After DH deposited the pocketful of change he'd been forgetting about for the past couple days into the change jar, I was able to roll coin.

$10.00 in quarters
5.00 in dimes
2.00 in nickles
.50 in pennies
8.00 in $1 bills
-------
$25.50 total in coin jar
$20.00 to be paid back to savings
-------
$55.50 total deposit for Monday

This is going into my vacation fund tomorrow. I am going to town anyway for a dentist appointment so I will do my banking on the same trip.

$ 59.27 current vacation fund
$ 55.50
-------
$114.77 New vacation fund total

Rose's basketball games went pretty well today--for Rose. Our team lost both games but Rose made the most baskets of any of her teammates in the first game and was one of only 3 people to make any baskets on her team on the second game.

The first game was against our own school's other team and they have most of the 6th graders and the 5th graders they do have are the most advanced players. They didn't divide it up well, not mixing the experienced kids with the less so ones. Of the 10 kids on Rose's team, only half have played before. And this is the team they practice and scrimmage with, so we knew going in we wouldn't beat them. I just told Rose to do her best and she did.

The second game went pretty well considering that 5 out of 10 of their players were half a head to 8 inches taller than Rose who is the tallest girl on her team. There's not too much you can do when people outreach you by that
much, so I'm proud my daughter did so well against them.

I do wish they would have separate 5th and 6th grade teams and not combine
them together. They have enough kids to do it and its hard when you are
overmatched because of height, even though you play well.

I just wish that the girl who used to bully Rose would get her act together. She used to be such a good player and now she's just acting like a ditz and has made maybe one basket in 3 games when she used to be a top scorer. She doesn't pay any attention to what's going on around her, I don't know why she is even out there if she isn't going to give it her best. Well, she doesn't bully Rose anymore. Kind of hard to when Rose has flown right past her in skills this year. It's a good thing Rose isn't the vindictive sort or she'd have good reason to bully back now. Or at least tease.

Anyway, I still feel really good about Rose, knowing she is getting better and better all the time and trying hard.

We got smart and packed lunches today for the kids, since the games were from 12 to 2 and they just get so hungry. If we hadn't packed food, they would have wanted to go down the road to the Casino and get sub sandwiches at their market store that has a Port of Subs in it. Wanted to prevent the "can we eat outs" from happening.

After that we went into my mother's house to do laundry and Mom took over so we could go do the rest of our grocery shopping. We are trying for a weekend shop that means we won't shop again for the month except to buy eggs and milk. That is the best way I can think of right now to keep to the grocery budget of $200 a month.

Then Mom decided to take the kids overnight so we came home without them. I made whole wheat hamburger buns tonight as we are planning on making cheeseburgers for lunch tomorrow. I've got a few ideas to try next time to see if they might work better. We put them in a 9 X 13 glass pan and next time I think we'll try using a cookie sheet instead. The pan works great for rolls but less great for buns. I think I'll see about finding a different whole wheat bun recipe that's a little different, too.

It's late now so I will post our spending journal for today tomorrow.

This is my 5th Entry for today but it is payday so it is to be expected that I can't silence my keyboard for any decent stretch of time once I sit down to it.

It is a very interesting experience tracking daily spending. DH is totally on board with it and is even reminding me when I forget which is very helpful because I want to do this.

We had a very good day out and about while the kids were in school. It is nice to have some time just to be a couple, even if it is doing mundane things like paying bills and grocery shopping. Being able to have an uninterupted conversation in the car is pretty cool, too.

Dinner tonight was cooked out of the freezer and pantry, none of the new stuff. I am trying to stick to a menu plan so things will stay on track. So dinner was oven baked chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and milk for everyone else, and just a piece of chicken and some green beans for me. My stomach is still unsure of itself, though I am feeling miles and away better than yesterday.

I really wanted to buy some bananas today but the last time we did it brought in fruit flies with them so until they have all died off we aren't buying fruit unless it goes in the fridge. It is so frustrating, I've got a few pest strips hanging but they just don't want to land on them.

A few more days and they should be all dead, there is no more available food for them. We are being extra careful that if we do leave dishes in the sink because the dishwasher is full, that we rinse everything off. Last thing I need is a resurgence of the the things because someone left a ketchup blob on a plate.

I've got plenty of apples and oranges, which of course is why I want bananas. Sigh. Oh, well, I will live and if this is the only thing in my life that is upsetting than I think I am very happy to live with that!

$ 34.33 Balance as of 1/4/07
$917.80 Today's spending
--------
$952.13 New YTD total as of 1/5/07

Lau posted a link to an amortization template and I downloaded it and have been playing with it for about 20 minutes.

If I continue at the rate I am going with making an extra principal payment of $24.14 each month I will finish the loan in 8.4 years.

If I bump it up to $74.14 extra each month, I can finish the loan in 7 years, 3 months.

If I bump it up to $124.14 extra each month, I will finish the loan in 6.5 years.

If I bump it up to $224.14 extra each month, I can finish the loan in 5 years and 2 months.

Not sure what I'll do about any of it yet but its fun to play with it and see the possibilities.

Thanks for posting the link, Lau.

I made the mortgage payment today of:

$375.86 regular payment
+ 24.14 extra principal payment
--------
$400.00

Mortgage balance is now at $32,251.24.
I am just short of having made the 71st payment by $62.16.

That means I have 109 payments to go plus $62.16.

I have 9 years, 1 month and $62.16 left to payoff my mortgage.

I always pay $24.14 extra, and on occasion will pay $124.14 extra over the years, so it will be less time than that, actually. But putting it out like this helps me keep track.

If I never made another extra principal payment between now and the end of the loan I should have it paid off by 2016. I am planning to have it paid off earlier than that of course, my daughter starts college in the fall of 2014 and it should be paid off well before then.

Today was payday so of course, I paid some bills and we went grocery shopping.

Bills paid:

$260.00 Medical
$ 20.00 Rose's Lunch Account
$ 20.00 Tobias' Lunch Account
$ 93.00 Puget Sound Energy
$400.00 House Mortgage
--------
$793.00 Bills Paid

Groceries bought:

@ Terra Organica:

$ 7.98 2 5 lb bags of organic 100% whole wheat bread flour
$ 3.38 2 packages of organic 100%whole wheat tortillas
$ 3.39 1 box of Wheatines organic crackers
$ 5.09 1 jar of Spectrum Omega-3 Flaxseed Oil Mayonnaise
-------
$19.84 Total at Terra Organica

@ Fred Meyer:

$12.40 for 7.2 pounds leanest hamburger
$11.98 2 packages organic uncured ham
$ 2.10 for 5.53 pounds navel oranges
$ 1.99 1 gallon 2% milk
$ 4.99 1 gallon organic non-fat milk
$ 3.29 Organic Yogi Ginger Tea
-------
$36.75

$56.59 Total grocery spending

@ Fred Meyer non-grocery spending

$ 1.98 2 packs key sorters
$ 3.29 bottle of Rolaids
$12.98 2 bottles Vicks Sinex nasal spray
-------
$18.25
$ 1.87 sales tax
-------
$20.12 Total non-grocery spending

Meal Out for 2 at Cinco de Mayo

$21.13 cost of meal
$ 1.96 sales tax
-------
$23.09
$ 5.00 tip
-------
$28.09

$897.80 Total spending today

I still have some bills to pay and $300 or so to do it with but have will not sit down and do those until this weekend.

The hamburger was the leanest they make and was all in the reduced bin so it went straight into the freezer when we got home.

The oranges were on sale for 38 cents a pound, really great price.

----------
Edited to add:

I forgot we got $20 worth of gas today, too.

$897.80
+ 20.00
--------
$917.80 Total payday spending.

Today was the automatic deposit of $10 to savings, which I will be transferring to ING soon.

I have some horrible type of stomach bug, it hit hard last night. DH went and bought me egg flower soup from the Chinese place that has no MSG. It's the only thing that will go down right now. I hope this thing passes fast as we have to do our grocery shopping tomorrow. He also got a 1/2 gallon of non-fat milk and a 1/2 gallon of 2% milk as we were completely out. He took the money out of savings but I will pay it back tomorrow when we get paid. Which is why I'm waiting to send the $10 to ING, when I can send this with it.

We got our income tax booklet in the mail, now we just have to wait for his work to issue the paperwork and the banks to send the interest notices. Probably nothing will come until the last day of January. I hate waiting. We should be getting back close to $3000.

I so wish we had that money throughout the year but because of the way DH works, 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off, he gets taxed funny, as if he was making the same amount each week of the month, when he only works 2 of 4. It's stupid but there isn't a way around it. We've tried. There used to be back when you could claim as many exemptions as you wanted to, but now, even with the max we are allowed to claim, it still ties up $3000. Bugs the heck out of me.

Today's spending:

$10.43 1 gallon of egg flower soup
$ 3.48 1 gallon of milk
-------
$13.91 Total today's spending
$20.42 Previous January spending
-------
$34.33 Year to date spending

Vizsla asked for my bread recipe so I thought I'd post it here.

1 and 1/2 cups + 2 tbsp water
3 and 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tbsp dry milk powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp honey (or cane sugar)
1 tbsp molasses
3 tsp active dry yeast

If your wheat flour does not have gluten in it you can add 1 and 1/2 tbsp of gluten as well. If you are grinding your own it will have it. There is no harm to the recipe in leaving it out.

Add ingredients in order indicated by your bread machine and use the whole wheat setting.

I don't have oven directions for it, but you could probably find them online for something comparable. This is for a 1 and a 1/2 pound loaf of bread.

This is a very filling bread, so when making sandwiches for the kids with it, we only make half sandwiches and they are full.

Today I:

Baked a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Made homemade tacos for dinner using a bunch of individual spices instead of from a mix. Healthier and with no fillers.

Cut up a 2 and a half pound pot roast into chunks to make chili tomorrow. If I had bought the pre-cut beef it would have cost twice as much for just under half the amount.

There will be enough chili leftover to package a family size meal for the freezer.

DH spent $10.98 of his travel money for food at the airport. Technically this is money from last year, but since it was spent this year I am tracking it anyway.

He also had enough left over to take us out for a very cheap lunch where we spent $9.44.

$10.98
+$09.44
--------
$20.42 Total spending for 1/3/07

No, not money. Nor political parties. Nope, its January and my daydreams turn to garden thoughts. I can't plant until late April, or mid-April if I use cloches, but my first seed catalog came in the mail and I'm off and running...at least in my head.

I've actually convinced DH to help me this year (so less of the grocery budget goes towards produce and more towards steak!) and the kids know it is going to be part of their responsibility as well. Tobias likes doing stuff in the garden, Rose, not so much. But they both like eating garden produce, so they'll both help this year.

Here are some of my gardening goals for this year:

Plant enough green beans to at least can a six month supply. Some things won't grow in my garden but green beans are prolific. I usually plant one 8 by 4 foot garden bed with pole beans on 8 teepees. Which is great for getting through the summer and having about 2 gallons left over 2 freeze. But I want more than that, and we eat a lot of green beans.

Transplant our two blueberry bushes and our Saskatoon bush out of the yard and into the garden proper where they will get adequate light and nutrients from the soil.

Dig up the asparagus crowns and put them on Freecycle. They grow fine, but I'm the only one who eats them and so much ends up getting wasted. Better to give them to someone else and use the valuable space for something else.

Convince myself not to plant a lot of corn, or possibly any corn. There are a lot of farms that grow corn here and they sell it for 10/$1.00. When you can get 100 ears for $10 to freeze, corn is not a good use of garden space. No matter how good it tastes 10 minutes from picked to cooked.

Do plant potatoes. They taste better than anything out of the stores and haven't been as cheap in the last couple of years, and they grow well in my garden.

Skip the tomatoes. They hate me, they will not grow for me, it doesn't matter how I treat them, they absolutely will not make it. No convincing myself that this year will be different. 7 years and its never different. Ditto bell peppers. Just give it up.

Plant thornless blackberries in quantity. Transplant thornless raspberries to a better location but not too near the blackberries, I don't want to end up with crossbred berries. Transplant strawberries to a better location. That portion of the garden will probably end up raspberries on one end, then blueberries, then strawberries, then blackberries across the shorter side of the garden rectangle. The transplants will grow anywhere in the garden, but they are in the way of how the new layout will go. This will be their permanent home, though.

Plant leaf lettuces only, head lettuce will be consumed by slugs, not me. Mix in spinach, radish, garlic bulbs and scallions. Do not try to grow onions, just use the scallions and deal with the fact that regular onions won't grow from sets in my garden, even if I plant them in the fall.

Plant 2 beds with broccoli, cauliflower, purple cabbage and kohlrabi, all plants from the same family.

Increase the herb bed, replace the tricolor sage that was destroyed by over enthusiastic pruning by children.

Plant 3 zucchini plants (not more!) and try planting cucumbers one more year, with an eye towards giving them up next time. Do not put the beds near each other. Think about squash if there is room.

Plant a second cherry tree to help fertilize the so-called self-fertilizing cherry tree we already have.

That's all I can think of now.

Today is shaping up nicely, well its almost over, but no money was spent. I will be using gas to go to basketball practice, the 2 mile round trip twice. A whopping 4 miles worth of gas.

The French Dip restaurant desire passed and I never made my chili today. The windstorm kept me up late last night. I took down the Christmas lights that are on the opposite side of my bedroom wall today so the clunking wouldn't keep jerking me awake tonight, like it did last night. I also turned off all the timers so the rest of the lights no longer come on. As tired as I was, I didn't think a major kitchen production was in order. Maybe tomorrow.

DH comes home tomorrow, maybe I'll make the chili then. It's a big recipe and there ought to be leftovers for the freezer.

I checked my regular savings accounts today. I made a total of 50 cents interest between the three of them. I am so glad I have ING.

I finally convinced DH to give up our current cell phone plan. Our two year contract expired in October, and isn't the company we signed up for to begin with, because they were bought out. Its been good service and all that but we are not heavy cell users. I'm lucky if I make two calls a month and they don't last long. DH uses his seldom also, maybe 8 short calls a month. We never even came close to using our minutes, and we were on the cheapest plan they had for two phones.

We are going to buy tracphones. $10 per phone and I believe its $9 for 60 days at the minimum for the pay as you go, which is enough minutes for us. Both Bellingham and Anchorage are in the calling zones, so this is great for us. We will have (after cost of phone) a bill that works out to $18 a month instead of one that is $72 a month.

Ever since reading a blog an hour or two ago that the person made French Dips for dinner, I have had a mad full on craving to go get a French Dip tomorrow from this wonderful restaurant down by the border crossing. They make what is probably the best French Dip in the state and I can't get the thought out of my head.

I don't have the cash on hand to buy one. I don't have the money in my checking account to buy one. I do have a credit on one of my credit cards for overpayment, but I don't want to use it. I'm trying to talk myself out of this, because it would be wasteful and I promised myself no eating out. Plus the French bread is white flour.

I hope I get over this by morning. I wish I even had the money to go get some London Broil and do it up myself. I can easily make whole wheat flour French bread in the bread machine. But no shopping until Friday. I'm not wasting the money right now.

My plan for tomorrow was to make some homemade no bean chili anyway. Which I have been wanting to make all week, but is a bit labor intensive. I guess if I get it started right after the kids leave for school the smells will permeate the house and overrun the French Dip thoughts. That sounds like a plan.

I also want to make up some hamburger buns. Basically use the bread machine to do the dough and after the first rise, divide the dough into six balls instead of 12 like I would for rolls, let them rise and bake them in the oven.

Ooh, now chili with crusty fresh hamburger bun type rolls, yes, that will wipe out the French Dip craving at its source.

Today was a no spend day.

I didn't go anywhere so I didn't use any gas.

We ate leftovers.

I built a fire in the woodstove instead of using the propane furnace.

I scheduled a bill to be paid online for 1/5/07, to save a stamp. (Man, that 07 feels weird to type).

I found another quarter on the floor of the kitchen and added it to my change jar.

I did the garbage can dance, where you get into the garbage can and smash it down so you can get a couple more bags in it before you put it out. Technically, not supposed to do that, but my garbage can has a limit of 80 pounds and believe you me, I am going to get all 80 pounds in there, or as close to, and the only way to do it is to do the garbage can dance.

Got all the recyling sorted as we have free recyling pick-up every two weeks and the value of recycled materials is deducted from our garbage bill since it doesn't go into the landfill. It's usually only a couple dollars a month, but every little bit counts.

Just my frugal things for the day.

Looking at blog statistics can get very addicting. Mine have steadily risen each month. I had my best month ever since joining the site. I had 3,162 unique visitors in December. That means that there are over 3000 people out there interested in what I have to say. Pretty cool. Sometimes I wonder if I am boring the universe but obviously the numbers wouldn't keep going up if I was.

And these readers managed to read 11,367 pages in the month of December. Quite the bookworms, or computer worms? No that has a bad connotation, who wants a computer worm. Screen worms? No, that sounds like a disease, doesn't it? We'll just stick with bookworms.

Anyway, to all my readers, thanks for taking the time.

In my quest towards better food management I aiming towards 5% waste as opposed to about 30%. I have been keeping better track this month than ever before. Today was leftovers for dinner, sort of.

There was enough spaghetti left over for Rose, but no hamburger. Tobias had a plate from the other day that has both spaghetti and hamburger on it (I guess his growth spurt is over). So I made fresh hamburger for Rose to have on her spaghetti, but made the entire package.

Then I had leftover hamburger, so I made 7 ounces of rice for me, as I know that is how much I can eat and have nothing left over. There was enough leftover sauce that I added it and the hamburger to the rice and that was my dinner along with green beans, a tangerine, and the last piece of bread from the batch I made last night, smeared with garlic butter.

Number of leftovers currently in my fridge: 0. Yay, me. It didn't even feel like I was eating leftovers. Okay, well, technically I wasn't except the sauce, but the kids were and didn't feel like they were eating leftovers.

So day one of the new year and food management is currently under control.

The interest in my ING savings account was added this morning, $2.05. Total interest since opening the account on October 23rd is $3.23. Sign on bonus of $25, which is counted as interest and one referral bonus of $10, also counted as interest, plus the real interest comes to $38.23. Not bad for 2 months and one week of having my money in their bank.

The total in my ING savings account is now $624.23. I have lots of referral invites, so if anyone wants to sign up and get the $25 bonus for opening an account with $250, leave a reply to this blog and I'll send you one.

Good-bye 2006, Hello 2007.

Somewhere in the neighborhood people are letting off fireworks. I hope all the little cats and dogs are safely tucked away and alseep tonight and not going crazy from fright at all the noise. No howling yet.

The first way I saved money in 2007 was not buying fireworks to light off! Course, I won't be that frugal in July.

I finally got everything cleared out around the bread machine so I measured out all the ingredients and it is busily working away on the dough and we shall have fresh bread tomorrow. This is going to be pretty good, I think. Since we only buy the organic 100% whole wheat bread, which comes to 2/$5.00 at the bread outlet store, and we buy five to six loaves a month, plus the same kind of hamburger or hot dog buns, we should save a lot of money doing it this way.

The organic ingredients came to $10.00 and should be good for about 40 loaves of bread or homemade buns, (I'll track it to be sure) which would come to $125 from the outlet store for that same number of loaves or buns. Homemade comes out to 25 cents per loaf or batch of buns.

So instead of spending $15 to $20 a month on bread products, I will be spending $6 to $8. And the kids will eat the crust off homemade bread as well as the heels. No problem.

I added $7 in ones to my coin jar today. We have enough organic milk to get through until payday, DH comes home Wednesday and he can just go without until Friday. We have apple juice so he will deal. I also found two quarters and three pennies while I was cleaning.

Yes, I know I said I was going to be Mrs. Lazy Pants today since all of my closets are organized, but I decided I was tired of only being able to enter the kitchen from one direction. Our kitchen is laid out where it has an entry to the laundry room and entry to the living room and an entry to the playroom/exercise room.

The hall leading off the kitchen to the laundry room is filled with "stuff" either kitchen or laundry related and needs to be organized. I can't get through that way to the laundry room at all. I have to go through my room, through the masterbath and out to the laundry room that way. Which isn't that big a deal but has to be dealt with before we get the dryer fixed.

Usually we can only get into the kitchen from the living room because there is so much "stuff" in the doorway to the exercise/playroom. You can get into it from the living room so its just a major pain to always have to go around.

Most of the stuff was recycling stuff. A lot of cardboard boxes that needed to be broken down, cans and plastic bottles that needed to be taken outside and put in the appropriate bins. Pop bottles that needed to have the labels removed. Now we haven't bought pop since Labor Day, so this should tell you how long they've been sitting there. A bunch of plastic grocery sacks that needed to be shoved in one bag and put under the sink for use as garbage can liners.

Well, I finally tackled all that. It took me 2 hours, but everything is outside and in its appropriate bin, ready to go out Monday night for Tuesday morning pick-up. And I can walk through my kitchen in two directions and it makes me very happy.