Monday, August 10, 2009
Tweet, Tweet, TWEET!
So I've been hearing about Twitter and Tweeting and all of that good stuff for awhile now, and finally decided to check it out... You can see my tweets Here
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Creating a Budget
This has been a LONG ongoing process for our family over the past few years, Originally we did just fine just paying bills whenever they came in and spending money on things we needed, when we needed it. We had that inflated sense of "we may not be rich but we can afford to live fairly comfortably".
Then, about 2 years ago, some things happened. I won't go into details what, but the husband was out of work for about a month. He was able to use his Vacation time to cover the loss of paychecks during that month, but vacation time doesn't take into consideration the amount of overtime he was receiving for all the hours he was usually working, so we started getting behind on bills, our regular bills as well as a few temporary extras we had incurred.
I took over paying the bills because although the husband always paid them, he rarely paid them on time, so there were overdue fees that began to stack up, not to mention not paying close attention to how much money was in the bank, plus some other details, causing overdraft fees (it took us about a year before we realized that at Key Bank, they don't process transactions in the order they happen... They take the ENTIRE days worth of Deductions, calculate those against your beginning balance, appoint any overdraft fees, and THEN they credit you any deposits... So even if you know you have say $5 and want to make a $10 purchase, and transfer the money from another account BEFORE making the purchase, you're still gonna get an overdraft fee for that purchase because the BEGINNING balance was still less than that deduction....) Oh how much money we lost because of them...
Anyway the budget I came up with worked out well for awhile, but then for a number of different reasons it stopped working for us, and we have been struggling for more than a year to try and figure something out that would.
Recently my mother suggested Sending out Weekly payments for the bills, she said that's what she's been doing and it seems a LOT more manageable and makes those LARGE numbers seem SO much smaller...
It has taken me some time to be able to get this started, but you know, I'm getting tired of getting those disconnect notices because I have a bit of an overdue balance and then am late sending the most recent payment out... So I got to work on it, I figure there are SOME bills I cant SEND weekly, like the Mortgage and the Kirby (yes, we have one of those SUPER expensive and really awesome, totally worth the $1200 vacuums LOL), and then there's the car insurance and the Netflix. All of those except for the Mortgage are automatically deducted from our account.
I figured out that for the month, our Bills come to approximately $1,329.69 (all of those are rounded up except the mortgage which is exactly $475 and Netflix is $14.69). Which divided by 4 weeks, is $332.42, which is a bit less than the husbands weekly paycheck... TOTALLY doable... I have a bit of income myself that we can use for Groceries and Gas, so this could work!
I created a list in my notebook that has all of our monthly bills, how much they are each month (all estimated and rounded up to make things easier and to help us get ahead), and made a column for how much they each will cost each week. Then I started out by scheduling 2 bills, one is for just $5 a week and the other is for $100 a week (the $100 is temporary as we have a past due balance, and I will be readjusting the amount to between $25 and $50 in a few months). After I scheduled those 2 weekly payments, I figured out which bills are already deducted from our bank account automatically, such as the Kirby and Car Insurance and Netflix. I ran the figures again and scheduled another small weekly payment ($10 a week) and now I am waiting to see how things go. We have a disconnect notice on one bill that I haven't scheduled yet, I have another week before the disconnection and after the husbands paycheck goes into the bank today and the scheduled payments go out tomorrow I will figure what we have available, make the necessary payment to get rid of the threat of disconnection, and then schedule the weekly payments of $25 to begin next week. Then there are just 2 more payments that need to be scheduled, Mortgage and Credit Card, and I will be waiting to make sure that everything goes smoothly with the already scheduled payments before I schedule those.
IF this works out the way I think it should, this will give us approximately $450 a month for Groceries and Gas, sometimes more, which is completely reasonable using coupons and Gas Rewards from Shaw's!
Then, about 2 years ago, some things happened. I won't go into details what, but the husband was out of work for about a month. He was able to use his Vacation time to cover the loss of paychecks during that month, but vacation time doesn't take into consideration the amount of overtime he was receiving for all the hours he was usually working, so we started getting behind on bills, our regular bills as well as a few temporary extras we had incurred.
I took over paying the bills because although the husband always paid them, he rarely paid them on time, so there were overdue fees that began to stack up, not to mention not paying close attention to how much money was in the bank, plus some other details, causing overdraft fees (it took us about a year before we realized that at Key Bank, they don't process transactions in the order they happen... They take the ENTIRE days worth of Deductions, calculate those against your beginning balance, appoint any overdraft fees, and THEN they credit you any deposits... So even if you know you have say $5 and want to make a $10 purchase, and transfer the money from another account BEFORE making the purchase, you're still gonna get an overdraft fee for that purchase because the BEGINNING balance was still less than that deduction....) Oh how much money we lost because of them...
Anyway the budget I came up with worked out well for awhile, but then for a number of different reasons it stopped working for us, and we have been struggling for more than a year to try and figure something out that would.
Recently my mother suggested Sending out Weekly payments for the bills, she said that's what she's been doing and it seems a LOT more manageable and makes those LARGE numbers seem SO much smaller...
It has taken me some time to be able to get this started, but you know, I'm getting tired of getting those disconnect notices because I have a bit of an overdue balance and then am late sending the most recent payment out... So I got to work on it, I figure there are SOME bills I cant SEND weekly, like the Mortgage and the Kirby (yes, we have one of those SUPER expensive and really awesome, totally worth the $1200 vacuums LOL), and then there's the car insurance and the Netflix. All of those except for the Mortgage are automatically deducted from our account.
I figured out that for the month, our Bills come to approximately $1,329.69 (all of those are rounded up except the mortgage which is exactly $475 and Netflix is $14.69). Which divided by 4 weeks, is $332.42, which is a bit less than the husbands weekly paycheck... TOTALLY doable... I have a bit of income myself that we can use for Groceries and Gas, so this could work!
I created a list in my notebook that has all of our monthly bills, how much they are each month (all estimated and rounded up to make things easier and to help us get ahead), and made a column for how much they each will cost each week. Then I started out by scheduling 2 bills, one is for just $5 a week and the other is for $100 a week (the $100 is temporary as we have a past due balance, and I will be readjusting the amount to between $25 and $50 in a few months). After I scheduled those 2 weekly payments, I figured out which bills are already deducted from our bank account automatically, such as the Kirby and Car Insurance and Netflix. I ran the figures again and scheduled another small weekly payment ($10 a week) and now I am waiting to see how things go. We have a disconnect notice on one bill that I haven't scheduled yet, I have another week before the disconnection and after the husbands paycheck goes into the bank today and the scheduled payments go out tomorrow I will figure what we have available, make the necessary payment to get rid of the threat of disconnection, and then schedule the weekly payments of $25 to begin next week. Then there are just 2 more payments that need to be scheduled, Mortgage and Credit Card, and I will be waiting to make sure that everything goes smoothly with the already scheduled payments before I schedule those.
IF this works out the way I think it should, this will give us approximately $450 a month for Groceries and Gas, sometimes more, which is completely reasonable using coupons and Gas Rewards from Shaw's!
Monday, August 3, 2009
11 Hours Of Home Improvements
Yesterday was a VERY busy day in our household, Sunday's are my ONE day off from my job, I know, my boss is such a bitch making me work 6 whole days a week, for 6, sometimes more hours a day - What a Slave Driver!
Instead of taking the "day off" like you would expect, my husband and I decided that we needed to put forth some brute force to clean and de-clutter our house. #1 is currently away from home, #'s 2&3 were able to help some, and well #4 was nice enough to not scream and want to eat all day, so between nursings I was able to help hubby clean.
Things we managed to do:
2 Bags included in our trip to the Transfer Station were FULL of clothes from the donation I received to the store last week... I love free stuff, especially when I can make money off it, but there were about 4 boxes of clothes, that all smell musty and old... A few very old dresses, like from the 60's and 70's maybe that I will be donating to the local theater for costumes, but 90% of the clothes that came in are so old and outdated that I doubt I'd ever be able to sell them, and these people probably knew that which is why they were planning to just take them to Goodwill and happened to think of my store first, which is great, but seriously, now I get stuck with the job of disposing of their trash LOL! At least I got some cool knick-nacks and stuff that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to sell at some point, and some nice stuff I'm keeping for the family as well!
Now, off to make phone calls to doctors to schedule checkups.
Instead of taking the "day off" like you would expect, my husband and I decided that we needed to put forth some brute force to clean and de-clutter our house. #1 is currently away from home, #'s 2&3 were able to help some, and well #4 was nice enough to not scream and want to eat all day, so between nursings I was able to help hubby clean.
Things we managed to do:
- Dishes
- 4 or 5 Loads of Laundry
- Cleaned #2's Bedroom (Complete with sorting his clothes, refolding and organizing his dresser and weeding out clothes that no longer fit - note to self, he needs more pants, hes down to 2 pairs)
- Cleaned #1's Bedroom completely out, so that we could cover the walls and floor with white primer (to prepare for actual painting, and finally completing the project started nearly a year ago of building him his own room)
- Cleaned the room shared by #'s 3&4 - Washing bedding, washing down #3's mattress (shes potty training), sorting clothes, and organizing dressers, weeding out clothes that no longer fit (#3's hand me downs were put into a tote for #4 to grow into and #3's hand me downs were put into a bag to give to my cousin as I absolutely need NO girls clothes for store inventory at this point in time!)
- 2 Trips to the transfer station (Recycling center/Dump) With about 4 more bags prepared for a trip next weekend plus whatever we will come up with through-out the week
- Cleaned OUR room & our TINY little closet that seems to wind up storing EVERYTHING except our clothing (Trying to figure that one out still!)
- Cleaned the Hallway (that had been storing bags and boxes up the Wah-Zoo of who knows what for months
2 Bags included in our trip to the Transfer Station were FULL of clothes from the donation I received to the store last week... I love free stuff, especially when I can make money off it, but there were about 4 boxes of clothes, that all smell musty and old... A few very old dresses, like from the 60's and 70's maybe that I will be donating to the local theater for costumes, but 90% of the clothes that came in are so old and outdated that I doubt I'd ever be able to sell them, and these people probably knew that which is why they were planning to just take them to Goodwill and happened to think of my store first, which is great, but seriously, now I get stuck with the job of disposing of their trash LOL! At least I got some cool knick-nacks and stuff that I'm pretty sure I'll be able to sell at some point, and some nice stuff I'm keeping for the family as well!
Now, off to make phone calls to doctors to schedule checkups.
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