Let’s face it, this stuff isn’t glamorous. You don’t get home at the end of a long day and think to yourself “I can’t wait to check my checking account and see what bills are due”. No, you put it off, or do it while killing time at work. There are bits and pieces here and there. A bill in your bag, and a pay stub in your lunch sack. It is mundane, and while you know it is important, you find every rationalization to put it off, or ignore it all together.

This is the situation I faced, and decided to do something a little different.

For a while, I tried Mint.com. It’s a great resource to keep track of everything money related, if it works with your bank. Unfortunately, Citizens bank doesn’t play nice with Mint, and since this is where I do most of my banking, I gave up with Mint. I have not deleted my account in the hopes that it will one day work with Citizens. It also sends me reminders about certain things, like finance charges. You can tweak the settings however you like, the finance charge reminder is my personal kick in the pants to get me fired up about my war on debt.

So I get a monthly reminder about how much interest I’m paying to my credit card. This number makes me sick. I can’t deduct this number on my taxes like with mortgage interest. Finance charges are helping my credit card company get richer while I get poorer, no fair! Now I need a better way to keep track of how much I owe, and something to keep me on track with my debt pay down plan. I whipped myself up a spreadsheet, because that’s what I do. I printed it out and taped it right in front of my desk. No more do I wonder how much I owe, or where to put that little extra income from doing friend’s taxes. All of my consumer debt is over $14,000, my goal is to get that number under $10,000 by the end of the year. My goal and my progress are staring me in the face every time I sit at my desk, I can’t forget or ignore it anymore!

The other trick I’m trying is putting all my bills on my calendar. When the bill comes in, I physically write the amount on the day it is due. For some reason lately, I just haven’t had a good gasp on when bills are due and how much they are. Late fees are my nemesis, and this tactic seems to be helping me have a better handle on the household bills.

In the pursuit of a frugal lifestyle, we often come across tricks that make very good use of our money. Ham is one of those things. Vegans, read no further.

Every once in a while, I like to make a big dinner for no particular occasion. I do this for a couple of reasons; one, I like to feed people, two, its much cheaper to make a big meal than to go out to a restaurant and three, leftovers! A couple of weeks ago, a friend planted the seed for ham dinner, I couldn’t ignore it, and so a huge ham roast found its way into my grocery cart. I should have paid better attention to the price and the weight, but it was about 9 pounds and maybe $17. And now, here are my adventures with the ham!

First meal – ham dinner, complete with roasted potatoes and veggies from the garden I picked at my mom’s, dinner rolls and some exorbitant dessert the suggestive friend brought over.

Second – Rob used a few slices for his lunch sandwiches, since it was a spiral cut, the slices are perfect!

Third – I got the trusty knife out and got to work. With the leftover slices, I diced up some very tiny ham cubes for ham salad sandwiches, which are Rob’s favorite. With the chunky bits, I got to cubing it up into bite sized pieces, which yielded a quart sized bag worth. I left a good amount of meat on the ham bone and popped it into the freezer.

Fourth – mac & cheese with ham, using about a cup of the cubed up ham, I had everything to make it in the cupboards, so this meal was essentially free. Plus, I got to use up some of the party crackers that most likely would have gone stale before the next party.

Fifth – omelets, just grabbed a handful of the cubed ham and tossed it in for a great breakfast. Eggs are free from my mom, and we always have a bit of cheese on hand.

Sixth – pizza! We love Hawaiian pizza, so this was a no-brainer.

Seventh – ham bone soup, I haven’t decided which recipe I will use yet, but this weekend, the ham bone, water and a bunch of veggies are going to make love in my crock pot.

Wow, 7 uses out of one roast! I challenge you to find a similar experiment and watch your savings add up.

In a perfect world, this number would be the same for everyone, but alas, the days of utopia are not here yet. Here’s my perspective on the whole idea.

First off, make your saving automatic. If you have to go through the trouble of going to the bank to deposit the money in a special account, it won’t happen. Either sign up for direct deposit, or make an automatic scheduled transfer through your bank. I started out with $20 a week going into my ING account, it was painless and the money just seemed to grow magically. Then Rob started contributing $25 a week with an automatic transfer through his bank and I get giddy whenever I check the account now.

If you don’t have anything saved yet, make $1000 your initial goal. $1000 can cover most small emergencies life can throw at you. Or at least get you through until you figure out what to do next. If you stash $20 a week away, it will take you just under a year to save up $1000. To boost this along, put any unexpected money into your emergency fund. For example, if you have a yard sale or sell some of your stuff on eBay, put the profits in your fund. Or if you get a holiday bonus at work, take a little to splurge with and stash the rest away.

Now, it might sound counter intuitive to tell you to put that money into savings when you have this mountain of debt looming over you. I would agree with you if I didn’t learn first hand how great it feels to pay CASH when my A/C broke during the heat wave of 2009. In the past, I would have just written a check out of my credit card and continued the cycle of debt. I felt so good NOT putting more on my credit card, I became even more motivated to fund my savings account and replace the few hundred dollars I had taken. My debt plan is still on track and the only discomfort I felt was the 100 degree heat in my house.

After a while, your goal will be reached and you’ll have this pile of money sitting in the bank, tempting you. To conquer this temptation, I set up a “CD ladder”. Once you have $1500 in there, put $500 in a 12 month CD. This leaves your $1000 cushion available for emergencies, and $500 working a little harder for your patience. You can still get to it if something major happens, and I would much rather pay an early withdrawal fee than rack up interest charges on my credit card. With my particular plan, I put away about $100 a month, so every six months, I open a new CD for $500. So far, so good!

And now the answer to the ultimate question! How much should your end goal be? That really depends on you, but I do have one hard and fast rule to consider. Save up X month’s worth of your total expenses. For some this should be three months, for others it should be more like six month’s worth. Of course, if you lost your income completely, you would cut back even more and you could stretch your budget. Most importantly, celebrate your milestones! Once you get to your $1000 mark, take some time to reflect on how far you’ve come. One month’s worth of expenses deserves a little splurge, and so on. Keep at it!

In the beginning, times were very tight, so I used all the resources I had available to me. I went to my mom’s a couple times a week for dinner to save on groceries. I let people that I had bought drinks for in the past, buy me drinks when I went out, or I was the designated driver. I sold a bunch of stuff in yard sales, which proved more lucrative than I ever imagined and it got a bunch of clutter out of my house. I got a roommate {Hi Leah} to help with the cost of the house. When preparing the house to sell, we did as many projects as we could ourselves, and borrowed tools and labor from friends.

I effectively refinanced the house with a real mortgage. Previously, I had taken out home equity loans and saved for my property taxes and insurance myself. Let me tell you, coming up with $1500-$2000 {depending on the year and how much I paid the previous term} every six months is no tranquil task. Doing this reduced my interest rate two full points, and my monthly payment $200. It was the first time I ever walked out of a closing and didn’t feel like I had made horrific mistake. Oh yes, I had done this many times before, something like six times in seven years, I was a pro at refinancing! Also, I didn’t take out anything extra, just paid off the existing mortgage so that was that.

Next I combined my credit cards into one big one. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but at the time I was barely making minimum payments on the accounts I had. The company that I had been with the longest sent me some balance transfer checks, so I took advantage of the 0% rate for a year to get my balance paid down faster. This would not have been possible if that account was already maxed out, but since I have been a customer for so long they give me an enormous line of credit. I closed the other accounts to remove temptation, I didn’t care how it affected my credit at that point, my mortgage was already processed.

Being a homeowner, I knew I needed to stash away money for home repairs because it is my experience that when you have to call a repairman after hours, they don’t take credit cards. I also didn’t want to add anything to my existing debt when I could easily pay for something cash with a little forethought. It started with $10 out of my paycheck into my shiny new ING account. Because it takes a few days for any transfers to go through, this was the perfect option for my “just in case” fund. My other savings account was tied to my checking account, and way too easy with instant transfers.

Now that Robbie’s part of the household, he contributes to the “just in case” fund also. I try to only check the balance every so often, and when I do, I get giddy because it grows so quickly! Recently our central A/C broke and we had to call a repairman. For once, it was nice to not scramble for cash to pay the man.

Since I needed a way to save money on groceries to fund our new savings account, I decided to start following the advice every article I’ve ever read about saving money on groceries told me. Here’s the short version: 1) shop the store flyers, see what the loss leaders are and make your menu around that. 2) write a list, taking into account what you already have on hand and what’s on your menu. 3) use coupons. 4) take advantage of store shopping “rewards” cards. 5) don’t shop hungry!

How I do it: 1)I peruse the flyers on Friday to get my brain working on a menu. 2)I write a list of the meals I want to make and then take a quick inventory of what I already have, fill in the list with the items I need. One of my downfalls with food shopping is that I buy things just to “have it in the house”, you know, just in case I feel like whipping up some chicken parm or something ridiculous like that. 3) I recently became a bit of a coupon whore when up until a month or so ago, I was totally against it. I hated clipping the damn things, only to find out I didn’t buy the correct item or combination of items when I got up to the register. Fooey! Now, I only clip the coupons of the items I usually buy, if I find it is not worth it when I get to the store {like the generic brand is half the price, even with the coupon} I toss it or leave it near the item on the shelf for some other frugal person to find. Since I drag Robbie with me shopping, he has become in charge of making sure I use the correct coupons as we go down the aisle. 4) I have every rewards card there is, but honestly, it only comes in handy when I actually shop the sales at the stores. Typically, I do all my shopping at Walmart because I find their prices better on the items I buy. Walmart also price-matches, but I have yet to be brave enough to bring in the other store flyers. Since I have 3 grocery stores within a 3 mile radius of my home, its not a burden to go to Shaw’s to get the deal on pork chops on the way home from Walmart. 5) Robbie and I try to make a point to eat a healthy lunch before we go grocery shopping. However, Saturday I spent $18 on nothing at Shaw’s because I was empty-stomached. 6) my personal addition: use whatever resources you have available to you. Where my mom lives is a working farm, I get free eggs as long as I bring my cartons back, and when the veggies come in, I pick whatever I want. The only expense is the time picking and prepping the veggies. This is nominal to me because I get to spend a little time with my mom and I’m outdoors, not in front of the TV or computer. She also saves the Sunday paper coupons for me, so I don’t have to buy it. Last week, I saved over $10 with my coupons, and I was able to stock up on some items, all while staying within my budget!

I have a menu calendar within my Google calendar. I set this up so I could stop asking the eternal question “what’s for dinner?”. It also helps me diversify the meals I make by seeing how long ago I made pulled pork, or spaghetti and meatballs. It saves me time looking through the cupboards and wondering what to make. I can also cook ahead if I’m time challenged later in the week.

Hope this helps, and I know you will save money if you use one or all of these tips! Happy shopping

This is where forecasting comes in to play. Personally, I use a very simple spreadsheet, which I match up to my bank account about once a week because I get paid weekly. Column one is the date, column two is for credits {direct deposit}, column three is for debits {bills, gas, etc} and column four is the balance. Somehow, I managed to have a bill due each week of the month so this works out very nicely. To have everything due at the beginning of the month is a little scary . November is a tough month for me because not only is it the beginning of the Holiday season, it is also the month of my birth. Car registration along with getting snow tires put on, and the additional grocery bill because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! Not to mention the impending vacuum of money the Holidays can be for some people. Last year, I officially boycotted gift giving and just gave out homemade goodies and a “thank you for not making me rack up more debt”. Oh, but I’ve gone a little of course here…

Once you figure out what bills come up when, plug them into your spreadsheet. I like to forecast out a good six months. If I see any red, which means my account will go in the negative, I know I need to plan better. Perhaps go out for one less meal that month, or do some extra bookkeeping work.

This is one more way to take charge of your finances and have less surprises along the way. And it almost totally negates the temptation to spend because you saw how much money you have in your account when you went to the ATM.

I’ve been using my homemade laundry detergent, and I haven’t found any differences from store bought. Everyone was so excited when I told them how easy it was, I’m betting A & H Washing Soda and Borax will be flying off the shelves. I read a little deeper into the original article to find out about High Efficiency washers. If you have this type of machine, you can simply make a dry mix from the soda, borax and grated soap and use a tablespoon or two per load. Even easier than my globbity gloop!

The carpet in my hallway is quite interesting now! With that $2.16 ginormous box of baking soda I mistakenly bought, I’ve been using it in as many ways as possible. The hallway gets quite a bit of traffic, and my furkid Goo decided it was a good place to throw up. Usually the Resolve carpet spot cleaner gets it right out, but there was still a spot left after I treated it. Out came the box of baking soda! I poured on a good layer and scrubbed it with a brush and a bit of water. Now the spots I’ve treated are back to the original color of the carpet, and glaringly obvious I need to clean the whole damn thing. Luckily, I don’t have much planned this weekend, ha ha! I’ve also put baking soda down the smelly drains, in the bottom of the trash can to absorb the odor, in the cat litter box, and out in the garage where there is a mysterious wet spot.

Now for my most exciting accomplishment of late! I opened a high yield saving account at my credit union. 3% may not seem like “high yield”, but it is the highest savings rate I could find anywhere. The catch is, the CU wants you to use it as a short term emergency savings account, so the 3% is only good up to $500. Well, I already have an established emergency fund that we both automatically contribute to, so how will I fund this new account? It took me a couple days to come up with the answer… whatever I save on groceries gets transferred to the new account. We have a weekly budget of $85 for food and household supplies, which is really quite a lot for just two people. I cook most of our meals, saving us a bunch of money on eating out. We started to plan meals better, so that we can shop the sales, and I recently started couponing. Last week, we only spent $62.50 on groceries, woo hoo!

That’s what I’ve been up to. Peace out!

I read How to Make Your Own Laundry Detergent over at The Simple Dollar last week. Interesting, I thought to myself, this doesn’t seem like too much of a pain, maybe I should give a whirl. Rob brought home a 5 gallon bucket the following day, and I scoped out the laundry soap aisles for the supplies I needed over the weekend. My costs were a bit different, but I used the same supplies Trent did with the exception of the bar soap,  I used Irish Spring.

Borax $3.36, washing soda $2.59, bar soap $0.97, total cost $6.92. About the cost of ONE bottle of Tide. Not too bad.

Sunday night I got to grating up the bar soap and making my soap soup. While that was simmering, I filled up the bucket with about 3 gallons of water and placed it in the kitchen. Everything came together fairly quickly. All told, it probably took me about 20 minutes to do everything, put the lid on and left it in the laundry room to set.

When I got home from work Monday evening, I was all excited to see what I had. The texture was similar to Jello until I poked it with my spatula. I stirred it a bit and had a nice concoction of globbery goup. I saved a bit of dirty laundry to try it out on, and I am happy to report I notice no difference between the store-bought detergent and my homemade stuff. Plus, it smells like Irish Spring, which is one of my favorite smells

Luckily, a couple of my empty detergent bottles hadn’t made it into the recycling bin yet, so I filled those up to make dispensing a little easier.

If you are sick of paying through the nose to get your clothes clean, give this a try. Seriously, its a half hour of your life that will pay you back over and over again. Additionally, you don’t have to lug the bottles home from the store. You don’t have to add to landfills. And you don’t have to worry about what perfumes and dyes are in it because YOU made it!

As an aside, I accidentally bought a ginormous box of baking soda thinking it was the same thing as the washing soda. I’ve already found a bunch of uses for it right on the side of the box. Let’s see what kind of experiments I can come up with for it!uses for baking soda

In tooling around on my Credit Union’s website today, I found Debt in Focus. I found this simple and easy to plug numbers into, and you remain anonymus, so you won’t be getting junk mail for years to come! It shows you where you are financially, and makes suggestions on how to improve it. It also takes into account what effects any actions will make on your credit score, which is great if you are trying to repair your credit to buy a house.

Of course, the site is sponsored by Northeast Credit Union, so it will tell you to talk to them in order to take some of the actions, but in truth, credit unions are usually the better choice in banking  anyway. Even if you don’t do any of the actions it suggests, at least you’ll know where you stand.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

So anyway, Sunday is my normal grocery shopping day and I was in Brentwood making jam with my mom and Mo. I figured I would just wing it when I got up there, I didn’t take the 5 or 10 minutes to make a meal plan so I would know what to buy. Big mistake!

Not only did I go way over my budget, I spent nearly an hour and a half in the store because I had to back track a few times when I remembered items. Now, I probably did buy at least a week and a half worth’s of meals, so I won’t have to buy as much next week. Still, poor planning = poor Susie!

Duly noted for next time, always make a meal plan and take a quick inventory before heading out to the store.