win for me. I wish most stores would start giving discounts to people who used reusable bags, or even the cardboard boxes that the groceries are shipped to the store in. Even though its only 5 cents, its still enough for me to grab them on my way out the door to the store.
• Disposable cup vs Ceramic mug: Again, a disposable item (come to think of it, aren’t plastic bags ‘disposable’?) issue. The author of the article seems to think that a couple hundred plastic/styrofoam cups aren’t anything to worry about. Well, multiply that by the sheer number of adults (leave the kiddos out of this for now) & you see how it quickly adds up! I mean, seriously how hard is it to bring your second favorite coffee cup to work & use it in the break room? I said second favorite so that you don’t lose your favorite if someone knocks yours to the floor. And for the drive to work? Buy one of those travel mugs. Yeah they are a bit expensive, last I checked a good one was between $10 & $15, but they last for a while. And if you hand wash them instead of throwing them in the dishwasher, they’ll last even longer! The shortest I had one of them last was about 3 months I think, it would have lasted longer but someone decided they needed it more than me, so they stole it! The average lifetime for a travel mug in my experience is 6 - 9 months.

Those are the 3 common habits that she said are pretty pointless. Her 3 big tips kind of make sense, to a degree. But like I said earlier, most people need to cement the little habits before they tackle something big. And to me they are big because they require changing your eating habits (I know that’s a hard one for many people, I mean look at how many people fall off their diet), & changing your ingrained cleaning habit.

• The first, the eating habit one, is to eat less meat. Yeah, cows make an inordinate amount of methane, a greenhouse gas, but what about the farmers/ranchers raising those cattle? They are supposed to just destroy their whole herd so that people quit complaining about their environmental impact? I think not! Unless the author wants to support the ranchers & their families, I suggest she quit trying to convince people to be vegetarians. Yeah, I know that our current portions (think double cheeseburger with each patty containing 4-6 ounces of meat) are way out of proportion to what we really need. I do think that’s a factor in so many Americans being overweight. But telling people to eat less meat under the guise of being environmentally friendly will make no one happy & it might make some people reconsider helping Mother Earth.
• Car Maintenance: I’ll admit, I have NO idea to the details to this one. I’ve never been a car person, as long as it runs, won’t break down on me & gets me from point A to point B, I’m happy with it. Many people in my family are the total opposite, so I just go with the flow to keep the peace. However, I do want to say that its been proven that regular preventative maintenance (oil changes, filter changes, etc) does help to extend the life of your car (longer use, not in the junkyard as soon) and keeps it running in top condition. Which means it is less likely to have awful emissions, leaks, what have you. I know they used to recommend you have an oil change every 3000 miles, but talking to my mechanic brother-in-law has made me realize that unless your vehicle is old (like ours, 1996) or used for extensive driving (think door to door salesman) than you can get by with only getting an oil change every 5000-6000 miles. So if you only drive your car to work or use it 2 days out of the week, than you don’t have to get one every 3000 miles.
• Wash your clothes in cold water: Many people are used to using warm/hot water for their clothes. I however have always used cold water to wash, except whites (cloth diapers were in the white loads) then I used hot. Some people (in the comments) have mentioned that cold water doesn’t get your clothes as clean as warm or hot water, especially if you work in a greasy environment. I have to disagree. Hubby was a diesel mechanic for the military for 3 years & his clothes were always clean after being washed in cold water. I didn’t have to use a harsh detergent either, just wash, check for grease stains, then dry. If there were grease stains (there was once, somehow he got drenched in oil & I ended up having to throw that shirt away) then I’d treat with Shout or Spray ‘n Wash & toss it in the next load of darks. If you know anything, diesel mechanics are some of the dirtiest workers ever & get some serious stains in their clothes. His old work clothes are still in our closet, able to be worn whenever he or I want.

This post is getting long, so I’m going to quit for now. Later, I might post my ways of helping the environment. Keep in mind that not all my ways will be good for you. Bye for now!

Last night was kinda sombre for me. I thought about my work at home gigs, thought about Hubby’s work, thought about our finances in general. Actually, I thought about everything involved in caring for a household, from cleaning to finances. I think its time for me to reevaluate my efforts to work at home.

I’ve been trying My Instant Biz but its not working for me. I’ve been at it for nearly 3 month, paid for 2 months of TrafficWave, & still no signups. My TW is good through May 2, so I’m not quitting today. But I have decided that if there’s no progress by April 27-28th, I’m going to have to quit. I can’t continue to spend money on this, even if it is a good idea.

The other thing I tried, way back when I first started looking for a work at home gig, was MPAM.  I don’t recommend joining that right now, several people that were there at the beginning have left it due to a variety of reasons, lack of updates being a big one. There are signs that the owner is working on getting some major changes up, so it may be a good idea again soon. I hope so.

I’ve looked at many of the e-books that people promote, claiming instant earnings or $10,000/month profit. While they appealed to me (who wouldn’t want $10,000 a month, especially when your budget at the time needs less than $5,000), they just didn’t seem logical to me, or they screamed SCAM! So I left that kind of thing alone.

You may think that eliminates many of the work at home gigs, but it doesn’t. MIB works for most people, I just haven’t had any luck with it. MPAM, I’m giving it some more time then I’ll check it out again. Besides, those are businesses. There are many gigs where you are an independant contractor or an honest-to-goodness employee! WPLH is a good place to find those type of gigs, its where I found out about ChaCha and Today.com. I hadn’t been on there in a while, but I got on again last night. I found some good writing work, just got to apply for it.

Hubby has said that he doesn’t want me working, he’s also said that he wishes he could get off the truck because he’s missing so much of the girls’ lives. The only answer I can think of is for me to work at home when the monsters are asleep or otherwise occupied. And to do as much as I can to get our monthly spending down. Right now, his paycheck & my child support cover all the monthly bills. Getting off the truck would be a severe paycut, probably 50% or more since he regularly makes $1,000/week bring home pay. His monthly income averages to $3,600 - 4,000. That means I have to either decrease spending by about $500/week or increase our income by $500/week. I’ll probably do a combination of the 2.

I’ve been thinking about our tax refund… I can either spend it, or pay down bills with it. I do need to get my oldest’s high school curriculum, so I might do a bit of both, spending & debt elimination. Her curriculum is going to be about $275, after all supplies are bought. Not bad for the first year of high school. Then next tax refund, I can get her 2nd year, and so on till she’s done with high school. I’ve also been thinking about freezers, I really want a chest freezer. Wal-Mart has them for about $200 for a small one. So that’s about $500, after taxes, to spend. The rest of the approximate $3,000 will go towards our debts. I’m thinking Aaron’s and the car. That’ll free up around $400 - 500 each month. So that’s nearly $100/week already!

This week, my United has 85/15 ground beef on sale for $1.59/pound. I priced other varieties, the 73/27 was $1.69/pound & the 80/20 was $2.49/pound! Yeah, I’m gonna get the 85/15! They also have their Skillet Classics on sale for 99 cents each. Quick & easy meal - Hamburger Helper with a salad!

Shopping list:

• 1/2 - 1 pound 85/15 beef (sold in 3+ pound packages, you’ll have to divide it up) - $0.79 - 1.59
• 1 box Skillet Classics - $0.99
• 1 bag salad mix - $1.59
• 1 tomato (assuming 1lb tomato) - .99

Grand total comes to $4.36 or $5.16, depending on how meaty you like your Hamburger Helper. I’m guessing on the price of the salad mix, they aren’t on sale & I haven’t bought them in a while. All in all, its a good easy dinner for that night that you really don’t want to cook.

For more $5 dinners, go to 5dollardinners.com . They have an extensive list of stores, even Wal-Mart & Target.

I kind of got caught up in the day-to-day things around here & totally forgot about putting posts up here. Ooops!

Last week, I didn’t get all the things at Walgreen’s that I wanted. I only did 2 trips instead of the 5 or 6 like I planned. This week, oh boy! I went through the ad & there are plenty of things to get for free! I have to do 8 transactions just to get it all! Today, I got some Scunci elastics (free after Register Reward), a gallon of milk, some Coffee-Mate liquid creamer, 2 Excedrin Migraine, & 4 bags of Hershey’s Kisses. All for under $10, plus I’ll be getting $5.50 back for buying 4 bags of Hershey’s candy. That makes the candy free after rebate since it was 50% off, being Easter candy.

I’m about ready to give up on Redbox. I got the DVD issues resolved from a month ago, it took a while but it finally was taken care of & I didn’t have to pay anything extra. I went today to use today’s free rental code - J89LA2 - but the machine had problems vending my DVD, again! It did that last time too! I don’t know if free movies are worth the hassle I’ve been dealing with, ya know?

United doesn’t have much on sale this week, last week’s sale went to Saturday instead of Thursday. Easter & all, ya know? This week’s sale is Monday to Thursday & the ad is only 1 page. I’ll be going over the ad & figure out a meal or two from it later this afternoon or evening.

Well, I finally got around to planning my trips. United isn’t much this week, as far as my coupons & their sales match up anyway. Walgreen’s on the other hand, I’m gonna have to make a couple transactions each day for 2-3 days at least. They seriously have that much stuff this week on sale that is free or almost free. I’ll do United first, then Walgreen’s since it will be so extensive.

United only really has 3 things on sale that line up with my coupons this week, one of which I’m not 100% sure on. They have Imperial Sugar 2/$3, Post cereals (selected varieties) 2/$4, & Wheat Thins 2/$4. If all goes well, I’m planning on:

• 4 Imperial Sugar - $1.50-.30 c/o = $1.20 for 4 lbs sugar, or 30 cents a pound.
• 5 boxes Post cereal - $2-.50 c/o = $1.50 box OR $2-.55 c/o = $1.45 box OR $2-1.00 c/o = $1.00 box
• 2 Wheat Thins Artisan Cheese crackers if they are on sale - BOGO c/o making them 2/$2

I also have a couple other coupons that I’m going to look at while at United, don’t know how much they are yet, so I don’t know if they are a good deal.

Now Walgreen’s… They have 7 different things that I want, all either have a mail in rebate or produce RR. They are Armour Vienna Sausages, Betty Crocker Brownie Mix, Cake Mix, & Frosting, Oust Spray, Glade Lasting Impressions, & Colgate Total Toothpaste. My plan is 2 transactions today.

• 2 Oust sprays - $2.99-2 c/o = $0.99 - $1 MIR = Better than Free!
• 1 Colgate Total Toothpaste - $3.49 - $.75 c/o = $2.74 - 3.49RR = Better than Free!
• Total paid for this transaction will be $4.72 + tax, I haven’t quite figured out how Texas does tax yet.

The 2nd transaction will be a little more extensive

• 5 Armour Vienna Sausages - $0.49 each
• 2 Betty Crocker Brownie Mix - $3.00-1.00 c/o = $2 - $1RR = $1 for 2 brownie mixes
• 2 Oust sprays - $2.99-2 c/o = $0.99 - $1 MIR = Better than Free!
• Grand total will be $6.43, then I’ll use the RR from the first transaction bringing it down to $2.94 + tax.

If I add in the MIR’s, I’ll actually be getting paid to shop at Walgreen’s today. I’ll have the Walgreen’s rebate on the Oust sprays plus there was a MIR in Sunday’s inserts “Buy 5 participating products, get $5 back” & Armour Vienna sausages are on the list. Pretty sweet deal, don’t ya think?