January Frugals

[Mighty Frugal]

I am hoping back on to the tracking our spending for January, then budget in February. I have an awesome excel spreadsheet from the last time I did it. It has budget column, an actual column, variance and YTD variance-so detailed (I'm pretty OCD when it comes to spreadsheets-haha)

Our discount dept. store had a 50% off coupon on FB DH and I finally bought my beloved Kitchenaid mixer-regular 300 on sale for 170 and 50% off so we bought it for $88-which is a steal!! Already made some bread-mmm

We have so much chocolate in the house that we are saving $$ from not buying it (staple in our home)

Had a quiet fun little 'party' in our basement last night-just the 4 of us so saved money there!

Don't have to pay for daycare for 3 whole weeks-woo hoo! Extra savings in the bank for us!

Will try to live on just my income this year. DH had his pay cheque deposited into a savings acct and we'll just use my chequing acct-so we will bank his entire pay

Doing a lot of fun frugal outings during our 3 weeks off-library visits, walks in our park, play date with friends, watching movies, and we'll spend some time at my parents home-they have a nice big backyard and SNOW

This is the year 100% certainty dh will lose his job (probably early summer) and 80% that I will (probably early fall) so we need to save as much as we can and learn to live with less.

THANK YOU SIMPLE LIVING without you we would have been in debt-but because of this board we are 100% debt free and a healthy savings acct and retirement acct.

[mara61]

One of the birthdays yes, my FIL. My sister, sil, two bil's just a card, my niece a small gc, my son not to much. We will do a family birthday party for him at the end of the month when my in' laws get back from their trip to the Dominican Republic. My husbands birthday is at the beginning of Feb. I know what he wants, it's not terrible but not super cheap either.

The car thing is huge. We bought a nicer version when we bought it with the thought that we would have it for a bit (Pontiac Torrent), put half down and I've tried to pay extra whenever I can. It will be paid off 6 months early.

[fidgiegirl]

Mighty Frugal, super bummer about the jobs but awesome that you are in a position to face it!

[Azure]

It's 2:20 pm here and I am the only one up. Well, DH was up for a few hours and then went back to bed. I am still in my pajamas. Not sure when/or if I will shower & get dressed. I think if I do get dressed the only reason I leave the house will be to walk to the store to get the shopping guide. So a no drive/no spend day to start the new year off right.

Took the boys to dinner at Olive Garden yesterday. We had $50 in GC so it cost us about $35 for all 4 of us to have a nice dinner. I had hoped to go to lunch instead of dinner but time slipped away from us. Spent our usual quiet New Years Eve at home with sparkling juice, shrimp & ice cream. Youngest son was gone to a friends part of the evening but made it home in time to toast to the new year. Introduced oldest son to Young Frankenstein & Arsenic & Old Lace.

I have yet to sit down and seriously think about goals for the year but will spend some time doing that this afternoon. It's going to be an expensive year with our youngest graduating high school in May & so both boys in college next fall. I know that I need to start bringing in an income. That is probably the biggest thing for me for the year. But I am so stuck. I've been home for 21 years. I feel like I have no skills and I have no strong desire to do anything in particular. And I'm kind of scared that I am not competent enough. Gosh I sound pathetic lol. I know I'll figure something out and be just fine.

Welcome home Stella! I enjoyed reading about your trip.
Mara, congrats on paying off the car! That's a big deal.
Mighty Frugal, I am sorry to hear about your job situations but very impressed that you have been so pro-active in preparing.

Happy 2012 Everyone!

[reader99]

We talked yesterday about getting rid of our satellite TV subscription and using the TV for watching old shows and the radio for news we need. The current TV is so bad that we continually scroll thru and find nothing worth watching except old shows. Yesterday it was the Twilight Zone from the 60s.

Even if we dropped down to only local stations or got cable for local, we could save $75 a month or more. Hmmm. Need to find out when our contract expires.

My local public library has tons of old tv series on DVD. And a lot of classic movies and interesting documentaires too

[kally]

we watch videos and dvds only from the library. Maybe once a year we will rent one. I have not finished with their whole collection yet and they often get more.

[Stella]

Thanks for the welcome home everyone! It feels fantastic to be back.

Mighty Frugal, I am glad you are in such a good position to weather the rough waters you are facing. It sounds scary, but I am sure you and your DH can handle it.

I went grocery shopping and spent about $140 on food. Considering how low we were on food I am OK with that. It's a bit over budget, but I should easily be able to make up the difference over the rest of January.

[Merski]

Did my usual cooking marathon so we can eat this week. Made split pea and ham soup, a lemon 2 crust pie, a very nice new years lunch for the 3 of us with baked stuffed haddock, smashed potatoes and garden kale. After lunch I made the sauce for american chop suey and we'll free half for the future. My mantra is going to be "empty the freezer". Have sold some stuff on etsy and I'm going to track my profit and also my earnings from consignment shop pretty carefully. Going through the stuff that MIL brought with her and no longer needs so there are more profits to be made. We're still trying not to get in each other's face but she did have an incident when she forgot to take a very important medicine and poor DH had to call around to see what to do. But we do love having her here. She's very quiet since she lives on another floor and is a bit hard of hearing which is good for us wink wink nod nod.

[AmeliaJane]

This year's frugal resolution is cutting back on food waste and eating down the cupboards a bit. Right now I have lamb stew on to use up artichokes, onions and tomato sauce from the freezer, and also homemade applesauce to use up apples that had gone mealy. Next is bread pudding with some cranberry bread that had gotten stale...

[lhamo]

Spent about $70 to totally restock the fridge. I am running low on smoked salmon, so may make an ikea run later this week, but except for that and some fruit we should be fine for groceries for the week.

One major non-frugal -- somehow lost the Xbox live gold card that DS bought with Christmas gift cards. Actually I suspect it was stolen from our luggage because I have turned everything upside down and inside out and couldn't find it, and my sister scoured her place and couldn't find it either. Thankfully found a replacement on Amazon for $20 cheaper than he had originally paid. WIsh I'd known about that option before he bought the card. Much easier and safer to have an emailed code. Lesson learned, and count it against my stupid tax allotment for 2011 (since the card disappeared then, and I don't want to start off the new year on a negative note).

lhamo