One and Done

I know I made some promises in the first blog post about money. I intend to deliver today. I wanted to talk to you about your cycle. No, not your lady cycle. The cycle in which you spend your money. We have a large desk calendar up on the door in the kitchen. On this calendar we have each payday marked and what bills we need to pay out of each check. I also put random things we need to pay for on there. Then at the end of each month I rip off that month, fold it up and put it in a drawer in our kitchen. When I would clean out that drawer I would pull them out and look over them. I started to notice patterns. Mainly we have money at the beginning of the year from out tax return and we are broke during the holidays. I wanted to change this. I would like to enjoy the holiday season and like it or not having money at that time of year helps.

I needed to find a way to ease the money pain that we were facing. How many years did we have to face this before I caught on? It took me four years to track our financial trends. I can now tell the hubs at the beginning of the month if it is going to be an expensive one or not. We try and plan accordingly. Things happen though. My car was sitting in the driveway for four months. It needed to be towed to the shop. Oops, we didn't plan for that. To my parents: No we do not have an emergency car fund. One day we will, I swear.

One thing that we do to ease the financial burden is the yearly grocery trip.

It is intense. It is well planned. It takes a day maybe even two. There are multiple stores involved. We take two cars (maybe not this year). We might even ask a grandparent to watch the kids. Crazy or genius? Depends on who you ask.

We use our tax return money for groceries. It helps the biweekly paycheck last longer. When we have the money we look like hoarders at the store. I am a firm believer in shopping weekly only for perishable goods. I encourage many people to try and go to the store only once a week to cut down on costs, driving, and general headache.

First thing: Make some space. Clean out all the places you can use for storage. The things you can sell, get them sold. Be honest with yourself. You might only make a few dollars on something that you bought for hundreds of dollars. The goal is to purge the waste and refill it with necessities. We have a basement, but for those who do not we will get creative. Guest rooms make great storage rooms. Under furniture is good too. Kids closets work well for some storage space for these goods. There are plenty of goods that you can store in a water proof shed on your back deck if you really want to dive in!

Now time to get in the know. Knowing what it costs to run your home is key. I go overboard and find out year to year how much it costs everyday (on average) to run our home. This goes for utilities all the way down to dishwasher cubes and kleenex. For example we do about 6-10 loads of dishes per week, over the course of the year that is about 500ish dishwasher cubes. Costco sells them 110 count for around $20. I am going to buy 5. They happen to be on sale this month, so hooray for that! Could I sit around and clip coupons, wait for the sale, buy them all and save tons of money? Maybe, but I will pay a small premium for convenience and shop for the best price unit price for some items.

With that being said, coupon clipping season is now for me as well. I do the extreme coupon thing once a year. I need to make things stretch so I work really hard to do this. This is the time that I take to try out some new non perishable goods that are easily stored in the basement. I like to stock up for parties by buying chips and crackers. I will also go crazy in the juice aisle. I only buy razors once a year. I use all the coupons I can find for those!

I go around the house and look at all the goods that I do not want to have to buy with my tiny grocery budget. Remember that tiny $377 for food? I did not put toilet paper, paper towels, ziplocs, foil, and other similar goods on that list. I bought them in the first quarter of the year when I had a large chunk of money. The list I would imagine would be different in each house. Ours looks a little like this:

Toilet Paper
Paper Towels
Dishwasher Cubes
Aluminium Foil
Ziploc Bags
Trash Bags
Dish Soap
Laundry Soap
Shampoo
Conditioner
Baking Soda
Salt
Kleenex
Body Wash
Toothpaste
Cotton Balls
Q-Tips
Razors
Lightbulbs
Batteries

I will also say that we replace things like spices and canned goods that were depleted over the year. The non-perishable good list looks a little like this:

Spices
Canned Beans
Canned Tomatoes
Tomato Paste
Lentils
Dried Beans
Oats
Flour
Sugar
Honey
Oils
Vinegar
Rice
Condiments

I said before we get a chunk of money for tax season. We will be paying off a few things with it, but sometimes I just wanna spend some. We do buy other groceries with this money. We take a trip to a farmers market down in Dekalb county. There we buy things that we can't get at the big box store. I am a very simple girl. I like to buy groceries. Maybe one day I will open up my own general store. It might just be out of my basement!

Stop spending money. Really.

This is the beginning of a six month money makeover in our house. I am not an accountant; I am really not even that great at math. Money is not math for me. Money is what keeps the lights on, what buys the food and what pays to get to the place where the hubs makes more money. It is a mild obsession of mine. Not like I want all the money. More like how can I make the money work for us instead of us working for the money. Over the next six months I will share our journey. I hope you find it useful.

So I am going to do something that I have never done before. I am going to share just how ugly our finances are right now. Currently our priorities are to eliminate our debt. I would love to buy local, eat organic, and buy my milk and eggs from a local farmer. Right now we can not do that. This post is not about how to buy more things for less. This is really about being honest about what you need.

Income per month: $3950
Paycheck: $2900
Odd Jobs: $1050

We have a separate account for the odd job money. The main paycheck is divided into two checks at $1450 each. Now because of the way my husbands shifts fall, every third check is only $1100. Boo for that short check! So this budget is for a month when we receive two full checks.

Now for the bills:
Mortgage: $1750
Jeep: $500
Cell: $155
Cable: $200
Credit Card: $100
Freezer: $115
Student Loans: $155
Electric: $150
Gas: $100
Water: $65
Gym: $68
Car Insurance: $90
Gas for Cars: $125

Total: $3573

Leftover cash: $377

This is all that is leftover for groceries and lunches for Andrew at school. On a month with a short check, my husband makes up for it with extra odd jobs. I will say that we have a very good stock pile of canned goods, meat that we have frozen, and nonperishable items that we obtained while we were on food stamps and WIC. We knew that we would only have them for a limited time so we stock piled.

I spend money on fruit, veggies, noodles (my boys eat lots of noodles) and coffee. There is also a good chunk of money that goes to dairy. I do love cheese. I go to the store and only buy what is on sale. Then I plan my menu.

We do three types of shopping; weekly,  monthly, and yearly. A weekly trip runs us about $50. A monthly trip to Costco runs us about $120. When we do our monthly run, we will not go for a weekly trip. A yearly trip (I will get into this one later) will cost us about $1500. So lets just focus on weekly groceries. People have a tendency to buy like crazy and in turn we waste. I am a neurotic person right now and I am counting grapes and berries out to make sure that we have enough for the week. I am making sure we save the ones that are not eaten.  This is a general grocery list for one week:

Berries (if they are over $5 I don't buy them)
Apples or Oranges
Grapes

Lettuce (Manager special or BOGO only)
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Kale or Collards
Potatoes or Sweet Potatoes

Milk
Half and Half
Eggs
Butter
Shredded Cheese

Bacon

Pasta or Rice
Coffee

That is it. When we run out, I do not go back to the store until it has been seven days. No one is starving here. It usually will run about $50. You will notice there is no meat except bacon. We have a freezer full of meat we bought in bulk (monthly grocery trip) and portioned. No frozen goods and very little canned goods. We are very fortunate that the hubs works at a fire station where a local grocery store drops off their bakery bread. Before that though we made our own. If I wasn't in the mood to make it, we didn't have sandwiches that week. I can not stress this part enough: buy only what you need. The easiest way to save money is not to spend it.

I have no magical way to save money. All I can tell you is that when you don't have any money you can't spend any money. I am always thinking about what we need and how much money we have. I can say that I am a little obsessed, but for me it is fun. I like thinking about how I can live on less and enjoy other things more.

I will continue this series about money in two weeks. I will talk about our monthly grocery trip and how we plan for our yearly trip. Stay tuned for a breakdown of our utilities. I might have a trick up my sleeve there.