3 years...

Three years ago today my mom died. I spent last bawling and have cried sporadically today. I didn't think it would be so hard this many years later. I think hurts more now than it did when she died because I had my husband, dad, and family. All I have left is my husband and I feel alone in this world. Does it ever get easier?

AT&T, I dislike you!

I have spent almost an entire hour this morning on the phone with AT&T wireless. That 50 minute phone call was bad enough, but the worst part was the customer service rep barely spoke English and would get upset with me each time I couldn't understand what he was saying in his very thick accent!

Anyways, on with the problem. I have an app on my iPhone that allows me to set up automatic payments to them. Well I had a payment set to go out yesterday since I got paid. It paid the bill in full for January. Well this mining I got a text from my bank stating AT&T had taken out $181!! I was really confused about that amount because my bill is always $147. I called them as I was driving to work and found out they signed me up for automatic bill payment and averaged my bills to $181. Grr! They refused to refund me my money, but cancelled the automatic bill payment. At least I won't have to pay the bill in march! Oh, how I miss Verizon!

Spinach/Artichoke recipe

1 can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped finely
10-ounces of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
8-oz. yogurt, plain, lowfat
1 cup mozzarella cheese, low fat
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
Garlic powder to taste

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Combine all ingredients; mix well. Pour mixture into dish and bake until warm (20ish minutes).

Sunday Night Chit chat

Joining in on the chit chat from http://halfdozendaily.blog.com/

Reading?

The only thing I've been reading is the LCSW study guide and my bible. I'm oh so boring!

Watching?

Facing the Giants in anticipation of the Super Bowl!!

Listening to?

Just got the new Newsong cd at the winter jam concert and it's been on repeat in my car.

Cooking/Baking?

Just finished a spinach/artichoke dip for my church's Super Bowl party.

Happy you accomplished this week?

Staying under budget!

Looking forward to next week?

The art of marriage conference and our church's valentine banquet.

Thankful for today?

This beautiful sunshiny day!

Still alive!

Still alive! Just temporarily forgot about the blog. We've kept up with out plan to not spend excessively. All the bills have been paid on time and without late fees. We haven't went out to eat or shopped for anything except groceries. We did go to Winter Jam 2012 in Evansville. The tickets were $20 total for both of us, we got two CDs for $10 total, & bought two sodas and a water for $13.50! My hubby did get a raise and it'll bring in about $200 extra a month and that'll go directly into the EF for a while. Hope all is well!

I love couponing

Just because I'm excited about this I thought I'd share it early.

Today's coupon trip from CVS. I paid $22.42 out of pocket, received $5 ECB and just mailed in a $10 rebate for my Brita pitcher...so technically I will have only paid $12.42 for all this:

That's 12/12 packs of soda, a Brita filter, hand lotion, mascara, and 3 hallmark cards. LOVE IT!!!

Weekly spend total: $1,275.24

This week we spent a lot of moolah! This week my grand total of spending was $1,275.24! This week was the first week of the new year that my hubby and I got paid so we paid a lot of our bills and bought groceries for the first time in a month. I had three days of no spending at all again. It continues to be gasoline that kills me. My high point this week in spending was getting free tickets to see the globetrotters and receiving free sodas there, so no money was spent at all at the event! My low point in spending this week is my meal at Taco Johns…I still wish I would have waited until I got home to eat.

Sunday: Grand total $1
Walgreens $1 on two newspapers (the rest of the total was paid from register rewards)

Monday: NO SPEND!!

Tuesday: NO SPEND!!

Wednesday: Grand total: $1,050.28 (OUCH!)
Gasoline $32.01 for my car and $7.91 at Taco Johns (I unexpectedly got stuck driving two states away transporting a kid & had to stop for dinner finally at 8pm). Paid cell phone & internet bill ($178.74), car payments for both hubby and I ($688), water bill ($48.42) & loan ($95.20).

Thursday: NO SPEND!!

Friday: Grand Total: $93.74
(Weekly couponing trip-includes everything in picture plus 2 gallons of milk not pictured) CVS: 13.51 spent, but I received a $10 CVS gift card and $5.75 in ECB. Walgreens $16.23. Gasoline for me $34.00 and gasoline for my hubby $30.

Saturday: Grand total: $130.22
Went grocery shopping for at least two weeks worth of groceries at Wal-mart $129.15 (used $27.85 worth of coupons). Picked up a huge bottle of bleach at the dollar store $1.07.

I still have another 10 days until payday and we still have plenty of money left in our couponing/grocery budget as well as enough for gasoline. We put our extra money into our savings account for the EF. Tomorrow we will be paying money for a marriage retreat at church and our church’s valentine banquet that follows the weekend marriage retreat (total is $70 for both). Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!

It's been one of those weeks

I've been kind of MIA this week. It has been a crazy week and I am glad it's finally over! Monday and Tuesday were completely routine days...well almost. We had an issue at work and I didn't get to leave until almost 7pm, but otherwise no problem.

I got a phone call from a lady at church on Tuesday afternoon (she does council time at church when I'm not there) saying she had to be out of town on Wednesday and wanted to see if I could do council. I said I would, but had a bad feeling about it. When I got home Tuesday, I asked my hubby if he could have a lesson planned for church "just in case" because I had a feeling something was going to come up.

On Wednesday at work we had some problems with a client that escalated into a huge deal and suddenly at 12:15pm we find out we have to transfer her. Myself and my case manager ended up rushing around like idiots until 3:30pm when they arrived home and we whisked her away. My case manager and I were on the road from 3:30pm until 8:30pm and then I still had an hour drive home. I got home after 10pm and totally missed church. Thank God my hubby had planned a lesson!

Thursday we had snow and it took me 2.5 hours to drive home from work because people in Indiana and Kentucky cannot drive in snow. I ended up getting home at like 8pm only to eat, shower, and go to bed. Today the kids had no school because of the few snowflakes that were on the ground so work was chaos. Since I got home I gathered all the information and material and went for my weekly coupon trip. Now I just have to get a grocery list ready for tomorrows trip to the store (Boo!).

My hubby and I received two free tickets to the Harlem Globetrotters for tomorrow afternoon from my company. I've never been and I am really excited to go. Hopefully I can convince him that he does not need to buy anything at the concession stand tomorrow or anything as a souvenir.

I hope everyone has had a better, less stressful week! I've been working on my weekly spend and will have it up [hopefully] by tomorrow night.

A small achievement

My hubby and I were talking about bills and money last night and came up with a new snow ball plan after we reevaluated our debt. We discovered that we have an extra $13,000 in debt excluding cars, house, & student loans. Ouch! We are breaking that 13k in even smaller categories so we aren't too overwhelmed and can hopefully stay focused.

We had our first teeny tiny achievement today, too! Usually every Monday and Tuesday before payday we would be write checks to make it until Wednesday when I get paid and pray my paycheck went to the bank before the checks did. We would then already be short on that paychecks budget because of the checks we would write. Well, no more. I just transferred an extra $62 into my savings account because it was all left over money from our grocery/coupon and spend budget. Woo-hoo!!

I know I'm a complete newbie at this, so please excuse my stupidity. But, is it best to get your emergency fund funded before beginning to pay off some smaller debt?

Ready to spend some money...

In regards to my left over 401k from my previous job, I am going to put half into our emergency fund and the rest to pay off our capital one credit card. Once the card is paid off, I really want to cut it up. Hubby is totally against it because he wants it for emergencies and to build credit (uh-huh, yeah right) It'll take me at least 6 weeks to get the funds because I have to prove to them that my last name has changed due to marriage (It was back in 2007 when I worked for them), so I have some time to change his mind.

Here it is January 8th and I am still itching to pay bills and I can't until Wednesday when I finally get my first check of the new year. I really hope this urgency to pay bills and become debt free remains throughout the year and years to come. How do all you bloggers keep you mind so focused on debt repayment throughout the year.

Weekly spend total: $112.73

We are in for the night and done shopping for the week so I figured I'd post this tonight. I ending up having three days of no spending. The most I spent this week was on gasoline as it always is with me living an hour from my job. We barely purchased any groceries because we still have a massive stockpile in our pantry and deep freezers (I love couponing!).

Sunday 1/1/12 Day total $42.75
Casey’s General Store: Newspapers total $6
CVS: (weekly coupon trip) Purchased 4 Nivea lip care sticks and 6 bottles of Dawn dish liquid (3 for me and 3 for my SIL for this quarter). I paid $5.81 and received $5 ECB.
Thorton’s Gas Station: $30 in gas for hubby and 2 fountain drinks to take to a family dinner total $30.94

Monday 1/2/12
No Spend

Tuesday 1/3/12
No Spend

Wednesday 1/4/12 Day total $30.02
Swifty’s gas station: $30.02 in gas for me.

Thursday 1/5/12
No Spend

Friday 1/6/12 Day total $35
Swifty’s gas station: $35.00

Saturday 1/7/12 Day total $4.96
Walgreens: (weekly coupon trip) Purchased 8 skinny cow ice creams and snack boxes, 4 boxes of Fiber One cereal, 2 boxes of Keebler Club crackers, and 4 cans of Progresso soup. I paid $16.55 and still have $4 register rewards left over. Wal-mart: Returned disfunctional chopper (+14.96) and purchased a half gallon of milk and a package of cheese for the next week. Left me with +11.59 in cash back.

Opinions please

I got a letter this week from my former employer that I had my 401K with them and have 60 days to do something with it. I was told I will lose the funds that my employer contributed, but I will get everything I put in with the exception of 20% to withhold for tax purposes. Since I only contributed for 6 months, I will only get about $515.00 back (I know, sad). So here's the dilemma: do I cash it out and pay off a credit card and a small loan OR put it in an emergency fund OR do I take it and start a Roth IRA?

What would y'all do?

Accountability Needed

In an effort to better hold myself accountable, I am going to summarize my spending on here. I don’t have anyone in my life currently that can hold me accountable, so I am putting ya’ll in blog world in that position. I figured I’ll start with January 1 and make the first day of the week for me as Sunday and go through Saturday. Please hold me accountable because I need it. Feel free to question my spending habits as well as my saving habits. God knows, I need it. I’ll either have the summary posted each week by Saturday night or between morning and evening church services on Sunday.

Another hubby rant

Why is the first day back to work and your typical rountine so difficult? I feel like I've never been more tired. Got absolutely nothing accomplished today at work or at home. I did manage to have a zero spend day, which is huge for me. My co-workers did not bring their lunch so they went to pick up lunch and I didn't go or ask for anything! Huge I tell ya! I brought leftover potato soup and ate it. I also kind of worked out today, too. My hubs and I played volleyball tonight for our church for two hours. Loads of fun, but not sure it's much of an exercise.

Any ideas on how to get hubby on board with saving money and paying bills? He continues to use the credit card even though it's in my possesion. He thought he JUST HAD TO HAVE a slice of pizza and a liter of soda at the local gas station after work. Why? I can only do so much to save money and pay bills, but it's super hard when he is still being irresponsible. I have showed him all the finances, bills, debts, and statistics. It still does not seem like he gets it. He unfortunately comes from a family that has very poor money management skills, so I don't know if that's his excuse or what. I know separate bank accounts are an option, but I know he will spend all his money and we won't have enough for bills. I have given him a spend account and he still goes through it all and then some. He gives me such grief and makes me feel like a bad person because I don't want to always go out to eat or buy fun stuff. I always end up feeling like a major control freak or his mommy. Not fun!

Okay I am off my soapbox. I hope everyone has a great night.

Organizing

I spent my last day of organizing my life and it literally took all day...not much else do to while the hubs and nephew played video games all day anyways. The first think I did was make a little caddy for all the loose papers that float around my home. I made a folder for incoming mail to be sorted, papers to be filed, loose or uncut coupons, all the crazy bill envelopes, my folder, my hubby's folder, and original printable forms. On the front of the caddy is the family calendar that matches the information in my Erin Condren planner.

After the caddy was finished, I did our family binder. I made dividers for every category. In the front is a calendar of all activites. The first tab is the bill calendar that shows when every bill is due and how much. It also shows each payday and the amount incoming. The second tab is the bills that are all due and the snowball. The third tab is the budget. It includes budget for the year, each month, birthdays, and christmas. The forth tab is menu planning that has monthly calendar of meals, recipes, groceries in the home currently, and a shopping list. The fifth tab is to do. It has family to do, house to do, and each person has a to do list. The sixth tab is blog. It's for all the wonderful things I find that I want to do or copy, and it has lists for what I'd like to do with my own. The last tab is church. It has a calendar with all the activities in it because we have a lot going on in church and we need it keep it straight. It also has all the info sheets we get about activities and such at church.

When you don't need the binder, it fits nicely in the caddy and the caddy rests on the kitchen counter.
(2/365)

Happy New Year

Taking the nephew to our house for a sleepover with his cool aunt and uncle. Unfortunately he was knocked out within 15 minutes in the car. Luckily there's always tomorrow with Doodlebug. (1/365)