One thing I’ve noticed the last few years is how much it costs to ship something.  As in a box full of clothes, or an oversized valentine card, just anything.  We shipped a couple of boxes today to some family to put the hand-me-down system into effect for some of the kids.  It cost us $30.34!  For two boxes that aren’t even that big!  Wow.

To top it all off, today the USPS announced the penny increase in the price of stamps from $0.41 to $0.42.  Talk about convenient timing for today’s topic.  ;)  Maybe I just never really knew how much it all cost because I never really did a lot of shipping, but it sure seems expensive to me.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $30.34 (shipping)
• Debt Reduced - $0

Well, as much as I’d like to say this is a great milestone for me, paying off the $6.09 on my Menard’s card just doesn’t seem to feel like I’ve made much progress.  LOL!  It does feel nice to have yet another 0-balance card though.  The less distractions and clutter the better.

So the rest of my extra money this week goes toward another credit card.  I don’t really have a snowball set up, but I’ll have one set up once we get our tax refund.  I have 3 credit cards all with about the same balance, but we’ll see where all of our balance floating to 0% offers takes us first.  So for now I’m just paying over on each card as much as I can.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $272.93 (Menard’s, cable, credit card)
• Debt Reduced - $103.48  (Menards, credit card)

Well, I almost got by today without spending any money at all, but then the boy scouts pulled the annual request for money speech on us tonight.  I typically give them $25/year just because I enjoy what my kids get out of the organization, but don’t have a lot of money to share.  (heck, let’s face it…I don’t have any money, LOL)  I don’t give out to that many organizations, so this isn’t something that really sets me back a lot every year.  I try to keep my giving down while getting out of debt so that I can give much more freely someday when I’m no longer a slave to the lender! 

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $25.00 (boy scouts)
• Debt Reduced - $0

Today we finally ordered a newspaper for the next 12 weeks.  The last few months our neighbors have been giving us their coupons from the weekend paper.  This was great until they all saw how much money we were saving and started using all the good ones themselves!  LOL!

So, the paper company called and said we could get on an intro program for $1/week, renewable for the first year.  We don’t really like spending that, but we get about $5 in savings on average from it, so we figured we’d give it the 12-week try and see how it goes.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $12.00 (newspaper)
• Debt Reduced - $0

Ouch, I just paid $50 to fill up my van with gas today.  We don’t normally let it get so low (it only had 8 miles left before empty according to the display) but wow.  I guess I just wasn’t mentally prepared to make that jump from $30/tank for my car and $40 a tank for my van to the $50 range.  That makes planning $75/month for gas look like it might not be enough.  We’ll see…

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $50.00 (gas)
• Debt Reduced - $0

LOL, just when we thought we’d spent our whole week’s worth of grocery money, we got word of a clearance special going on at one of the local stores.  I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to swing through and find any great deals.  I actually managed to get some frozen lunch packs at 40% off, four loaves of bread for $2, milk and cereal, and spaghetti sauce at 2/$1, and peanut butter for $1.  This is stuff we use almost daily, so what the heck.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $13.16 (groceries)
• Debt Reduced - $0