An old bad habit I had (or thought i HAD) creeped up on me this weekend. I got involved on a project (adding some holloween lights) and made a few trips to home depot for "necessary" supplies to finish the project. Now its Monday and i have 5 recipts infront of me for $36.24, $4.83, $5.58, $43.14 and $27.84 totalling $117.63. The major problem is that I didn't make a budget. In my head I am thinking... "This won't be too expensive and I 'need' to do this for the lights this year".
Luckly, what I am doing will serve a dual purpose of adding something for halloween and christmas this year. Last year I had draped lights onto our front bushes. My display makes use of 4 colors for most elements (red, blue, green and white). However, the lights on the bushes were only white. I could not add 4 times the amount of lights to the bushes this year with out crushing them. So i build PVC frames that I will attach the lights to which will sit infront of the bushes. This will make it easier to set up and take down and also save my bushes. I decided to do this now because I had enough Orange lights for halloween to add a 5th color to the frames to use for the trick-or-treaters. Most of the PVC i already owned, unused in the garage and was able to use it for this project, saving me alot of money. I know there is more I want to do for both halloween and christmas. I just don't want to keep spending money thinking "well, I need to buy this to finish this project". I really need to sit down and make a budget that I can spend. Especially for these semi-unexpected expenses and projects.
So we are planning another Disney trip on Diana's birthday. This time we are staying an extra day. At $64 a night we are budgeting $130 for the room. $50 for gas and an additional $60 for food (we are splurging on eating out one night with some of our cousins that are flying in from Indiana). So for about $240 were going to visit the mouse to celebrate Diana’s birthday.
It's still hard to plan a trip like this and try to save money. The easiest thing to do is just pay for everything you need. I especially have a hard time convincing myself that it’s not better to just eat out for everything. We are planning on bringing meals for just about everything. Luckily the kids are not spoiled, yet, and they enjoy eating packed lunch in a new environment. I guess its helps Diana and myself in those situations to see the kids handle it so well. I want to do something special for Diana’s birthday but again, budgeting is getting in the way. If anyone has any ideas for me to do something special for Diana at Disneyworld (on the cheap) send them to mgrosh@thirdkind.com (so she doesn’t see) and ill post them here after the trip.
I'm sure all of us have had fantasies of how to blow $200 on a weekend.
Maybe a nice dinner...
A quick trip somewhere...
Maybe a bunch of clearance stuff from Target...
But, a snotty acorn???
So on sunday at 5:00 Jacob was showing mommy something. "dook mommy, my doze" A quick trip to Patients First and $50 copay we found that Jacob had stuck something up his nose. Also, that they were not able to take it out. They sent us to TMH ($150 copay) to have them try. We arrived around 6:30 and was told that the longest wait was about 2 hours.
7 hours later....
we saw the doctor. They tried a couple times to remove the acorn but decided that they would have to sedate Jacob to get the job done. They used Ketamine to sedate Jacob and remove the acorn. It was a little scary, but everyone survived the ordeal. Diana took the day off work to stay with Jacob. He is doing great but we are keeping a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't spend another $200 today. Luckly we didn't have to think twice if we had the money to afford the emergency. We have saved up our emergency fund and put it to good use today.
As stressfull as the whole situation was, Jacob cheered us up by singing "where is thumbkin" while still in his Ketamine induced stupor. Click here to watch
There are dishes piled up in my kitchen sink…my poor DH is wearing dirty socks…the toilets are growing fuzzy stuff…my desk has mountains of mail and general paper junk towering and threatening to avalanche…there are about 500 puzzle pieces (from 20 different puzzles) spread amongst the blocks, trains, and crayons littering the playroom floor…crumbs from dinner 3 weeks ago are mixed in with cereal and other bits on my kitchen floor…and I’m too exhausted to care!
We have been busy the last few weeks, getting into a new routine with school starting, and me going back to tutoring, trying to get the van running, kids getting sick (no wonder with the condition of my house, right, but I’m also clinging to the excuse that they just started school and picked up something), Michael traveling for work, football season back in full swing, Michael back to playing city league softball…
I need to get online and pay the utility bill that was due several days ago (FYI they don’t report to the credit bureau, thank goodness!) and the upcoming phone and cable bills (Not sure, but I think they DO report…)
Just hoping that this extreme fatigue goes away in a few weeks like it’s supposed to, and I can get back to feeling fairly normal, for a little while anyway. All the sick and tired feelings can’t get me down, though, because today, Charmin Ultra was on sale, and I had a coupon…I’ve been missing two-ply!
Michael has been giddy for weeks looking forward to tonight! Our football fan status has evolved quite a bit over the last 12 years…
I don’t know when Michael really got into football, because his dad isn’t really into it, but when he started attending FSU over 13 years ago, it became something he enjoyed. When we were newlyweds, I had just gotten my first teaching job and really needed a distraction from the stress of being a first year teacher, so a four hour break on the weekend was something I quickly learned to enjoy as well. At that time we would buy single game tickets if we needed to, or upgrade a student ticket to let me in, and Michael would use his free (well, already paid for in fees and tuition) student ticket. I think Michael enjoyed teaching me the rules of the game and did a great job tolerating and patiently answering my gazillion questions. (I probably said “what just happened?” about 59 times per game, but now I only ask once or twice per season—see girls can learn sports!) And I know he really enjoyed the games when his twin brother came home from Atlanta for the weekend and came with us.
At some point, maybe 10 year s ago, we started buying season tickets. We started off with 6, two for my BIL and his current SO, two for Michael and I, and two that we would give away or sell or just let 4 people have some extra space! We got 6 tickets for over 5 years, I think, and then it became much more practical for us to just have the 4 that we knew we would use.
Michael has attended every home game for a really long time. We would even order tickets to a few away games each year, and make a couple of road trips each fall. (BK, of course) Michael and his brother attended all the bowl games, too, often costing as much in travel, lodging and time off of work as we would spend on the tickets for the whole season. Of course we are also making booster contributions each year as well, in order to get the best seats possible through the point system.
Then there were the years that we had teeny babies at home, and I didn’t want to leave them, so I would miss many if not all the games in those years. And who can forget stadium food! We would easily drop $30 on snacks and a meal while at the stadium. I have continued to enjoy the games over the years, but I like away games just about as much because I like having friends over and offering the comforts of home and really yummy food to our friends and family who enjoy football, too. Last year was kind of a wake-up call though. (The wake-up call actually came when we were gathering information to submit to our weLiveFIT challenge coaches about our spending last year, and we actually paid attention to how much we were spending on this—ugh!) We spent plenty of money on our booster contribution and tickets, and since we didn’t have any teeny tinies at home, Mommy wanted to go to every game! We paid almost $500 just in babysitting for the home games last year!!! GASP!!!
When it came time this past spring to buy tickets, there was some serious “discussions” about football! I believed this was an extra that we couldn’t afford, but I also enjoy football and want to resume attending games when our financial situation is better and we are able to afford more luxuries. My (very creative—I thought) solution was to go ahead and buy the tickets (something about consecutive years of season ticket holding makes a big difference in the point system that can allow you to get better seats as they are available) to keep our points, but to resell the tickets. (Not for profit—I’m not into scalping—in fact I figured we might have to take a small loss, but a price I was willing to pay to save the cost of having and using the tickets, and to keep our points.) Anyway, Michael was not willing to give up attending football. Our compromise ended up being that we would drop the tickets we bought down to just the 2 for Michael and his brother (they have a new baby, so their second ticket wouldn’t have been used much either this year). I am staying home and inviting friends over or watching the game with my SIL and all the kids, which is saving us babysitting money. Michael is under strict orders to buy nothing at the stadium, and we will see what happens for next year. Though I have a very strong reason to believe that I will not be attending any football next year either—maybe I can come back in 2011, Doak, but until then…
I hope we win, but it is WAAAAY past my new early bedtime, so I'll just have to find out tomorrow...
I finally got the used van back together last weekend. After almost 2 months of work I felt I had it working pretty well. I guess that we knew it was ready to start driving it instead of the Toyota when we moved the kid’s car seats over. They were completely excited to be riding in the “new” van. LoL. I thought they might be upset that it didn’t have any of the features that our current van does. No power doors, no cool sun shades, no widows that roll down for the kids, etc.. However, they both were happy just because it was different. I totally wish I could still appreciate things like kids do.
We drove it around all weekend and took it to super-lube to get a much needed oil change. Super-Lube told us it had been almost 3 years since its last oil change. Needless to say that getting a complete system flush and “special” oil was going to cost us more. There was some damage to the oil pan but nothing that seemed to be critical and lucky it was not leaking oil yet. I even splurged $5 to run the van through the car-wash. I think it was the first time the kids have been through and automatic car wash. Now every night I give them baths they want me to use the sprayer on them like the car-wash.
However, I guess this is the week for bad things to happen. I took a trip to the hardware store with the kids. When we went back to the van to drive home it would not start. Completely dead. I had to call Diana to come give us a jump. I drove it back home and charged the battery again and let it sit for 2 hours. When I tried to start it again it was completely dead again. Either I have a bad battery (which just happened to work the whole time I was repairing the van) or I have a short somewhere in the van (highly likely since many parts were corroded and worn).
So, our big plans on selling the van right away are on hold till I can find whats wrong and fix it. I am glad this happened now and not after we sell the van or we might have been in a pickle.
Don't most banking institutions want people to borrow money and pay interest and fees?
I love that Florida Commerce seems to be focusing on consumer education and truly helping people find personal financial stability. About 10 days ago, Michael and I attended FCCU's Financial Fitness Festival and feel even more informed and empowered than we already did just because of all the great coaching we are getting through the contest.
We especially wanted to take the Raising Money Smart Kids section and the Building a Better Budget. Those two courses weren’t available back to back (luckily) so we also took the Preparing for Retirement section. All the courses were really good!
In the Money Smart Kids section, FCCU provided some great forms for kids for budgeting, planning their income and expenses, goal setting, as well as keeping track of chores that are tied to regular allowance or those that are for extra pay. Some of the best tips we learned are: 1) Money smart behavior is taught through both your example and through explicit instruction. 2) Kids earn and spend money in a multitude of ways, learn your kids and be intentional about how you want them to earn and spend. 3) Teach children early and often that income is limited, spending should be controlled, and some income should be saved. 4) Let kids learn from their mistakes, rather than fixing every problem for them. 5) Watch commercials with the kids and teach them how to discriminate between valuable information and marketing messages. 6) Make activities, goals, etc age appropriate for your child.
We have now set Gabriel up with a chore chart, things like gathering the trash from around the house, clearing off the table after meals, putting the clean silverware away, and moving laundry from the washer to the dryer. He gets a daily allowance at the end of each day, and then when he has accrued a certain amount, we will let him divide it up into investing (never to be seen again—okay maybe to pay for his college or his retirement), saving up for something he wants to buy that is more expensive, spending on something small right now, and giving.
The Better Budgeting class was good in that it helped me identify some of the psychological obstacles I have keeping me from being very diligent about budgeting. Don’t get me wrong—we have a “budget,” but it’s just a general guideline based on what usually happens and we haven’t been very good at creating a new written plan for the things that come up or change from month to month. The course reminded us to revisit some things like our short term goals (we’ve met so many of them recently that we need some new ones!) and how much we will need for a 6 month emergency fund (about $15,000 by my calculations). We learned some more specifics of physically creating a budget, such as using a paper form vs. a spreadsheet, how to stay organized, and way s to stay motivated to keep up with budgeting. Overall another great course!
The Planning for Retirement segment was a gem of a course that I didn’t expect to get so much from. You know how when something seems really overwhelming, your brain just kind of shuts out more information than what you can handle at the moment? I think we are finally getting to the point (eliminating consumer debt and working on the emergency fund) that we can actually let the retirement stuff start to actually sink in. The best pieces to me were the formulas to figure out your retirement goals, for instance: how much will you need in retirement to live the way you want? These formulas take into consideration the number of years you will need retirement income, which of your expenses will lessen, go away, appear, or increase during retirement, inflation, and several other factors. Another set of formulas helped us determine how much we need to start saving per month now and what interest rates we’ll need in order to achieve that goal. Another big part of the course was about asset allocation and how to diversify your investments to meet your needs based on your goals, age, and risk tolerance—which I found out is more about how well you can sleep at night versus any other factors. Anyway, in order to maximize our contribution to a Roth IRA for each of us, we need to start saving $833 per month!!! That seems really high, but I suppose as we continue to eliminate debt and have more control of our income, that number becomes more doable.
Again I am continually impressed with Florida Commerce as a banking institution that seems really focused on supporting its members and everyone in the community to improve money management, decrease debt, and increase savings. I guess there will just always be an excessive number of people who are so influenced by commercialism and our consumer culture to continue to borrow money and pay plenty of interest and fees. At least Florida Commerce will have access to all of our (the financially educated ones’) deposits to loan them money!
Saturday, August 22nd from 8am-12noon. (Early Birds will be shot.) Come check out our goods! Tons of baby and toddler boy clothes, toys, books, speakers, a TV, a hot tub, and general household stuff!
We are located in the back side of Killearn Estates, near Celebration Baptist Church, on Tralee Road.
In other exciting news, Michael is SO CLOSE (I am holding my fingers very close together, and squinting one eye) to being done with the new/older van. He just drove it out to get gas, leaving me with strict instructions to stay close to the phone in case he ran out on the way, and we are planning to make a very short trip with the kids tonight (as in a brief visit to my MILs house, about 2 miles away.) So our next order of business (in between pricing things for the yard sale and getting ready for school—phew!) is to get the old/newer van vacuumed out and washed, so we can post it on Craigslist and SELL IT!!! YAY!!! We will let you know when it posts so you can go check it out!
See you this Saturday!
Do people really buy this stuff?
I checked the mail today, (which is getting to be a lonelier experience than it used to be, since we are paying off bills and using electronic billing and paying—I’ve thought about getting a pen pal) and I found something new and interesting. It was a catalog with a beautiful 8 year old girl on the cover, dressed in sequins, organza, and genuine peacock feathers! You think back to school shopping has busted your budget—ha! Better start saving up for Halloween!
I really couldn’t believe as I started flipping through this catalog, first that a parent would think it was appropriate to dress a 3 year old as a vampire, and then that anyone would spend $185 to do it!!! How about $214 for a Ghostly Girl costume, which essentially consists of a tattered gray gown, wig, and hat? Can you say Goodwill? I’m pretty sure I could find a torn up dress (or one I wouldn’t mind “tattering” myself) for a few bucks. You could dress your little girl as an Enchanting Princess—and I quote: “She’ll be the belle of the ball in this ice-blue creation. Rich satin has ornate brocade accents, a tulle underskirt and comes with white glovelets. Adorn her with the tiara, faux pearl necklace and earrings, and heart wand. Don’t forget her glass slippers! Finally, an enchanting hooded velour cape trimmed with faux fur (that pumpkin coach is unheated). Polyester…” For the small price of only $260!!! OMG!!! The kid is going to wear it for what? Two hours, maybe? While she drags her “faux fur trimmed velour cape” through the neighborhood, picking up dirt and dead leaves? Not my kid (even if I did have a daughter)!
There is a Little Bo Peep costume that only costs $52, but you’ll have to get the incredibly life-like 36” sheep for her to stand next to, for $370. Better not let Michael see the Obi-Wan Kenobi costume—it’s only $103.
They do have few other things besides costumes in this catalog: Butterfly kiss—a 4” antique glass bottle containing a butterfly and a note, sealed with wax, for only $78. Personalized sandwitch plate for $35. Vintage official Harley-Davidson t-shirt, $64. Light up carousel letters—think circus or fair, and hope you have a short word to spell—they are $178 each.
Now babies, on the other hand, are a totally different story. I certainly wouldn’t mind spending $68 for the cutest little kangaroo costume you have ever seen! (JK) It comes with a pouch, tail, hood, booties, even a little baby kangaroo puppet to tuck inside the pouch. Too bad my kids are too big for that already—we’ll just have to dress them up in their super hero pajamas and call it a day!
For The Van - Part 1,2 & 3 click
http://www.welivefitchallenge.com/meet_the_families/grosh_family_blog/the_van_part_1
One of the worst parts of the interior of the van was that the mold and humidity had gotten to the headliner and caused it to fall down and deteriorate. There was not much I could do with the old one and the foam had started to fall apart and stick to everything inside the van. I knew a new headliner was needed. I decided to replace it myself to save money. I waited a couple weeks until I found a coupon for 40% off jo-anns fabrics and was able to buy $55 of headliner fabric for about $27. The glue used was a different story and cost about $50. Cheaper glue is available but you will have a headliner falling down within a year. Having never done one myself I consulted the second greatest resource available to me, the Internet. After reading a lot about how to replace one but still a little unsure about the details I consulted the greatest resource available to me, my dad. You can always ask my dad anything and he will always give you an answer. In some cases you might even understand the answer. Luckily he had replaced a couple headliners in his younger years. After vetoing a few of the crazier ideas we settled on one that only required 3 people, some marbles, bungee cords, 3 feet of rope and a couple wooden sticks. I wish I had taken some pictures of the contraption. With the imminent threat of rain we hurriedly applied the new headliner to the shell and installed it into the Van. Although it did not come out perfectly it is much nicer than before. The interior is almost completely reinstalled and cleaned. I know it smells a lot nicer now and will serve us for a long time.
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