Well, we were hoping to actually get by with a day where we simply didn’t spend anything, but we won’t hesitate to fill prescriptions when trying to save money. Had to swing by the pharmacy again to get our next stash of medications. I really can’t complain at how reasonable thing cost on our medical plan though…
Today’s Progress:
Ok, I know that one of the first expenses to go right out the door are the little extra things. It really would make sense to nix just about anything that looks like it’s taking money from your account that isn’t going toward debt when you’re in such bad shape. This is my sad attempt at rationalizing why we actually spent over $30 on magazine subscriptions today…
Ok, so there’s my semi-lame excuse for spending $36 to get 3 magazines for the next 2-3 years. Pile that on top of the subscriptions that other people get for us on an annual basis and we’ve got ourselves quite the library of things to read all year long.
I think this helps us get by without more than 10 TV channels without going insane. I really can’t stand spending too much time in front of those things anyway.
Today’s Progress:
Well, today I just feel like Wal-mart owns me. I just spent 3 hours in that store piling up enough groceries to last us maybe a week or so and it ended up costing over $200. This is something I do a couple times a month at least. Then there’s all the trips to either Wal-mart or some other grocery store for the daily needs stuff that we run out of all the time. Milk, bread, etc.
Now, we’ve actually done pretty well so far with sticking to a near-$600 budget for groceries. I think we may have to bump that up a little to actually manage this long term since our pantry seems to be getting a little more bare every month. Such is life when trying to feed 6 kids. It just gives me a more-than weekly reminder how much we sacrifice for our children, and how much it feels like Wal-mart owns us! LOL!
Today’s Progress:
Well, the kids brought home their report cards today. We’ve always tried to keep the kids interested in doing the best they can. So now that one brought home straight-A’s and the other had all A’s and one B…we just couldn’t help from spoiling them a little.
McDonald’s seemed to be the perfect reward, and it meant no messy kitchen while trying to manage costume changes for a large group. Now, we don’t go all out with the happy meals when we do this. We go with basic 2-cheeseburger combos for each pair of kids and have them share the fries and drink. This allows us to do the whole family meal for about $16 instead of $24.
Sometimes we just get a bag of burgers without the combo and have fillers and drinks from home to make it just under $10. Not that we can really justify going out to eat when it’s not in the budget, but at least we’re conscientious about how much we’re spending.
Today’s Progress:
Something my wife started getting into lately was digging around on the Internet for coupons that give significant discounts, or even completely FREE items with no catch or fine print. Just print out the coupons, take them to the store and enjoy whatever product it is.
This week we managed to find a couple that were well worth it. One was a coupon for a bag of free Halloween candy from K-mart. (not posting since it’s already expired) We printed out 3 or 4 of these coupons and went to the store a few times before trick-or-treating started. Each time was just as easy as walking in, grabbing a bag, and handing the coupon to the clerk behind the checkout counter.
Another great coupon was one for a free bottle of Juicy-Juice. This thing must have been part of some kind of handout or flyer, but I was able to clip the coupon image and make a page with 3 of them at actual size and use it at K-mart and Walmart both without issue. Considering that our family can burn through a 1/2 gallon bottle of juice almost every day, this saves us quite a bit if we can manage to grab one from the store every single time we go.
This coupon doesn’t expire until the end of 2007, so I’ve posted my document up for anyone that wants it. Note that the bar-codes may not scan depending on the quality of your printer, but the checkout clerks can just type in the code to get it to work just fine. The original source for this coupon was some free coupon site, and I wish I could remember which one it was. I just spent 10 minutes looking for it and can’t find it because we’ve apparently been to so many.
So, this is just a couple of coupons worth using that we’ve found that have saved us some cash. We’ll be on the lookout for more catch-free coupons that offer great deals to help save us money. I’ll post them as I find them in my coupon resource page if there are any more worthwhile ones that don’t expire super-quick.
Do you have any coupon sites that you frequent or find decent deals enough to bring you back? I’d love to hear of any sites you’ve found valuable. We had to do quite a bit of searching to find these amongst not-so-good deals. Please feel free to share any catch-free coupons with me that I can post in my coupon resource page as well for everyone else to use!
Something we’ve always had a hard time with is keeping expenses down during special occasions. Birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc. all seem to bring out the spontaneous nature in both me and the wife. We’re really trying to keep things at least reasonable this year with hopes that the kids will catch on in trying to see that we can still have fun without going overboard on buying things.
Halloween is no different from any other holiday in this regard since we still seem to spend more money than we’d like to. This year we were able to reuse 4 costumes out of 6 dressing up. Still, two fairly cheap costumes + pumpkins + bucket of candy and we’ve got ourselves at least a good $50-75 worth of holiday costs for one night. Really need to get the kids used to coming up with ideas that don’t require us to spend more than a few dollars.
There’s only a few times a year where we do this, but between 6 kids’ birthdays and a handful of holidays…it’s something that can impact us on an almost monthly basis if we’re not careful.
Today’s Progress:
Debtbeater