Friday, April 9, 2010
Setting up a budget is the best way to monitor how much money is coming in versus how much is going out each month. Today, I will help you customize your budget to meet your individual needs, and maximize your income. This can be helpful whether you are trying to stay home with your children, already staying home with your children, or you are just wondering what we all wonder, “Where does all of my money go?!”
Using Microsoft Excel, set up columns starting with A for Expense Name, B for usernames and passwords, and C, D, E, etc. for the months of the year. Set up the rows starting with row 3 for your monthly cyclical bills such as mortgage, cell phone payment, electricity, etc. After you are finished listing the cyclical bills that change from month-to-month, add bills that you incur each month like vehicle gas, groceries, entertainment, and clothing.
Once you have set up your spreadsheet, pull your online banking statement up, and print one month’s worth of banking statements. For example, March 1st – April 1st. The easiest way to single out expenses is with a colored highlighter. Highlight all grocery trips with pink, all gas expenses with yellow, etc. Add all of the pink expenses for one month together to figure out what you are spending on groceries. Add all yellow line items to pinpoint what you are spending in gas, and so on. Do this for every single line item on the statement. If you have rare expenses like vehicle registration, it is a good idea to budget a certain amount of money as “miscellaneous” in your budget. This way, nothing is truly a surprise if you budget for it.
At the bottom of your spreadsheet, add a “TOTAL” row. Add all of your expenses in the “March” column and put the total in your “Total” row. Below the total, add a row for “INCOME.” Put your monthly income in the row. Add a “LEFTOVER” row below the Income row. Subtract the TOTAL from the INCOME and this will be what you have for savings, or emergency situations every month after everything has been paid for.
The most important thing is to be realistic about your budget. Don’t cheap out if you REALLY spend $200 on clothing each month and put “$100” as this is not a realistic view of your spending.
If you look over your bank statement and see that you spend $400 on entertainment and eating out, perhaps you’d rather cut this line item to $300 and eat in or rent movies more often. There are a lot of ways to trim your expenses once you know what they are!
Take a couple of hours and sit down to put your budget on paper. You will sleep easier knowing precisely where your money is going and how you can keep more of that money in your pocket!
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Friday, April 9, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Money-saving Tricks
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Good morning! Today’s blog is a hodge podge of just a few things that I have been doing lately to save myself money, and make my days easier.
When I start my day, I pack my husband’s lunch and I like to have SOME idea of what the dinner plan is. If something needs to be thawed or marinated, I start that process in the morning. With the use of PARCHMENT PAPER, I can make my dinner duties much easier. I bake fish, chicken, vegetables, cookies and oven fries on parchment paper. The greatest thing about parchment paper is that it is easy to tear, non-stick, and once you are finished baking on it, you toss it in the garbage and your dishes are done! The cookie sheet stays clean! Parchment paper is oven and microwave safe and makes my life SO much easier. I haven’t discovered a store-brand of parchment paper, but Reynolds makes a great product. It usually runs about $3 for a roll and the roll will last you quite a while. If you are going to check out the 99 Cents Only Store (see my blog from Monday, March 15th) I found my parchment paper for $.99 for 8 – 15in x 12in sheets! You will love how easy doing the dishes becomes when you use parchment paper.
I noticed that there were two things that we were purchasing regularly, that I could make myself and save a significant amount of money doing so.
The first of these items is pudding. I was putting a cup of pudding in my husband’s lunch every day, and Emily and I would share a cup of pudding on occasion. These packs of ready-to-serve pudding can run anywhere from $1.00 for (4) to $3.00 for (6). When those packages will only last you one week, you find yourself buying pudding every time you run to the store! So, I decided to buy store-brand instant pudding mixes, and make the pudding myself. You can either 1.) buy some tiny containers – I found mine at Target for $1.00 for a package of 9 or 2.) save baby food jars (glass or plastic) to be refilled with pudding. All you need is 2 cups of milk, and the package of pudding mix which runs less than $1.00.
Pay close attention to when your milk will expire, because the pudding will expire when the milk expires! I have found that I can make more pudding for significantly less money if I do the work myself. I can also control whether we are eating sugary or sugar-free pudding, and what kind of milk goes into the pudding to reduce the calories that are in each serving.
The second item that I have chosen to make myself is Gatorade. During the summer with yard work, softball, swimming, and playing, we seem to go through a lot of Gatorade! We usually purchase the largest bottle of Gatorade (one gallon) at Wal-Mart for around $4.00. When I began staying home full-time, we talked about cutting back on expenses such as this. I did a little price-comparing while I was shopping one day, and realized that I could keep the gallon bottle that I had purchased last time, and refill it with water and powdered Gatorade! A can of powdered Gatorade runs about $6.00 and makes about six gallons. So, I could have purchased six pre-made gallons of Gatorade for $24.00 or make my own Gatorade for $6.00. The powdered stuff tastes exactly the same and saves us a TON of money!
I’m sure that we do many things like this as we move through daily life. These are just a few of the most money-saving tricks that I implement on a weekly basis. This blog is not intended to get you thinking about pudding or Gatorade. It is designed to get you thinking about the things that YOU buy and how to save money on them!
Good morning! Today’s blog is a hodge podge of just a few things that I have been doing lately to save myself money, and make my days easier.
When I start my day, I pack my husband’s lunch and I like to have SOME idea of what the dinner plan is. If something needs to be thawed or marinated, I start that process in the morning. With the use of PARCHMENT PAPER, I can make my dinner duties much easier. I bake fish, chicken, vegetables, cookies and oven fries on parchment paper. The greatest thing about parchment paper is that it is easy to tear, non-stick, and once you are finished baking on it, you toss it in the garbage and your dishes are done! The cookie sheet stays clean! Parchment paper is oven and microwave safe and makes my life SO much easier. I haven’t discovered a store-brand of parchment paper, but Reynolds makes a great product. It usually runs about $3 for a roll and the roll will last you quite a while. If you are going to check out the 99 Cents Only Store (see my blog from Monday, March 15th) I found my parchment paper for $.99 for 8 – 15in x 12in sheets! You will love how easy doing the dishes becomes when you use parchment paper.
I noticed that there were two things that we were purchasing regularly, that I could make myself and save a significant amount of money doing so.
The first of these items is pudding. I was putting a cup of pudding in my husband’s lunch every day, and Emily and I would share a cup of pudding on occasion. These packs of ready-to-serve pudding can run anywhere from $1.00 for (4) to $3.00 for (6). When those packages will only last you one week, you find yourself buying pudding every time you run to the store! So, I decided to buy store-brand instant pudding mixes, and make the pudding myself. You can either 1.) buy some tiny containers – I found mine at Target for $1.00 for a package of 9 or 2.) save baby food jars (glass or plastic) to be refilled with pudding. All you need is 2 cups of milk, and the package of pudding mix which runs less than $1.00.
Pay close attention to when your milk will expire, because the pudding will expire when the milk expires! I have found that I can make more pudding for significantly less money if I do the work myself. I can also control whether we are eating sugary or sugar-free pudding, and what kind of milk goes into the pudding to reduce the calories that are in each serving.
The second item that I have chosen to make myself is Gatorade. During the summer with yard work, softball, swimming, and playing, we seem to go through a lot of Gatorade! We usually purchase the largest bottle of Gatorade (one gallon) at Wal-Mart for around $4.00. When I began staying home full-time, we talked about cutting back on expenses such as this. I did a little price-comparing while I was shopping one day, and realized that I could keep the gallon bottle that I had purchased last time, and refill it with water and powdered Gatorade! A can of powdered Gatorade runs about $6.00 and makes about six gallons. So, I could have purchased six pre-made gallons of Gatorade for $24.00 or make my own Gatorade for $6.00. The powdered stuff tastes exactly the same and saves us a TON of money!
I’m sure that we do many things like this as we move through daily life. These are just a few of the most money-saving tricks that I implement on a weekly basis. This blog is not intended to get you thinking about pudding or Gatorade. It is designed to get you thinking about the things that YOU buy and how to save money on them!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Baby Necessities
Thursday, February, 24, 2010
I think I’ll kick things off with the things that I have found most helpful in my adventures as a first time Mom. As we all know, EVERYONE wants to share their war stories and must-haves when you are expecting. This is a practical account of the things that have saved my butt on numerous occasions. Of course, everyone wants to talk about the most fabulous cradle and bouncy seat. Well, Emily would sleep in a pile of dirt if I’d let her. So, let’s not worry with the obvious stuff. Everyone’s going to buy a play yard and a crib. So, what do you ACTUALLY need? A cart cover! That thing is so amazing, I’m not even kidding. My cart cover is a Kozypal and it is AMAZING. You can purchase them from retailers like Target for around $25. I checked in with Melissa at Kozypal for a few weeks and found that she was having a fabulous sale. I got my $62 cart cover for $35! The small compartments that the cover has, the loops for hanging keys or toys, and the easy elastic ties make my cart cover my favorite baby product thus far. I use my cart cover nearly every day and I highly recommend them if your child is anything like mine – chewing the metal on any cart she can wrap her teeth around!
My second favorite baby product has to be my sling. They are available in much more fun colors and patterns than they have been in the past, and they come in very handy when you have a newborn/infant. I never quite mastered the “vacuum with ease” aspect, but I still love my sling! It offers hands-free shopping and your baby can sleep nestled close to you, or ride around on your hip while your hands are both free. My sling is a product of Babies ‘R Us and ran around $40. I found that I could more easily slide into my sling than I could maneuver my front-to-back carrier.
My third and final favorite baby item is definitely a gadget. As my husband and I registered for our baby shower, we were incredibly overwhelmed with all of the things on the market for babies. What on EARTH do we truly need amidst all of these things? Of course, you want to have the coolest new items, and my favorite find in the gadget department would have to be the Boon Squirt Baby Food Dispensing Spoon. They can be found at both Target and Babies ‘R Us for around $7. The spoon holds more than one 4oz. container of baby food, and as you gently squeeze the bulb, baby food fills the spoon and you can 1. feed your baby one-handed, and 2. avoid a huge mess. I found this item to be PERFECT for shopping trips because I could load the spoon prior to leaving the house. Emily was surprisingly less messy when we used the “Boon Spoon” because I could control messes with my left hand while continuously feeding her with my right hand. A dream come true!
I think I’ll kick things off with the things that I have found most helpful in my adventures as a first time Mom. As we all know, EVERYONE wants to share their war stories and must-haves when you are expecting. This is a practical account of the things that have saved my butt on numerous occasions. Of course, everyone wants to talk about the most fabulous cradle and bouncy seat. Well, Emily would sleep in a pile of dirt if I’d let her. So, let’s not worry with the obvious stuff. Everyone’s going to buy a play yard and a crib. So, what do you ACTUALLY need? A cart cover! That thing is so amazing, I’m not even kidding. My cart cover is a Kozypal and it is AMAZING. You can purchase them from retailers like Target for around $25. I checked in with Melissa at Kozypal for a few weeks and found that she was having a fabulous sale. I got my $62 cart cover for $35! The small compartments that the cover has, the loops for hanging keys or toys, and the easy elastic ties make my cart cover my favorite baby product thus far. I use my cart cover nearly every day and I highly recommend them if your child is anything like mine – chewing the metal on any cart she can wrap her teeth around!
My second favorite baby product has to be my sling. They are available in much more fun colors and patterns than they have been in the past, and they come in very handy when you have a newborn/infant. I never quite mastered the “vacuum with ease” aspect, but I still love my sling! It offers hands-free shopping and your baby can sleep nestled close to you, or ride around on your hip while your hands are both free. My sling is a product of Babies ‘R Us and ran around $40. I found that I could more easily slide into my sling than I could maneuver my front-to-back carrier.
My third and final favorite baby item is definitely a gadget. As my husband and I registered for our baby shower, we were incredibly overwhelmed with all of the things on the market for babies. What on EARTH do we truly need amidst all of these things? Of course, you want to have the coolest new items, and my favorite find in the gadget department would have to be the Boon Squirt Baby Food Dispensing Spoon. They can be found at both Target and Babies ‘R Us for around $7. The spoon holds more than one 4oz. container of baby food, and as you gently squeeze the bulb, baby food fills the spoon and you can 1. feed your baby one-handed, and 2. avoid a huge mess. I found this item to be PERFECT for shopping trips because I could load the spoon prior to leaving the house. Emily was surprisingly less messy when we used the “Boon Spoon” because I could control messes with my left hand while continuously feeding her with my right hand. A dream come true!
Welcome to my new blog!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
When I decided to start a blog, I thought back to all of the things that I have searched the Internet for in the past. I practically planned my entire wedding via the Internet, after all! These days, however, I am constantly searching for things that will make my life easier, save money, and of course, the impulse buys that we all succumb to! This blog is dedicated to bringing you the best products, the best prices, and the most fabulous deals that I stumble upon as I shop for my family and raise my 14-month-old daughter.
First, I feel obligated to tell you a little bit about myself. I am a former public school Choir director who made the transition to staying home with my toddler, Emily, last June. This has been the most rewarding transition of my life so far, but a challenge none the less! I am 27 years old, and I make my home with my husband, Sean, in Wylie, Texas. Wylie is a small suburb north of Dallas that butts up with Plano, Sachse, and Lavon, Texas. My husband is a high school English teacher who has current aspirations of becoming an administrator in the public school setting. To continue with my life-long passion of music, I teach private piano and voice lessons out of my home in the evenings. I look forward to sharing with you the things that I have found helpful in my adventures as a stay-at-home-mom/bargain hunter extraordinaire!
When I decided to start a blog, I thought back to all of the things that I have searched the Internet for in the past. I practically planned my entire wedding via the Internet, after all! These days, however, I am constantly searching for things that will make my life easier, save money, and of course, the impulse buys that we all succumb to! This blog is dedicated to bringing you the best products, the best prices, and the most fabulous deals that I stumble upon as I shop for my family and raise my 14-month-old daughter.
First, I feel obligated to tell you a little bit about myself. I am a former public school Choir director who made the transition to staying home with my toddler, Emily, last June. This has been the most rewarding transition of my life so far, but a challenge none the less! I am 27 years old, and I make my home with my husband, Sean, in Wylie, Texas. Wylie is a small suburb north of Dallas that butts up with Plano, Sachse, and Lavon, Texas. My husband is a high school English teacher who has current aspirations of becoming an administrator in the public school setting. To continue with my life-long passion of music, I teach private piano and voice lessons out of my home in the evenings. I look forward to sharing with you the things that I have found helpful in my adventures as a stay-at-home-mom/bargain hunter extraordinaire!
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