Could have been a spoiled trip

Husband has always been a saver. Lucky for me, because when I met him, I was your typical spender. Of course, I'm reformed now (mostly), and often grateful for Husband's ways.

One of the things that is important to him is buying a car with cash. Instead of making a car payment (at outrageous interest rates), he makes the car payment "to himself". He would take $300 a month and put it into a special savings account just for his car. That way, when the time came to buy a new car, he already had the money saved.

This account has come into play not only as we have purchased our last two cars with cash, but also when a big car repair cost rolls in. We don't have to dip into our emergency savings to cover the bill.

I'm particularly grateful for that now as Husband's car sits in our driveway with a gas leak. We found it the night before we left for our trip, just after returning home from dropping off our babies at my parents' house. We quickly made arrangements for a shuttle service to take us to the airport and plan on taking care of the car trouble when we return home.

Had we not had that car account, I might have worried about it our whole trip. I'm grateful to say that I didn't have to worry about that one bit.

I'll be back tomorrow and can't wait to share my trip with you!

In-home salon

I'm coloring my hair this morning. (Funny how the things you always meant to do start to line up as NEED to do right before a trip!) I have been coloring my hair on and off for awhile now, so I feel totally comfortable coloring my own hair.

Before I started clipping coupons and planning my shopping around sales, I would buy whatever haircolor was on sale...and the cheapest I could usually find was about $7. Which still beats the salon, right?

But I've picked up two boxes of hair color in the last month...one for $2 and one for $1. By combining store coupons, mfr. coupons, and store sales, I'm able to stock up on something I need for a much better price! This leaves more wiggle room in my budget.

Now, as I plan my weekly and monthly budgets, I try to leave a little room in them to buy the things that I'll need to stock up on should they go on sale. {Another one in this category is diapers!} It's so empowering to choose the price you want to pay for something, isn't it?

Good-bye Blockbuster!

A few months ago, I noticed a big red box near the entrance of my local Safeway. Taking a second look, I found that it was a DVDPlay kiosk.

If you haven't heard of DVDPlay, listen up: you can rent new releases for only $1! That's right...$1! You get the movie until 7pm the following night and additional nights are billed to your credit card at $1 each. Rent 10 movies and get the 11th one free.

I'll pick up a movie at the DVDPlay kiosk on Saturday after my grocery shopping and then return it the next day. It has made our movie night much more fun because we don't spend an hour wandering around the Blockbuster, trying to find something we both agree on.

Here's a deal for you: from now through November 13th, DVDPlay is letting you rent two movies for the price of one! So rent one for the kids and one for you, for just $1. It can't get any better than that, right? Just enter the promo code VOTE at checkout. Find your nearest DVDPlay kiosk here.


Say good-bye to $5 per DVD rentals and say hello to DVDPlay!

Budget Report--October

I went over on my October budget. : ( I attribute it to our trip to Utah (stocking up on hot chocolate and buying lots more milk for the babies than they would normally need) and some poor planning at the end of the month.

Even though Thanksgiving is this month, I'm trimming my budget by $20. (This is the first month I won't be buying any formula.) I'm also deducting the amount that I went over in October. (Harsh!) I know, I know, but I'm really trying to keep things in check. I'm trying to plan for November in it's entirety instead of just week by week. I figure that will help me to get a better view of my spending.

...And we are headed to Hawaii this month for a long overdue vacation (and to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary), so I know that will eat up some of my grocery budget.

I read an article recently (of course now I can't remember where) but the author was talking about budgeting and she said that even though she had a party planned for that month, she was not going to veer from her budget and make excuses because stuff like that always comes up. She's right: we always have someone's birthday or other celebration or someone gets sick or we just don't feel like cooking...things come up that we don't plan for and we can't throw our budget out the window because of it.

So yes, even though Thanksgiving is coming up, now is not the time to lose hold of your budget. I'm going to take a deep breath and do the best with what I've got!

What are your plans for keeping your budget on track with the holidays coming up?




{image via Country Living}

Halvsies

Husband and I have long been miffed at the enormous amount of food that restaurants give diners these days. The price tags are nothing to laugh at either. Quite often, after bringing home some take out (and finding lots of it left over), Husband will say, "we should have just ordered one entree and split it".

Upon heading to the airport to fly home from Utah, we decided to employ this idea. We knew it would be awhile before we got some good food in our tummies and we were not interested in the high fast food prices at the airport.

We decided to stop at Cracker Barrel. We placed an order to go: Homestyle Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, fried apples, two YUMMY buttermilk biscuits, and a root beer to share. Total price: $11.91.

We ate our meal in the car (while the babies slept!) and it was so delicious. We finished it, too. It was the perfect amount for each of us. I think we've hit on a beautiful new strategy!