Would you like a little whine with your coffee?

We are coming up on about a week of our spending freeze. The hardest day was a day without enough coffee. I was so tired! I sat at my desk thinking about the coffee cup that sat just a few feet away. I kept envisioning myself taking a dollar out of my wallet and walking downstairs. Who would know, except me with a little extra pep in my step? After sending a very whiny text to my husband about not liking it when I don’t get what I want (okay about 15 texts about not getting what I want.) I was done dreaming of dark roast and sucked it up. A Few hours later I did happen across an expired thing of Starbucks Via in my desk drawer that I consumed with only a little bit of complaining.

Reflecting on this week, it makes me realize how self-indulgent I am. Not getting enough coffee can spoil my day when there are people not only far off, who are not getting enough food. I am sure they have more grace then I exhibited complaining about my coffee during a self-imposed fast on our spending. What would it be like to really go without? To have a sense of want, not because of greed, or being accustomed to more, but to want because I don’t have the basic things that sustain life? I have a slight pain in my stomach thinking about this situation and to experience that kind of hardship. Honestly it’s something I pray we never have to go through. It has made me realize though, how much I take for granted and how much we are truly blessed with every day.  

I will continue on with our spending freeze, with a lot more grace and gratitude than I’ve exhibited in this past week, and can hopefully extend that past the spending freeze into my daily life.

Spending freeze! Day 1!

After last month’s failure in couponing we decided to take even more drastic measures. Instead of allowing ourselves the gray matter of discounting and couponing it’s time for a spending freeze! A spending freeze in our house is a time period set aside by us, where we do not take money out of our checking accounts unless it’s vital, or preplanned. Gasoline to get to work for example would be considered a vital expense.  A bill like our daughters preschool is preplanned or something we already expected to pay. The rest of it we are not allowed to buy!

Why do we do it? It allows us to really reflect on our spending habits, and reset them. We have a few leaks in our budget. I’m guilty of spending money at coffee shop right down stairs from my office without thinking about it. Other things we are guilty of are quick meals out and about due to poor planning, or because I’m too tired to cook after a long day. And of course there are the impulse buys, and retail therapy we are all guilty of.

Tonight I kicked off the spending freeze by looking at what we have in the fridge and mentally planning some meals based on those items. It’s about making do with what we have, and hopefully at the end of this developing a better sense of gratitude for the things we are provided instead of always wanting something else, or something extra. I’m going to try to update my blog at least once a week so you can follow along in our success, failures, and attempts to better account for the way we spend our money.

In the spirit of being a shameless self-promoter you can also check out the food I make during our freeze at http://laurasmaking.blogspot.com/ to learn how I make do with what we have on hand, or make a recipe when I don’t have everything I need to do it.

A week of couponing and price checking

This past week with the couponing has been hard. Our week has come unraveled and I would be lying if I said we had been perfect on using discounts and coupons for everything. We have had to grab something to eat a few times and I didn’t have a coupon or discount for every time- although we have tried to eat at places that cost significantly less then I would have spent if we were not trying to save money, like this very shabby little Vietnamese restaurant we haven’t visits in ages where the cost is very reasonable. I am not going to dwell on my discounting failure though; instead I would like to talk about the things I’ve learned this week.


Due diligence:

I’ve always just assumed that things are cheaper where we have always gotten them, because once upon a time I price checked them. Costco was one of those places. We’ve always bought giant bags of Iams dog food from Costco because it was less. I found out though Walmart actually has food for less if I order it into my store and use a $3.00 off coupon. More due diligence though, had me looking at generic labels and comparing. Kirkland dog food seemed to have the same ingredients as the branded food, and as we opened up the bag it looked exactly the same. We will be saving about $18 dollars a month.

We also found this month eggs were less at Fred Meyer then Costco with a coupon. I was really proud of my husband who went to pick up these eggs and walked in with his coupons in hand and his head held high.

We also signed up for the Target Red Card debit card after looking into it and realizing it was really worth the deal. I had always planned to look into it, but never have. I shop there anyway so I might as well save 5% on my purchases. We needed things like deodorant, kitchen cleaner, and shampoo. Just having them route the purchase through my red card alone saved me $4.00 on my purchases today. It’s going to be extra appealing to me as I always hit target for clearance for clothing. An item at 70% off is now going to be 75% off and I’m okay with that as I’ve been dressing myself (and my family) almost exclusively with Target clearance for a while now. There is always a risk that I’ll shop there more now that I have this card, but I’m already a pretty loyal Target shopper, and pretty thrifty so I'm not really worried.

Shopping today for food was also successful with a $10 off $75 at Safeway, as well as some great deals for buy one get one free deals on things like sausages my daughter will eat, a sale on milk, and Chex for 1.52 each. I love watching the club card, and coupons reduce my total down, chipping away at it little by little until we saved 49% total on our grocery bill and over $120!

Finally we found some really great savings at Michael’s craft stores. Between 40% off coupons, BOGO sales, and a $10 off of $30 coupon we managed to spend money for a few upcoming art projects for a savings of 50%.

Over all I’m happy with my savings this month as it’s been over $200 in our household expenses so far this month. We are still learning to save money, and still finding ways to make our money go further but having Josh start to pay more attention to price, examining coupons and looking for red clearance stickers has been the greatest achievement of all!