Today was a really long day, but I feel like I got a lot accomplished. And dinner was fantastic. It has been an age since I've made my garlic cheese meatballs. Usually when I make the fancy sauce from scratch I just don't bother with adding protein to the meal because it is a pretty hearty sauce, but we had a pound of hamburger thawed out leftover from making cheeseburgers last night and the kids had been asking for these so I did, with the idea that there would be leftovers for tomorrow night to make meatball sandwiches with. Umm...I'd forgoten how good they are. Suffice it to say there was exactly two meatballs leftover which is not going to make anyone a sandwich, but at least can be crumbled up and thrown on pizza when I make it this week.

DH and I went jeans shopping for him. Unfortunately we only found one pair that fit him right. There were four pairs in his size, but only one brand fit him right. I kind of wish clothing manufacturers woiuld be more standard. So we might have to wait until next month to buy him the other two pairs, but we will check back next week in case new stock came in.

While we were there, totally unexpectedly, I found the perfect swimsuit for me. I was going to order one off a website, but was hesitating because of the price. The suit I found at the store was $20 less. It was just what I wanted, in that it had thick shoulder straps instead of tying behind the neck, a good built-in bra that doesn't show off more than I'm comfortable having the world see, and a skirt that wasn't so long it gets in my way when I do the crawl stroke, but was long enough to cover what I wanted covered. We got a $3 catalina coupon for health and beauty that is good until mid-April at the check-out.

The suit is a little...loud, but not garishly so and most swimsuits are these days. Just more than I would normally wear. Looks like confetti all over a black background. I will have to cut these goofy bows off that serve no purpose and then I will be completely happy. I've been making do with a suit that's too big for a while now, (wore it when pregnant with my almost eleven year old) so I'm glad I'll have something that fits better now that I swim so much more than I used to. I'm going to start swimming again tomorrow. I hate to see what kind of shape I'm in. I was doing 40 laps when I got sick and quit. I think I'll be lucky if I can do 10.

We went to Lowe's and bought replacement filters for our Brita faucet filter and my mom had us pick up a filter for her, too. They had a $10 rebate for if you bought a replacement 2 pack and a filter. Mom doesn't rebate so I got it and I will send it off tomorrow. It also came with a thing that if you sign up at Brita for reminder emails for replacement filters they will send you a $2 coupon.

We got a gallon of Darigold milk today that was marked down to 99 cents because it's sell by date was tomorrow. My son's special milk was on special for $5.29 a gallon (usually $5.99) with a sell by date of March 23 so we got two of those. I also got some bananas that were 48 cents a pound. Normally the best I can get them for is 59 cents a pound, so yay.

We went to the pharmacy and got 2 prescriptions for $14.92. I was afraid that the drug part of our medical plan had changed, but it hasn't. Very happy about that. I am still waiting on the one doctor to call in another RX. I will have to call tomorrow. I called on Monday and they said they'd call it in but haven't. I only have 2 samples left so they better get a move on.

I'm going to have to make more bread tomorrow. I usually only do it twice a week, but we seem to be eating more than previously. Or maybe my mother is filching more than she used to. She does like fresh bread. DH is probably snacking on it without telling me. I've noticed a big dip in the peanut butter jar, too. I'll have to ask him as I'll want to account for it in my meal planning if he is.

Meal Planning for tomorrow:

Breakfast:
French toast with powdered sugar ($1)
Milk ($1.50)

Total $2.50

Lunch:
2 kids--
PB and Honey sandwich (.50)
Turkey ham and roast beef sandwich ($1)
banana (.20)
apple (.50)
hard pretzels (.25)

2 adults--
All meat chili ($3)
Cornbread (.30)
bananas (.40)

Total: $6.15

Dinner:
Chicken legs ($3)
Mashed potatoes and gravy (.50)
Broccoli ($1)
Cauliflower ($1)
Milk ($1.50)

Total $7

Total for day: $15.65

Today is payday. I'm still figuring stuff out as far as the bills go. We went to Costco and bought $45.14 worth of food and a case of toilet paper. We don't need to do any major shopping this week at all. We will have to pick up milk, de-icer spray for the car windows, and jeans for DH, but that should be it.

I have to set money aside for the cell phone due on the 12th, the VISA due on the 21st, the MC due on the 17nth, and the car payment due on the 19th. Ticket prices have gone up on airfare and DH had to buy one this time around for a total of $950. Ouch. That's about $250 higher than usual. I'm sure that's due to gas and oil prices going up so high right now. Add that to the $70 for the hotel and the $40 for travel food, plus the interest for the month and that VISA is basically going to just be standing still this month. I am glad I already made an extra $1000 payment to it last week.

I was going to make an extra payment to the AMEX but I think I will hold off on that until the 1st and just make an extra large payment then instead. It's not due until April 3 anyway. The extra will go to the Master Card instead. For now I will transfer $3000 to the holding tank and then pay those bills closer to when they are due. Two weeks of interest isn't much, but it's something.

I added 34 cents to the change jar and $85 to the laptop fund.

$475.44 beginning laptop fund balance
$+85.00 amount added
-----------
$560.44 ending laptop fund balance

I got the statement from Best Buy for the laptop in the mail today. They only require a $25 payment. Sheesh. I'll be sending them $100 a month. Even though I have 18 months to pay it off without interest, I am not even going to come close to not paying it off in time. It's due on the 22nd, so I'll take $100 out of the laptop fund to pay it, and continue adding what I can to the fund as I go.

DH is safely home from Alaska. The plane had to circle the runway for an hour though on account of the wind gusting up to 72 miles per hour today. (The wind is just ridiculous. There are branches everywhere. Our basketball hoop fell over.) They were afraid they were going to have to go back to Seattle to land. I'm glad they didn't because then who knows how long it would have taken him to get home.

Food expenses will go up now that he's home, as we'll be feeding one more person, so I really need to keep an eye on that and make sure it doesn't get out of control. I also need to stand firm on not eating out much, because it is very easy to do that when he is at home. We have a lot of meat and cheese in the freezer and plenty of starch (pasta, rice, potatoes, bread) so I really just need to worry about fruit, veg, and milk.

He is going to need some jeans for work so I'll need to budget three pairs into next payday's expenses. I'm really glad that Kmart has a big and tall section now. He's got really long legs. It used to cost us $35 per pair of his jeans because he'd have to get them at Carharts (usually by special order). But now he can usually get 3 good pairs for around $50. That's the only unforeseen expense going into this paycheck, thankfully.

We spent $37.03 at the grocery store today. We bought milk, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, lemons, bananas, frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries, frozen peaches, and apples, so we should be set for the next seven days or so.

I was reading an old thread in the forums about whether or not it pays to buy in bulk and whether or not it pays to have a membership to a warehouse club. For the majority of the posters they didn't find having a membership was worth the price. I don't know about places like Sam's or BJ's, we don't have them here, but for me Costco has been well worth the membership price. And since we bumped up to the Executive level, we will more than get back the cost of membership when we get our yearly cash back from the club. In fact, we've already spent enough this year to have earned back most of it.

So what do I buy at Costco? My number one purchase would be gasoline. And with the Costco AMEX I'm also getting 1% cash back on every gas purchase. In our town Costco and the other cheapest gas station (cash only one) have the same price on gas. I do check some of the other less expensive places, but I've never found any place to be cheaper here.

Toilet paper. Because of my son's allergies there are only three brands of toilet paper he can use. One of them is available at Costco, and often the Costco booklet that comes out each month will have a $3 off coupon for it. I have, on very rare occasions found a sale, that combined with a coupon will cost less, but it is usually only if I buy the 4-pk. I'll get it, but then I'll still turn around and buy the 36 roll case from Costco. I'd rather not be shopping more than once a month for toiletries and the 36 roll pack lasts six weeks.

Flour, yeast, and sugar. We bake. A lot. Again, because of my son's allergies it is almost impossible to find bread products that don't have one of the ingredients he is allergic to. So we buy the 25 pound bag of flour and the 10 pound bag of sugar and the 2 pound bag of yeast. I've never found yeast cheaper. Flour and sugar I only find cheaper at Christmas time and shop accordingly. We have a large, plastic, airtight bulk bin that holds 20 pounds of flour and one that holds 10 pound of sugar. The extra five pounds of flour goes into a canister for my mother to use.

Butter. My son cannot have margarine and the health risks they've found related to it makes me unwilling to buy it. Butter, while a fat, is a natural fat and tastes so much better. Buying the bulk one pound cubes tends to be cheaper than even the best sales on butter, with coupons. Even at Christmas. And unsalted cubed butter for baking is also far cheaper than in regular stores.

Extra virgin olive oil. No contest.

Cheese. If cheese is on a really good sale at the regular grocery stores, it might be cheaper, but it seldom is. I keep an eye on the sales, but it's rare to find a better deal. At best I can find the same deal. Also Costco sells shredded cheese at the same price as unshredded cheese, which seems to be rare in the grocery stores around here. Because we make our own pizzas and casseroles that use cheese, and use it on sandwiches a lot, I don't mind getting five pounds at a time to save money, but I do make sure I freeze the excess (shred before freezing or cheese will just crumble).

Oranges and lemons. We go through oranges by the case in the winter and for lemons we use them year round and make our own lemonade from scratch. Although I will buy them elsewhere on good sales, I find that the quality of the ones at Costco tend to be far superior and the size of the fruit is consitent (so four lemons will equal one batch of lemonade every time). That doesn't mean I won't open up the box and check every single orange for mold spots. One bad one will ruin the ones around it and then you are wasting money.

Potato products. Hashbrowns, french fries, and organic mashed potato flakes. Costco happens to carry brands that don't interfere with my son's allergies and at prices that beat the regular stores on sale with coupons. I will buy actual potatoes there at times, but only when I can't find a sale elsewhere. If I get the 20 pound bag I make my own french fries out of it.

Peanut butter. There are only a few brands it is safe for my son to use. We don't like the oily ones, they are too much of a mess to deal with so this leaves us with Jif. We go through a lot of peanut butter so we often buy it from Costco, but on really good sales it can be cheaper elsewhere so I do pay attention to the sale ads.

Cashews. Even from the bulk bins at the grocery store I cannot find these cheaper and these ones don't have anything added to them that I have to worry about. It's just cashews, peanut oil, and salt. No additives, no preservatives, no coating.

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Unless it is marked down for quick sale, the price on these is hard to beat. And they come in a six pack of meal sized portions for our family of four. We make our own chicken nuggets so one of these tends to be perfect for us, with a bit left over to throw in the stir-fry bag in the freezer because of uneven sizes. Most other meats I can find cheaper elsewhere on good sales, even seafood. I used to buy the organic eggs there, too, but that was before we had chickens.

Aluminum foil, wax paper, plastic wrap, garbage bags, and Ziploc bags. Sometimes I can find the Ziploc bags and the garbage bags on sale for cheaper with a coupon, but it is really rare. I won't buy the cheapy garbage bags because they break too easily so if I do get a non-Costco brand of garbage bags it will be Glad or Hefty, not a store brand. Store brand is not worth it if it shreds on the way out to the rubbish bin.

Canned green beans, pineapple, organic tomato sauce, organic diced tomatoes, and orgainic tomato paste. Unless someone is having a case sale, it's hard to beat these for price anymore. I will have to find another source for green beans though as they have switched from S&W to Kirkland (store brand) and green beans are something we are very finicky about, since we eat a can almost every day. I have a few cases left, but when that runs out I'll have to get them at the grocery store (either S&W or the Haggen store brand).

Sea salt, peppercorns, chili powder, minced garlic, basil and oregano. Most other spices I get at the reglar grocery store where they have a larger selection and smaller bottles. But for the things I use most in cooking, the bigger, cheaper bottles (one pound) are the way to go.

Vitamins, Ibuprofen, and cold medicine. I don't quite pay as much attention here on prices as I should. In this case I want them in bulk so I don't have to buy them every month. Sometimes they run cheaper, but not if there is a good sale on. I stick to Naturemade on the vitamins because they have a rewards program.

Krusteaz pancake mix in the 10 pound bag. I have tried to make my own baking mix but it honestly doesn't save me any money and isn't worth the hassle. We can't use Bisquick because of my son's allergies. We make pancakes and waffles and biscuits out of this and it is definitely well worth it. Pretty much anything you can make with Bisquick you can make with Krusteaz, which is great because there are a ton of Bisquick recipes out there and very few Krusteaz ones.

By picking and choosing what I buy there, I save money, more than make back the price of membership, and seldom run out of anything so meal planning is a breeze.

Today is payday and I’m really happy with how things shaped up.

$1000 to BoA VISA. This is the second payment this month and this one goes completely to principle since the one I made last week was to cover all of DH’s work travel expenses and the monthly interest charge.

$1000 to Mom’s 0% interest loan, dropping the amount we now owe her to $91,000.00. We have 7 years and 8 months’ worth of payments to go. We have paid off $19,000.00 so far. This was originally all medical debt.

$300 to Mom to help her with utilities.

$34 to the EF and $1 to the holding tank since the electric bill for the old house was $1 less than I’d budgeted for. That brings the holding tank to $204.30 and the EF to $7468.65, with $1000 of that in the safety net at the local CU and the rest in ING.

$20 for the electric bill at the old house

$212.66 for term life insurance for me and DH, house insurance on old house, and car insurance

$39.37 security system on old house

$131 to storage

$200 to AMEX

$375.86 to mortgage on old house

$407.75 on propane

I have a couple hundred left for groceries and miscellaneous items for the week. I doubt I will spend it all. Any extra will go to the laptop fund. I did spend $60.11 on Chinese food from the no MSG place. I got enough to have several meals out of it so I don’t have to cook while I am still so sick. I really wish this cold would leave. I am just too out of it to cook like normal. I hate spending that much money but it’s good food with lots of veg so I don’t feel too bad about it.

Out of next week’s payday I will pay an additional $500 to AMEX, $500 to the holding tank for medical, $124 to renew AAA, $1000 to the EF and $1000 to the holding tank for the two week period of no paycheck. There should be about $600 left and $300 of that will go to the property tax portion of the holding tank, $100 to the laptop fund, $100 for groceries and $100 for miscellaneous. If there is anything beyond that it will go to the laptop fund. The payday after that, which is only two and a half day’s pay will also be for stretching across the two week period of no paycheck.

I took back the 3 cans of chicken and rice soup I bought on Tuesday by accident and got 3 cans of chicken and stars soup in exchange. The price had dropped 10 cents a can on the new sale week, so I got 30 cents back in change. Also at the Chinese place the lady didn’t want to use so many pennies by giving me back the 14 cents she owed me so she gave me 15 cents instead, so that’s a total of 45 cents to the coin jar today. I also grabbed some penny wrappers while I was at the CU paying the mortgage, so I can roll coins today and add that to next week’s laptop fund deposit.

All in all a satisfying payday and I can’t wait until next week when everything posts and I can update my numbers again and see some real progress this time.

Oh, and DH has heard from three different people, one his direct supervisor that he’ll be getting a raise in April at the six month mark. It will add $525 to his gross income for a six week pay cycle if the amount he was told is correct, so I’m thinking we will at least get $400 of it and that can go to debt repayment probably. If I’ve done the numbers right, with that extra amount we should hit the end of the year no problem with having BoA paid off completely. I’m not counting it yet, though, in my budget. It’s one of those things where I’ll believe it when I see it.

The BoA VISA should now have a little over $3000 between what we owe and what the limit is on it, so with that cushion there I am going to now switch to paying only $1500 on the BoA VISA each month (expenses, plus interest, plus about $100 to principle) and take the extra $1000 and add it to the $400 payment we make on the BoA Master Card. That will pay it off by the end of May and then we’ll be able to pay $2900 to the VISA each month until it is paid off. I may try to scrape up an extra $100 each time to make it $3000. We’ll see what’s available.

Once that is done the money will then go to finish paying off the car, unless DH talks me into trading in the Matrix for a Sienna sooner than we planned.
If we stick to the plan, we should be out of debt, except what we owe to Mom, by the middle of 2012, possibly sooner if he gets the raise.

Mom doesn’t want us paying her back any faster than $1000 a month because she is using that to supplement her income from social security (and saving as much of it as she can for the future). She likes having it come in steadily and our system seems to be working for everyone.

Edited to add: I was cleaning out an old purse and found $1.95 in coins. I then rolled coins and I have $7.50 to add to the laptop fund.

$467.94 beginning laptop fund balance
$=07.50 amount added
---------------
$475.44 ending laptop fund balance

Comcast needs to get it's act together. I paid for both the phone for the old house and the internet for where we are living now on the 17th. The checks have still not been cashed. Seriously, Comcast, it takes you more than a week to cash a check now? As greedy and as grasping of an entity as you are and you haven't deposited the money yet?

It's annoying. I want my checkbook to be up to date and these two checks are the only things I am waiting on. They better cash them before the end of the month. I hate carrying stuff over from month to month (and generally avoid writing checks the last week of the month so I don't have to and everything will have cleared). I took them there in person so they couldn't have gotten lost in the mail. I should dig up my statements and at least make sure they were credited to my accounts. If they try to pull late fee garbage over this I am going to go down there and make a scene.

In other news, I spent $35.92 for $11.022 gallons of gas. It's at $3.25 a gallon at the cheapest place. It's better than in some states, but it still is a ridiculous amount to be paying.

I also spent $5 on soup for my poor sick kiddo (because I'm too sick to make another batch myself). They were on sale and of course I grabbed the cans right over the sign that said Chicken and Stars. And then of course I get home and see that they are Chicken with Rice, which nobody likes. Why can't they put the sale sign with the proper item? Most of the time I check, but I wasn't feeling good and from a distance it looked like the right kind. They were on sale, too, so I should just be able to exchange them. I'll do it tomorrow. Kiddo will just have to deal.

I forgot to mention that the $218.18 refund finally showed up from BoA yesterday. It was part of the payment I made to the VISA yesterday of $1500. I can't wait until next Friday when I can send them an additional $1000. I wish they'd hurry up and post the payment I made at the bank yesterday. It probably won't post until Monday. It was after 3 p.m. when I paid it and if it's after 3 p.m. they don't post it that day, though they do credit it that day. With everything online, I don't get why they don't, same as I don't get why online banks really "need" that three day transfer between banks. It disappears from your account right away and then it's just in limbo. I think it's just an excuse to get out of paying a few days' worth of interest. They can certainly accept and add to your account a credit card purchase instantly. To me it should all be the same thing.

I went grocery shopping today and bought milk and produce. I also got a pound of sundrops. They are like M&M's only made without artifical ingredients or food dyes. They are colored naturally. My son was happy. I was happy to find them. They have them in the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. That pound should last a few months.

I spent $19.41 at one store and got a reciept that had a coupon for $4 off a car wash. It's normally a ten dollar car wash so that is a good price. I also could have my choice of very cheap pizzas, half off at the pita place, and half off at the pho place. Not that I'd use any of those, but I'll use the car wash coupon. In warm weather we wash the car ourselves but it's been in the thirties with whipping wind for months and the car is filthy so I'll definitely take it in. I'll probably wait until DH comes home. I really hate matching up the tires with those automated tracks.

I went to a second store and paid $18.43 for a large picnic ham. Does anyone have a good soup recipe made with a ham bone? I don't want anything with beans, though. My kids have textural issues and I don't like them. Pretty much any veg except parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas are a go, though. I'd like to be able to stretch the ham as far as I did the chicken. I know I can use diced ham in omelettes or breakfast casserole and the kids will eat it in sandwiches, too, but soup goes over really well here when it's this cold.

I can't find what I did with the receipt, I might have dropped it, to the other store, but it was $21 and something. I bought cans of organic chili and beef stew there. Everyone is feeling under the weather. I have plenty of food made/planned for the next two days for dinners. But if the kids get sick of them they'll have another option and I can freeze the other stuff for next week sometime.

I added $3 in ones to the laptop fund today and $2.16 in change to the coin jar. I found a quarter on the floor at the check out of one of the stores.

$432.94 beginning laptop fund balance
$+03.00 amount added
-----------
$435.94 ending laptop fund balance

Thanks to Laura I learned about a food program that amazon.com has for shipping you food and if you take out a subscription for it, you get 15% off the purchase price. And if you buy more than $25 worth you can get the free shipping. Of course they then wanted me to apply for their credit card and get $30 off as well, but I'm not at the point in my life where I have any intention of adding another credit card into the mix.

Anyway the choices of subscribing had a six month option and could be cancelled at any time so I went ahead and clicked the six month option. I will be getting 12 boxes of a gluten-free, organic, hamburger helper type (but healthier) lasanga dinner. They stopped carrying this particular brand around here. I figure if we go through it faster than six months we can switch to three months and if we don't go through it as fast as I think we will, I can just drop the subscription.

Anyway, I paid $34 for it, which is $2.83 a box. This stuff cost $4 a box when the stores around here still carried it. So, add in the cost of a pound of hamburger (2.29 usually here on sale) and I've got a filling dinner for 4 for $5.12. Add a veg and it goes up a buck. Not bad for something super fast and easy to make. It's good to have back up items like this when I don't feel like making a real effort to cook.

I also ordered a cookbook as a birthday present for me. B&N didn't have it when I went in there before my birthday. Just as well. The price from amazon was $18.79. When I bought it at Christmas as a gift for my neice it was $30. It would have been worth paying that, though. It's a really excellent book that tells all about the ingredients and covers dozens of proteins and hundreds of fruits and veg, as well as having recipes for the items. It's a real learning tool for a cook and the pictures are amazing. I got free shipping on that as well.

Then I ordered a replacement copy of a novel of mine that DH took on an airplane two years ago and left behind. It's out of print now, but I was able to find it new on half.com for $9 plus $3.99 shipping from someone with 100% positive feedback. I'm considering that my b'day present, too, even though it's technically not.

I'll need to set aside the extra money for the AMEX when it comes due. I put a notation in the budget. I've been working slowly to get the budget set up so that it covers extras like this, and put on two columns as holding tank in and holding tank out, to keep track of any extra money in each category and when it's paid out. The holding tank will be saved in the same savings account as the safety net. For now, anyway. I may switch it over to the laptop fund account once I reach my goal there, just to keep it away from the easily accessible portion of our EF money.

I was running numbers last night and once the credit card debt is gone, we will have $4000 a month just to put to saving up for a downpayment on a house. That's $96,000 after two years, assuming all goes well. Add that to whatever we sell the house for and we'll have a pretty substantial downpayment. As much as I'm going to want to rush to get out of here once the debt is gone, after running the numbers it makes so much more finanacial sense to wait two more years. We're probably looking in a price range of $350,000 max and I'd like to not carry more than a $150,000 mortgage. I know it might be closer to $200,000, but hopefully we'll find something closer to the lower end of our price range and not the higher one.

We also want to buy a mini-van in 2013. Hopefully a 2011 Toyota Sienna because they meet all of our needs and are so nice. They are too expensive brand new, but the price drops substantially on two year old vehicles. We definitely want the new redesign though, so a 2011 car in 2013 will be just right. We'll have $10,000 saved by then for a downpayment and we'll have a decent trade in and we're used to paying almost $500 a month on the car anyway, so if we can get around that on financing the rest (probably 15 to 20,000 depending on mileage), we'll be in a good place for it. By then our FICO should be back over 800, which makes low interest rates our friend.

After that there will be at least $2000 a month going into a college fund. Her school of choice is the local U and it, at the moment, costs about $7000 a year (including books and fees) for a local student living at home. After a year of saving we'll have $24,000 set aside right as our daughter is starting college. I'll keep adding to it. Fortunately our children are four grades apart so she will graduate college in the summer that my son will start in the fall. Hopefully they can both get scholarships, too. DD is on honor role as a freshman and DS is testing well above fifth grade level despite his behavioral issues. So it's a possibility. I want nothing to do with student loans or having my kids start out their lives with the debt they cause.

I scheduled a payment last night of $400 to the BoA Master Card for today. I had to take the money out of savings, but I will replace it on Friday, which is payday. It was due tomorrow and I wanted to send a decent chunk, not just the little scrapings that were left in checking. It didn't come out of the EF, it came out of the money we set aside for property tax, so that has to be replaced no matter what. If the due date had fallen one day later I just would have gone to the bank on Friday and paid it in person, but this way works, even if I am temporarily juggling a bit of money.

My husband and I decided we were actually going to be more aggressive on the BoA VISA for the next few months instead of paying off the MC. The BoA VISA is an airmiles reward card and it's only got about $1000 of available credit left. We need to get it down so that there is about $3000 worth of available credit so it's further away from that upper wall. We've never gone overlimit, but I would just have more peace of mind this way. This is because this is the card DH uses to pay for his airfare to work and back every six weeks.

Once we get some breathing room, then we will take the extra money and get that MC paid off. We will also then be able to move the last autopay off the MC and onto the VISA. The goal for the VISA will then be to pay the autopay, the airfare, and the interest and about $50 more than that each month, while we throw the rest of our debt repayment money at the MC. The MC should then be paid off in three months time. The interest rates are the same so it doesn't matter too much how we do it, except once the MC is paid off it'll be one less payment and one bigger snowball.

Actually I should check with the health club. If we can take the monthly fee out of checking instead of having it on a card, then I wouldn't have to worry about moving it from MC to VISA. Most of our autopays are out of checking, but I have Netflix on the AMEX, because that is paid off without fail every month. We usually only buy gas on that one. Health club might do AMEX. I'll have to check. I don't want to be charging anything on the the VISA or MC that I don't have to, since the goal there is to pay them off, cancel that MC as it's the non-rewards one, and then only use the airmiles VISA for DH's work travel expenses.

I met with my son's school counselor today. We talked for over an hour. She wants to Vanderbuilt him. I called the doctor today and they'll be sending out the paperwork for that. I don't think he's ADHD, but I know he's OCD and there's other things the evaluation looks for. Bi-polar runs in the family on both sides and though I haven't really seen signs of depression in him, I've definitely seen signs of mania. Combined with his food allergies and his difficulties with peers, she thinks he probably needs therapy regardless of what the test says. I agree. I've suspected for a long time that this is the road we were headed down with him. I put a call into DH to see what our new medical insurance covers in the form of counseling. I can't find where he put the medical booklet.

The local grocery store had whole chickens on sale so I went ahead and picked one up today. It cost $5.15 and is between five and six pounds. We will roast it tonight, make chicken quesadillas and chicken fried rice with the leftover meat, and make soup stock with the carcass. I love getting 3 or 4 meals out of one base item. It's a pretty large chicken. Without DH here, I might have enough leftover meat to make enchiladas or Tex-Mex chicken and rice as well.

I love making roast chicken. I have a very simple recipe for it. Rub it with extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkle it heavily with basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Simple, but so good! For variation I will rub it with crushed garlic before rubbing it with olive oil, but I only do that when I'm not planning on making Mexican based dishes off the leftovers. I don't like the way garlic clashes with Mexican spices.

Monday of last week DH called BoA about getting a refund on the amount we overpaid when paying off the loan balance of our Gold Star Option loan (which happened, mind you, because of an error on their part). They said it would be in our account no later than Friday. Friday came and went and nothing. Today there is still nothing.

I called DH at work, which I hate to do because his office is always so ridiculously noisy and he is always so busy. He's going to call them again. I can't do it because my name is not on the loan and they won't talk to me. They'll probably say another five business days and then it will probably still not be there. This is making me grumbly because I wanted to use that money on the MC bill that is due on Thursday. Now I won't be able to add that in. Oh, I can do it when it finally shows up, but I wanted to do it on this one.

I wish we could fine the credit card companies when they are late doing something like they do when people are late making payments. A lovely $15 to $30 surcharge every time they didn't follow through on their commitments would be nice. Or charge them the same amount of interest they charged on the loan (6.9% in this case) compounded daily. Might make them less tight-fisted when paying back the people they owe. Or at least get them to do it when they say they will.

I paid out $90 to the physical therapist today. My session went really well and I am almost walking normally again.

I noticed that Verizon did not take out the autopay today. It is supposed to come out on the 12th but when it falls on a weekend it usually comes out the following Monday. If it still hasn't come out by tomorrow that'll be another call for DH to make. He needs to put me on the Verizon account.

I have to go to the store for milk and DD is going to need cough drops, too, (I'll spend around $15 instead of the planned $12) so a bit of that $103 reserve is going to have to be used for that. Not too much of it, though. I should have at least $99 or $100 leftover still by payday Friday for savings.

I added $0.78 to the coin jar today and have five ones to add to the laptop fund.

$424.94 laptop fund beginning balance
$+05.00 amount added
---------------
$429.94 ending laptop fund balance

I broke my no eating out rule today. I made it 15 days, so not too bad. I got a double cheeseburger and drink from DQ for $4.71. It was actually very good. I was afraid I'd be disappointed because usually when I stay away from fast food for a long time it doesn't taste that great, but this did. Not great enough that I'll be tempted back into eating fast food several times a week, though. I'm probaly good for another couple weeks.

So far this month my ING savings account has made $2.37 in interest. I don't add that in of course until the end of the month when they actually add it to the bank account, but I like watching it accumulate, so I tend to check it once a week. I'm not sure what the interest rate is there right now, somewhere just under 1% I think, but it's a heck of a lot better than any of the CU's I bank at which are .4 to .1 percent.

The wind is blowing hard today. I've got flashlights located and lots of blankets ready in case of a power failure tonight. The temp is 45 degrees outside right now. Not too bad, but still, the house will get cold after a couple hours if it does go out, so best to be prepared.

Yesterday after school I stopped at a different grocery store to pick up scallions because I needed them for the two types of soup I am making this week. Well, something prompted me to go back to the meat department and check for any sales. They had 2 pound chubs on for $2.49 a pound and five of them had $1.50 off stickers on them with a sell by date of today and they still smelled good. That made them $1.73 a pound which was such an excellent price I went ahead and bought them.

I am lucky if I can find it on sale for $2.29 a pound and have grudgingly began to think $2.49 was a good price. But $1.73 had me practically doing cartwheels. I still miss .99/lb hamburger though. But anyway, $17.30 for ten pounds of meat is awesome and that will be anywhere from 10 to 18 meals worth of protein, depending on whether or not DH is home or away at the time.

DH finally got around to taking care of the Verizon refund. They sent us a $50 debit card instead of a check a while back and in order to get a check you have to then call the number on the card and ask them to send it to you. I don't know why they can't just do it in the first place. Debit cards are no good to me if I want to put the money in a savings account, which I do, my laptop fund one. Anyway, they said 3 to 5 business days so I should see it by Tuesday or Wednesday.

The refund from the loan should hit our account tomorrow. They said no later than Friday, but I was hoping maybe it would be there today so I could send it to the MC. Oh, well, I can wait another day. I just get impatient sometimes.

I entered both refunds into my spreadsheet that tracks those things. I also updated my freezer inventory spreadsheet with the meat I bought. I love that thing. It was quite a bit of work when I made it, but now that I have it and can just add or subtract from it and automatically know what I have in the freezers at all times with out looking, is an awesome meal planning tool.

I am in a weird mood today, craving lettuce like it is going out of business so my meal planning (at least for my meals, not the kids) reflects this. Also DS is home sick again.

Breakfast:
(Everyone) Homemade beef sausage patties ($1)
(Just me) Lettuce dressed with E.V. olive oil and salt (.30)
(Just kids) Hashbrowns (.50)
(Just kids) Milk ($1)
(Me) Water
Total: $2.80

Lunch:
DD
Leftover pizza (free)
apple (.50)
baggy potato chips (.50)
water

DS
Half a chicken quesadilla
--3 ounces leftover chicken (free)
--1 tortilla (.30)
--1.5 ounces of cheese (.30)
Pineapple Juice (.50)

Me:
Ribeye steak (4 ounces, I cut up a big one, on sale for $3.99/lb over a holiday weekend) $1
Lettuce dressed with e.v.o.o. and salt (.30)
water

Total Lunch: $3.40

Dinner (for 4):
Baked potato soup
--potatoes (.80)
--8 ounces extra sharp cheddar ($2)
--Half a package of bacon ($2)
--8 cups whole milk ($2)
--16 ounces sour cream ($2)
--Half bunch scallions (.40)
Salmon (was on sale for $5.99/lb)--$4.50
Broccoli/Cauliflower/Asparagus ($2)
(Just Me) Yogurt ($1)
water

Total Dinner: $17.70

All meals $23.90

Dinner is very expensive tonight but there will be several servings of soup leftover (we'll eat about 1/3 of it tonight) and lots of veggies leftover for future meals this week. So I'm making planned overs which will bring the cost of the rest of the week down quite a lot. It's more about the average for the month than the daily average anyway.

So I'm not much of a couponer. It's just plain hard to find coupons for the sorts of foods I buy, which are generally unprocessed whole foods. Not impossible, but hard. I can download and print two milk coupons a month from Organic Valley for their organic milk, but considering it's still $5 a gallon after you take off the $1 coupon, it's still not much in the way of coupon savings for the month. But with the great store coupons on produce at Cost Cutter this week, I suddenly found myself with a whole lot of coupons I could use.

I'm not just thrilled with how much I saved, but on how much I spent overall, which was $17.75. I got 15 pounds of potatoes, 2 pounds of strawberries, 5.25 pounds of oranges, 1.66 pounds of tomatoes, 1.5 pounds of lettuce, and a 4 ounce generic saline nasal spray for my son for $1.99 + .17 tax. Take out the $2.18 for the spray and I paid $15.57 for 30.41 pounds of food. My average food cost for this visit is 51 cents per pound! 51 cents! How often does that happen? Never, that's how often.

I seriously considered getting another 15 pound bag of potatoes and 5 pound bag of onions since you could get 2 each on their limit and those things will keep for a couple months, but it's a question of storage space, so I didn't. Oh, well, I did great and I'm very happy with it.

I went to the grocery store with all my store coupons and I saved $8.92 off the regular price. I ended up spending $17.75 for 2 pounds of strawberries, 15 pounds of potatoes, 5 pounds of onions, 5.25 pounds of oranges, 1.5 pounds lettuce, 1.66 pounds of tomatoes and $1.99 + .17 tax for a bottle of generic saline nasal spray for my son.

$17.75 total
-02.18 medicine
--------
$15.57 groceries

So I spent $15.57 for 30.41 pounds of food. That averages out to 51 cents per pound! I love that. And the great thing is that maybe I'll have .5 pounds of waste in peelings, and everything but the orange peels goes to feed the chickens, so even that isn't really waste. I'll be zesting and drying some orange zest for future use in making orange chicken, too, but probably only about 4 oranges worth.

I may not be able to use regular coupons much for food, but I am thrilled that I was able to save so much on produce this week with the store ones.

Well, apparently I am in a very talky mood today. This is my third entry and I guess I am doing a lot of thought organization as I go. Anywho the grocery flyers came out today. Their Valentine's savings are actually pretty incredible, way, way better than their super bowl ads last week, except on beef.

I don't tend to use coupons often on groceries as we don't buy too much in the way of processed foods because of my son's allergies to additives, preservative, stabilizers, food colorings, grapes, raisins, and apples. It's shocking how much that is healthy is sweetened with apple juice or raisin juice, unfortunately.

But there are a few things we buy like Healthy Choice chicken noodle soup if there is a good coupon or sale. I like to have canned soup on hand for those times when I just feel too sick to cook or have an interminable case of the lazies. I won't pay more than a dollar a can for HC (but up to $1.29 for TJ's). Usually it's too expensive. This week they have a special on that if you buy any ten of certain items you get $3 off produce. Well, the soup is on special 10 cans for $10 and it qualifies for the ten items. And since broccoli and cauliflower prices finally fell to $1 a pound I can get three pounds for free. My kids love both of these things, but since they've been hovering near the $2 per pound mark I haven't bought them for a while. They also have cameo apples on sale for .59 a pound. It is so rare to find apples anymore for less than a dollar a pound (even in an apple state like this one). Even if my son can't eat them my daughter can. Also organic chili powder for 3.99 for 6 ounces. I don't use it enough to buy it in bulk, but I use it enough to keep a bottle around and I'm out. The sale is on the 11th through the 14th so I will go first thing Friday morning after dropping my son off at school.

Another store is having a sale Wednesday through Sunday with a bunch of produce coupons. 5 pound bags of yellow onions for $1.48, 15 pound bags of russet potatoes for $1.98 (ten pound is almost $4 on a non sale price lately), .68/lb for navel oranges, 1 lb of fresh strawberries for $1.98 a pound (limit 2, and that's rare to find even in season from the local farms), salad blends for .98 (limit 2, but cheaper than two heads of lettuce at the moment), and .98 cents a pound for fresh tomatoes (cheaper than what I can find canned for at the moment which will mean club sandwiches sometime this week for me for lunch, yay).

They have 4 ounce lobster tails on for $3.98 per pound. Per pound not per tail. $3.98 for four servings of sea food is an awesome price. I can make lobster tails for my birthday without breaking the bank! It's a nice surprise. I certainly wouldn't have thought to get them otherwise. Valentine's Day, I guess you are good for something after all!

They also have a store coupon for Bryer's ice cream for $2.87 (limit 2) and since my son can have the Black Label vanilla I'm going to get some. That's cheaper than the ingredients (and the time effort) to make homemade. It's on for $2.49 at another store but it would require a fifteen minute drive there and then a fifteen minute drive back and I don't think it's worth the gallon of gas to go clear over there for one item to save 56 cents when gas is over $3 a gallon. That's penny wise, but pound foolish.

I'm pretty excited about the produce sale. I should be able to have enough produce in general for the next two weeks and the potatoes and onions should last a month. I'm definitely going to be under the $500 grocery budget goal this month!

I hate it when I don't sleep well at night. It just throws me off for the whole day. Especially when I have a cold. I was just starting to feel halfway decent and today I've been sneezing and having a runny nose like I was three days ago. I'm taking something to make sure I sleep tonight so that I don't go back downhill. I really don't want to have to buy another box of cold medicine to manage my symptoms. It is getting expensive to buy and I don't have any coupons.

Today was a busy day. I had my physical therapy appointment today so that was $90. I will be so glad when my deductible kicks in, but they raised it this year to a ridiculously high $1,250 per person or $2500 per family. Well, I'll definitely make up the bulk of that. The kids have each been to the doctor once this year, but probably won't need to go again this cold season. They will have to get physicals before camp. But mostly it's going to be me.

They did start an HSA though so DH is going to start having them take out $300 a month pretax for that since we easily spend that much on my medical alone and I am likely going to have to have another surgery in the next couple of months. I see a specialist on the 15th. Our out of pocket for the surgery, if I need it, will be about $2000, since it's just a laproscopy and will be done in office as an outpatient. Glad I decided to keep a decent sized EF. We'll try to swing it without touching it, but it's nice to know it's there.

Just once I'd like to go more than a year and a half without a visit to the slice and dice boys. My last surgery was 12/07/09. This has been going on more or less since I was 33. I'm turning 41. That is a lot of surgeries to have. On the bright side I might get my jury duty postponed again, which would be nice, as it's scheduled for a time when DH is supposed be gone for most of it. If I could postpone it for two weeks it would be perfect since he doesn't work when he is home.

We got gas for the car, so that was $38.02. It was running on fumes. It's a twelve gallon tank and it took 11.89 gallons so definitely don't want to cut it so close again. DH has been doing a lot of running around without me this week so I hadn't kept as close of an eye on it as usual and DH doesn't pay much attention to it.

I paid $4.46 on BoA MC #1, the one we paid off, but the last bit of interest came through. I also transferred off the autopayment for our credit monitoring service to the other card so nothing more will be put on that card. It has been put away. Once the second MC is paid off we will cancel it entirely.

DH called today to get a refund of the $218.18 we overpaid on the Gold Star Loan that we paid off last month. They said it will be in our bank account by Friday and to call them back when we get it and they will officially close out that line of credit and will report to the credit bureaus that it has been paid in full and the account closed by us.

I'm trying to get our available lines of credit down lower well before we are ready to buy a new house. Our credit score is at 780, but it says because we have so much available credit it will not go above 800 until we get rid of some of it. I know it'll take a dip first, closing accounts always does, but that is why we are doing it so far in advance of buying a house, to give it time to bounce back up again. The loan line of credit is $41,000 available and the MC is $3000. I think I might have them lower my AMEX limit, too, since it is $15,000 and we never use more than $2000 at a given time with it and we pay it off in full each month. So maybe get them to lower it to $7000 or something.

I spent $35.79 at the grocery store today on organic milk and orange juice (very much a luxury but I like it when I am sick), veggies, some organic deli meat, and the giant jar of peanut butter that's the size of a tub of Crisco.

I took DH to the airport as he flies back to Alaska for work. I won't see him again until the 2nd or 3rd, I believe. I don't remember if he comes home on Tuesdays or Wednesday now. Which means he misses my birthday on Saturday, but then he usually does. He will be home on both my son's birthday and our 16th wedding anniversary in March so that is much more important to me. I will go this week and pick up my two birthday presents on my own, a giant coffee table sized cook book (that I got my niece for Christmas and coveted greatly) from B&N and season 4 of Lost. I have the money set aside. At first I was tempted to just add it to my laptop fund, but decided I really want to have something this year.

Meal planning for today:

Breakfast:
TJ's Crisped Rice cereal ($1)
Milk ($2)
Bacon ($2)
Total: $5

Lunch:
2 Kids
PB&J sandwich (.50) (free homemade jelly from aunt)
PB&H sandwich (.50) (free honey from Mom's bees)
apple (.50)
banana (.25)
hard pretzles (.50)
water
$2.50

DH
Leftover pot roast (free)
Leftover potatoes and gravy (free)
Leftover green beans

Me
Leftover spaghetti (free)
Orange juice ($1)

Total: $3.50

Dinner:
Me and kids
1 can of TJ's chili ($1.50)
1 can of TJ's chicken noodle soup ($1.29)
Can of Green beans ($1)
Oranges ($1.50)
Milk ($1.50)
Homemade cookies ($1)
Total: $8.79

DH will eat at the airport. That is part of his work travelling budget and does not come out of the grocery budget.

$14.29 for the day and there is a bowl of leftover chicken noodle soup so I will have that tomorrow for part of my lunch. With DH gone and work providing all of his meals for the the next 22 days, our meals should cost much less. We should easily be able to hit the goal of keeping it under $20 a day. Probably under $15.

No, I didn't use some kind of magical couponing/rebating system. I had exactly one coupon for $1.50 off TP. DH and I simply used the $40 gift card he got to a local grocery store from his work for Christmas. But to make it stretch as far as possible, I waited until meat went on sale to use it. So we ended up with 4 beef pot roasts, 1 whole chicken, a 24 pack of Charmin toilet paper (son's allergies dictate this is about the only brand we can buy), six apples, six oranges, six bananas, 2 shampoos and a bodywash.

So now I have enough crockpot meat for the next five Sundays and enough fruit for a week.

We also signed up for their club card for greater discounts. It has the added benefit of giving you Alaska Airlines (the carrier he uses to go back and forth to work) miles for every $250 you spend. Now, I doubt very much we will be going back to that store any time in the near future because it is across the county and generally more expensive on a regular basis than the stores we normally shop. But if on the off chance we do go back there, his miles will build up.

We also picked up some milk on a rain check at our usual store. It was on sale Tuesday for $1.98 a gallon but they were sold out so DH got a rain check. We used it yesterday to get 2 gallons at $3.96. The price was back up to $3.29 a gallon, so it would have been $6.58 for the same amount, a savings of $2.62.

Well, DH and I talked it over and we decided to go ahead and pay off the AMEX card on Friday. I'm still getting the hang of the new budget and the higher income, but it looks like I'll be able to come up with $1000 of the payment just out of the paycheck and only have to dip into the emergency fund for the just under $500 of the remainder. I feel a lot better about that. I really didn't want to take the whole amount out of the EF. It'll be a little tight doing it this way, but I'm used to living on tight. And anyway, it'll make things less tight from the end of February onward.

The car payment came out of checking today so that was $490.70 for that and then I bought some groceries today at $37.47. We also filled up the gas tank for $37.09. There was no other spending today.

We are on day ten of no eating out. Today was the first day that the kids really fussed at me about it. Their dad came home today and in the past we have usually gone out on that day. Instead we made spaghetti and hamburger for dinner. We had a little leftover hamburger from last night and then did up another pound. Between the milk, spaghetti noodles, the tomato sauce, the herbs, and the hamburger it cost about $8 to feed the four of us. Going out to Olive Garden like the kids wanted, even with drinking only water and having no dessert, would have cost us between $65 and $100 with the tip. Pretty darn good savings, methinks.

I made homemade blueberry jelly with my mother yesterday. We took frozen berries from the freezer. The berries were free since they came off her bushes this summer. So just a bit of money for the sugar.

Planning for tomorrow, breakfast will be eggs, milk, toast with jelly, and bacon. Eggs are free-ish from the chickens and toast is pennies because I made the bread myself. Bacon is $3.99 a pound for the nitrate free kind and we will go through half a package. So breakfast will be about $4 with the cost of the milk. Not bad. We're really starting to get the cost of breakfast down.

Lunch will be club sandwiches all around to use up the rest of the bacon and the nitrate free lunch meat that has one day left on it. Plus we've got 3/4 of a tomato that needs using up and a bit of lettuce. The kids don't mind eating them cold in their lunches, but DH's and mine will be delightfully warm. I use Dijon mustard on mine instead of mayo for a bit of a kick. We've got some carrots that need using up so will add that and some bananas that have just ripened for fruit. We drink water at lunch. Not quite sure on the price range for that, I haven't sat down and done the calculations yet.

Dinner will be baked chicken ($4.29), green beans ($1.50), potatoes and gravy ($1.00), corn bread (.79 Jiffy mix) and oranges ($2.00) and milk ($2.00). Mom will be eating with us so that will feed five and we should have two pieces of chicken and some potatoes and gravy leftover for later meals. Possibly some cornbread but probably not. So $11.58 plus leftovers, not too bad.

Tomorrow is my second baking day of the week so I will make buns, biscuits, cornbread and possibly pumpkin bread if I still have the ingredients and the time (I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow so may not have as much time as usual). I think I saw a can of pumpkin kicking around last time I went through the cupboards. I think I'll try to talk DD into making sugar cookies tomorrow after school if she doesn't have too much homework. She's got it down pat and they are so good.

I went to the grocery store today and spent $36.50. They had prepared chicken on sale, ten pieces for $4.99, less than the cost of a raw whole chicken by a dollar. I don't usually buy their prepared chicken but it seemed silly to buy the raw one when I really didn't feel like cooking at all as I'm coming down with something and the cooked one was so much cheaper. We had leftover potatoes and gravy in the fridge from earlier in the week and we opened the ever faithful can of green beans. All in all a pretty frugal meal, and there are still five pieces of chicken left so we will get another dinner, plus a lunch for somebody out of it.

I gave my mother the white meat since she likes it and we don't. I also bought one of their prepared 1.5 pound meatloaves for $5. Hamburger here is $2.50 a pound and if you add in the cost of the ingredients, it is pretty close to breaking even. Maybe 50 cents cheaper to make it myself, but again I really feel yucky. I just got the kids well, so I don't need to infect them with whatever I'm getting.

I went and looked up the amount still owed on the car finally. It's about $3000 less than I thought at $17,022. That was a nice surprise. I really should keep better track of these things.

Tomorrow is payday and I'm looking forward to paying off MC #1. This month has been really exciting so far as paying things off go. I like making progress. It makes me giddy.

My youngest turned ten today. I think that's way harder for me to grasp than the fact that I turned 40 in February. In less time than he's been alive so far, he'll be heading off to college or trade school. Wow. I hope he earns lots of scholarships.

My sister's kids descended en masse on us, presumably to celebrate my son's birthday and not to eat us out of house and home. I hadn't really planned on doing anything other than making T pizza for dinner because it was what he wanted. We already celebrated his birthday and gave him his presents last weekend when his dad was home. Today was just supposed to be a mellow day. T didn't want any more than that.

I wasn't feeling good. I'm still not, been fighting a sinus infection that's not responding to meds, and I just really wanted a quiet day. R made the from scratch chocolate cake batter while I sat curled up in a chair in a blanket in the kitchen and read out the ingredients to her from my laptop. Then we discovered that mom's one cake pan was flaking.

I haven't brought in my glass cake pans or my metal rounds yet and I really did not want to have to drive with my head this full of congestion and buy a cake pan when I had good ones at home. Didn't want to drive back to the house either. Fortunately I had bought baking cups for making muffins and had my muffin tin here so instead of a birthday cake he got birthday cupcakes. I did put together the from scratch butter cream frosting but R stayed with it in the kitchen while it blended for the ten minutes. I love having a child who is old enough to bake with minimal supervision.

I had started the dough in the bread machine as soon as the cupcakes went in to the oven. They were cooled and frosted by the time the dough was done rising and I had assembled the pizzas and they were ready to go into the oven. I had only intended on using part of the dough to make one pizza but with extra mouths I suddenly had to feed I ended up using it all. Fortunately Mom has one of those ovens that has two parts so you can cook two things at once. I was able to cook them evenly and not one after another and they came out perfectly.

T loved his birthday dinner. He said it was better than Round Table Pizza and a bakery cake. Which made me feel pretty good, considering that from making it all from scratch, I spent around $12 where all that pizza and cake bought elsewhere would have rounded out around $60. The boys loved the food too and wished that their mother would cook like that. They said it was the best pizza they'd ever had. That made me feel good even if I was kind of annoyed with the whole day's change of plans.

I think I probably would have taken it better if I wasn't so grumpy from being ill and tired and if it had been planned and not suddenly thrust upon me. *sighs*

I had to go buy a few gallons of organic milk yesterday so I ended up with $3.58 in ones and change out of a $20 to add to the coin jar.

$60.28 beginning balance
+ 3.58 amount added
------
$63.86 ending balance

Yesterday I also paid $1079 on the credit cards and $375.14 on the mortgage.

I think we did fairly well this week. We went to Trader Joe's and to the local grocery store that has the cheapest price on organic milk and potatoes. We spent $45.82 at TJ's and $15.95 at the other store.

I ended up with one loaf of bread, 2 heads of cabbage (one purple, one green), 3 pounds of broccoli, one pound of asparagus, one head of cauliflower, a head of lettuce, 2.17 pounds of roast beef, a 15 pound bag of potatoes, 1 bunch of radishes, 1 large family bag of plain potato chips, 2 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of carrots, 4 large onions, and a head of garlic for roasting.

We also went to Costco for the big monthly stock up. It came in at $140.92. There we got 3 18 packs of organic eggs, large tub of pre-minced garlic, a 3 pack of English cucumbers, 5 pounds of pork chops, 6 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs, a case of oranges, a case of green beans, a case of pineapple, 4 pounds of butter, 4 pounds of unsalted butter for baking, 25 pound bag of flour (yay! I can make bread again), 10 pound bag of sugar, big package of all beef hot dogs, and a case of toilet paper.

We didn't buy any beef because I still have 8 pounds of hamburger and 2 large pot roasts in the freezer. Ditto canned salmon or tuna because we have a little over half a case of both. And I still have plenty of frozen salmon from that big fish I bought last month.

For the rest of the month I should only need to buy milk, fresh veggies, and possibly bananas if they start looking fit for human consumption again. I still have about 4 or 5 apples left from last month. They aren't really a favorite around here and Tobias is allergic to them so we don't go through a lot unless it's honeycrisp season.

Between the three stores we went to I ended up with some ones and some change to add to the coin jar.

$43.73 beginning balance
+ 6.84 amount added
-------
$50.57 ending balance

Tasks for tonight are to sit down and balance the checkbook for the week and to make up the menu plan for the next week. Our menu planning runs Saturday through Friday, usually

I also need to bake tomorrow, hamburger and hot dog buns and cloverleaf rolls (recipe was posted earlier this week) and bread, and Rose wants to do a batch of her famous sugar cookies.

I might make brownies, too, since I have been craving chocolate this week, but none of us can have store bought because of the vanillin or yellow #5. Doesn't take all that long to make them from scratch and they always taste much better. Now I just need to decide if I want to use cocoa or baker's chocolate since I have both on hand for a change. And I need to make a cake and frosting from scratch for T's birthday. He turns 10 on the 13th (my baby is ten!), but his dad goes back to Alaska on the 9th so we are celebrating early.

Which reminds me we still have to go up to the used video game store and do his birthday present shopping. He prefers used games because he can get more games that way than if he got new. He's really starting to get it about value for money. It started with his own allowance that he would do it, but it's carried over now since he knows he only gets a limited dollar amount for his birthday, too. Now that his reading has started to take off we might just take him down to the used bookstore and let him get a few books from the children's room there.

We also paid the chiropractor today. $215. They've raised their rates from $195 for the one month plan. It's still a good deal (up to 3 visits a week per family member for the four of us), and he hasn't raised the rates in five years. The difference is, as he put it, one less meal out at McDonalds per month, which no one really needs to eat at anyway. Of course, we're not really going there that much anymore and when we do we order off the dollar menu so it's closer to two visits cost for us, but still, I like his thinking.

Okay, I think that about catches us up on the last few days.

I didn't really feel like dumping out my bank today, so I don't know how much is in there at the moment, but I did empty my purse today and gathered up all the loose change and one dollar bills.

$ 8.00 in ones
+ 8.59 in coins
--------
$16.59 in the coin jar

Tomorrow I'll take the time to shake out the bank and see what's in there and add it to the total. I know there's some loose change floating around on my dresser and night stand, too, so when I declutter those I'll add that amount in as well.

The kids have been wanting pizza really badly the last couple of days and have been begging for Round Table pizza and I almost gave in to them today because it was payday and hey, it would be easy. Plus it's one of the few restaurants my son can eat at with his food allergies.

The thing was that there was plenty of time before dinner to start mixing dough in the bread machine and we had two unopened packages of pepperoni and Canadian bacon and a 2 pound brick of mozzarella. I had herbs and tomato sauce. The pizza pan was even clean. There was absolutely no reason to go out for pizza when I could make a perfectly good one that they would like better at home. The only thing stopping me was lazinesss. I got over it. *laughs* Just one of the things I need to do in readjusting my thinking back to a better way of doing things for financial gain.

So it was 3:45 and I popped the five ingredients I needed into the bread machine, set it on the dough cycle, which takes 63 minutes, and had enough time to run to the bank drive-thru and pay the credit card bill (take that evil empire!) then stop at the grocery store for milk.

They happened to have broccoli (crowns for 69 cents a pound!) and asparagus (for 99 cents a pound) and cauliflower (79 per pound) and a head of cabbage (33 per pound) on really good sales so I picked up those and glanced at the fruit. Nothing really looked good despite the prices and we still had apples and oranges and frozen bell peppers at home, so no need to buy anything even if the green bananas were 29 cents a pound.

I made my way over to the fish counter to see if they had anything on sale. They had wild Keta salmon $4 per pound if you buy the whole fish. They filet it for you right there and since the counter was devoid of customers I didn't feel guilty about taking the time to do it. I ended up with four pounds of usable fish for $20 which works out to $5 per pound after all the discards are taken out of the original five pound fish. Not bad for what will amount to six meals worth of salmon.

Nothing else was on sale and I have plenty of meat in the freezer so that was all I bought. Between the milk, veg (I bought a lot of veg, we eat a lot) and milk (organic), I spent $48.74.

I got back home to my mother saying the bread machine had just dinged (ha, timing!) So while my son and I divided the dough and put two balls in the fridge for later this week and started stretching out the other one, my daughter preheated the oven and shredded the cheese. We added the sauce to the dough, sprinkled on basil, oregano, and thyme, added cheese and the meats and by the time we were done the oven was warm.

With everyone pitching in it didn't feel like a huge production making it, we all had fun and instead of paying $30 for a large pizza, we'll end up with three pizzas for the same price of on hand ingredients we would have paid for the other. I used to do this all the time. I used to be good at it. It's coming back slowly but surely.

First I had to find the swing before I could make the attempt to get back into the swing of things. I pulled my CU statement off the internet today and balanced my checkbook for the month of December, so that's a positive step in the pay attention to my finances category!

Tomorrow's big step will be sitting down with the bill box and paying bills. Okay, more than that because I've been paying bills all along, but getting that aspect of my life organized. I'm going to be getting this nifty organizer thing from Lillian Vernon for my birthday in February. It's a box that has slots for every day of the month that you organize your bills into and then a couple little drawers for miscellaneous bill paying items like envelopes or stamps or whatnot. Always have a hard time keeping track of my whatnots, after all! But it should come in quite handy.

I'm working on my 2008 Budget Spreadsheet, too. Now I know that medical has not gone up for the first year in forever and that car insurance has actually gone down ('bout time, DH hasn't had an accident since '94 and I've not had one since '88 when I was 18 and that was only a parallel parking mishap!), and they've finally gotten the clue we're safe drivers! Security system monitoring has gone up by a buck a month.

Lots of little things. Property taxes should go down a bit this year as a levy came off.

Tomorrow I'll be making a trip to Costco and getting gas. Don't think I'll buy anything else there, except produce if it looks good. I've got plenty of canned goods and meat in the freezer. Well, maybe eggs, milk, and cheese. And dishwasher tablets. I think I'll make a list before I go. Since things seem to be magically popping into my head at the moment.

Just wanted to say thanks again for the warm welcome back. It was lovely.

I have seriously been so out of it lately, my head is in the clouds. My focus just is not on financial things at the moment. But I got a good deal today so I thought I should trot my sorry self over here and blog about it.

There's a new place that just opened up in my county (Whatcom) and they deliver. It's free range, steroid free, and hormone free protein, frozen and vacuum sealed. It's not organic but it is as close as you can get to it without being it and with delivery I don't have to worry about it sitting in the trunk for the long drive from town. It should last quite awhile when interspersed with the chicken and fish in the freezer already.

Other than eggs and cheese, I shouldn't have to purchase protein again for a couple of months. So even though it was more than half my monthly food budget in one go, I think it was well worth the expense.

They sell it by the case and I ended up with 55 beef steaks for $150. Very good portion sizes, too, no skimping. That works out to $2.72 per steak. It was T-bone and rib-eye, New York strip, and filet mignon as well as two other cuts I can't remember and I'm too lazy to go and get the brochure. Pretty good when the recent sale price on a plain old chuck roast was $2.99 this week.

Whenever I need more I just call them, order, and they put me on their delivery route for that week. The $150 a case is an introductory price for a year. Not sure what I'll do if it isn't a renewable special offer, because I don't want to go up to the $300 it is supposed to be after that.

Anyway, it's nice to find a good source of beef without having to buy a side of beef and find room for it in the freezers.

I won't use them for chicken since it's all white meat and we all prefer dark or seafood because we don't eat most of what is offered and we don't eat enough pork to even think about that. But for beef, definitely.

I made it to the new Trader Joe's yesterday. It was nice to have so many choices in healthier foods, though I was kind of surprised how much they had in the way of junk food. So many cookies and candies and chocolate covered nuts, and candied dried fruit dipped in sugar. Organic junk food is still junk food and at least it wasn't made with corn syrup.

Still I managed to find $55.61 worth of stuff that we could eat. I tried their store brand milk and it's decent tasting, though I will probably stick with Organic Valley and buying it from Fred Meyer since its a dollar cheaper there.

Never made it to Costco, just didn't feel good enough. Mom took the kids for the weekend, I get them back Sunday noontime. I am spending a lot of time sleeping and a lot of time reading over at Teaspoon and writing some. I've told myself that if I write a chapter on something over there, I've got to come and write at least one blog entry on that same day.

Yesterday was payday so I sent $100 to ING. That brings my EF to $2004.87 and my goal of $2000 is now achieved. I need $600 more to meet my goal of 2 weeks wages. That will take a couple of months.

I've been ignoring my surveys lately, just haven't felt in the mood to answer a bunch of repetive questions. I suppose I should get back to it, as it does help the EF to grow bit by bit. Just kind of apathetic about it.

Part of the apathy has been being sick and part of it has been the onset of SADS with the fall overcast. Time to dig out my light box and start light therapy again. It always hits me very hard in the fall, but it seems like it always a couple weeks in before the light bulb clicks on and I realize what it is I need. I think there was a bad pun in there somewhere.

I need to sit down and do bills still today. I am just in a lazy lay around do absolutely nothing physical mood today. Other than emptying the dishwasher and doing a load of towels, that is. I suppose I ought to do more. The laundry won't take care of itself no matter how hard I wish for it.

Finally got a new car stereo installed today, that comes with CD player, MP3 player adapter and a place where you can plug in a flash drive and bought a S-cable to hook the computer up to the TV so we can watch streaming video on TV. Cost just under $250.

We went out to breakfast at Shari's, which was $27.30 and left a $6 tip (she did a really good job).

Also bought a gallon of milk and two bottles of nasal spray. Nasal spray is getting ridiculously expensive, it was almost $8 per bottle. And the milk was $3.59. Could be worse and often is.

While we were waiting for the car we walked over to the mall and looked around FYE and Walden Books. Didn't buy anything though I would have if they had the CD I wanted. I haven't bought my September CD yet and I'll have to order it online. I think its an important, so this may count as both my September and my Ocotober music purchase if its too pricey.

Today was also the day of the auto deposit to savings of $10, so I sent that off to ING.

$1891.33 Old EF Total
+ 10.00 Deposit
---------
$1901.33 New EF Total

Just $98.77 to go to hit $2000. Slow and steady wins the race. And I want to win.

I got shanghied by another website

www.whofic.com called A Teaspoon and an Open Mind and have been off playing with them all week, since I had a cold and didn't want to think about reality. But reality is back and 20,263 words of fanfic later, and an empty spot in my head where a story used to be, I'm back to reality and blogging again.

Oh, I'll still play over there, but it won't be as time consuming. Anyone into Doctor Who and Firefly there is an amazing crossover story called Out of Joint. I usually don't like fanfic crossovers but this one is just done so amazingly well. Especially River and the Doctor, though there was a good bit between mechanic Kaylee and the Doctor's TARDIS. But I digress.

So, bills so far this week:

$1000.00 to medical debt
$1000.00 to Chase (last card)
$ 129.50 to BoA (leftover interest, but now its clear)
$ 9.58 to Citi (leftover interest, now clear)
$ 100.00 to the gas card
$ 200.00 to groceries and toiletries
--------
$2439.08

Otherwise its been a pretty low spend, low key week. We haven't done much since I was getting over the cold.

DH comes home tomorrow, finally. I haven't seen him in a month. There will be some spending as we are going out to eat at a nearby restaurant while we get a new car stereo installed.

I am starting to settle in to this new payraise DH has and I feel so much better about everything. Life has gotten a whole lot easier in the financial ring, but I really want to make sure we maintain our focus on getting out of debt and building up the EF. I am so close to $2000 and then after that I want to build it up to $2600 and that will be half a month's wages saved.

I haven't done much in the survey area this week. Too much time spent writing and reading instead. But I'm pretty close to cashing out again with Global Test Market for a $50 check. I think I need just 50 points to do so. So time to refocus and get on with it.

I've missed being around here and now I need to go and get caught up with you folks!

I spent $15.49 at the grocery store today. I used the self-check and I think it would have been faster to just go to the express lane. Looking up produce is a pain as you have to go through all the touch screens. Everything is in alphabetical order and so of course nectarines were on page 10 and plums were on page 12. No shortcuts, no clicking on the letter it starts with. And once I entered in the nectarines, I had to start all over again with the plums. Some stores you can just enter in the number of the produce and it is much faster. So I guess I'll stick to using the self check at Fred Meyer because it has nice shortcuts, and avoid it at this grocery store.

My third entry for today.

I stopped at Freddy's today to get organic milk and use my coupon. So I got another gallon of organic milk for $3.58 a gallon. And guess what printed out at the cash register? Yet another coupon for $3.00 off 2 half gallons of Organic Valley milk.

They also had turkey legs on sale for 79 cents per pound so I got two packages. I ended up with 9 very large turkey legs. My daughter is an extreme turkey lover so this works out well. It's been a while since I've seen them for 79 cents a pound. They are usually 99 cents a pound now.

I also took Rose for a haircut today. We had the girl wash it, too, which I usually don't do, but Rose's ears still hurt from being pierced and she bumps them so much when she washes it herself, we decided it would be worth the $3 extra to have someone else do it for her. So it ended up costing $16. Now that she is eleven she no longer qualifies for the children's haircut, even though all they did was give her bangs, trim the ends and put a little layering around the face. Took all of ten minutes, if that to do the actual cut. It wasn't some fancy adult style or anything. Of course, I forgot my $2 off coupon for them, too.

Five more days until school starts and it can come none too soon for me. The kids were picking at each other for most of the day. But they managed to finagle a two night stay at the lovely Casa Grandma so I get some time to destress.

I think I might go to a matinee movie tomorrow if Hairspray is still here. It is tonight, but they change out on Friday mornings and I have a feeling it will be gone. That's okay if it is, I'll just stay home and watch a movie I taped instead. As long as I get to unwind. Then I'm going to get started on The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald. Starts out set on the Australian planet Kookaburra. Should be interesting. Plus its military sci-fi, which I love. Looks like she may be as good as Elizabeth Moon at that if it is even possible.

I went grocery shopping tonight. They were having one of their big sales, where if you buy meat in quantities of ten pounds or more, you get it deeply discounted. I got:

14.1 pounds of turkey legs for $13.95
13.44 pounds of ground beef for $18.55
10.93 pounds of beef ribs for $10.83
10.1 pounds of mixed pork chops for $9.11
2.5 pounds of turkey ham for $4.60

So 51.07 pounds of meat for $57.94, giving me an average cost of $1.12 per pound. Yee Haw, Baby! Now if someone would just have a good chicken sale, I'd be set for a nice long while. Oh, and maybe a seafood sale, too.

Rose and I spent about 30 minutes dividing up everything into Ziploc baggies for the freezer. Except the ribs which were partially frozen and will need to thaw for at least a day. That's okay. I ran out of gallon size Ziploc's anyway and will be doing a Costco run on Monday, by which time they should be thawed enough to seperate and cut up. I'm happy because my meat stocks were getting quite low.

I received the $10.00 payout from Lightspeed today so transferred that to my CU.

I ended up spending $16.10 at the grocery store, so that means I had $3 in ones and 90 cents more in change to add to the change jar.

I only spent $5 on cherries today instead of $10 at the farmstand.