Paper and Ink

Have you realized that once you start seriously couponing you start to go through a lot more paper and ink than you used to? Some of the best Qs are internet printables but sometimes you start to wonder if it's worth the cost. Well, it is, if you know where to shop. This week, for example, is a great week to stock up on paper, and to get some ink. For Earth Day Walgreens is refilling one black or color cartridge per person for $1. Awesome! Too bad I turned in my last empty cartridge to Staples for a $3 credit when I was in Miami a few weeks ago. I have a color one I can refill, I guess.

Also, since turning in three cartridges to Staples a few months ago, I received a $9 credit that is set to expire at the end of the month. I was stressing over getting a good deal on something without paying too much shipping (the nearest Staples is 3 hours away, boo!!). BUT, this morning I stumbled upon a great deal on moneysavingmom. This is what I did:
$1.51

Two cases of Hammermill paper at the sale price: $49.98 (.02 shy of free shipping, but I added a .29 cent (cheapest thing I could find) tape dispenser replacement wheel to bring it to $50.27

$5 off/per box promo code: -$10

Ink recycling rewards: -$9

Total after tax: $33.61

Staples Easy Rewards for paper: $7.58

Staples Easy Rebate: $32.00 (will come in the form of two $16 prepaid Visa cards)

ShopAtHome 3% credit: $1.51

After all the total math: $-7.48

Did I just get paid (essentially) to have 20 reams of paper delivered to my doorstep tomorrow? :O That's me screaming excitedly :)

My first "Deals I've Scored" post

Alright, so, I'm supposed to take a friend grocery shopping tomorrow to show her the ropes, but I needed to go to the store today to get some stuff for our Chili Cook-Off tomorrow (woot!), so I figured I'd get my shopping out of the way so I can focus more on helping her get some sweet deals. I stopped off at Walgreens first, where I paid .10 for 5-5 lb. bags of Gold Medal flour, 2 Planters Trail Mixes and a Scotch Bubble Mailer.

Then I headed to Winn-Dixie to get some Kelloggs fruit snacks and ended up paying .98 for 4 boxes (there was a fluke with a Vocalpoint $1.50/1 I had; it rang up twice for the two boxes of the alphabet shaped snacks, weird, but the cashier didn't mind, sweet!).

Then I headed to KMart to test the $10/20 Q and do the Huggies Diaper deal. It worked after they entered it manually at Customer Service so I got 2 jumbo packs of Huggies and a Colgate toothpaste for $7.17, and supposedly a $3 credit is getting added to my rewards card so I can apply that to the twin air mattress I have to pick up tomorrow for camp. I kind of wish I would've gone ahead and gotten the mattresses today instead, now that they've fixed the coupon to list the locations it's valid at.

Finally, I headed to Publix, the big mama of the shopping day. There were a few really good deals I couldn't pass up. Seriously, it's really sad, but this month I'm already over budget (cringe). I know, I know. And I was doing the cash system and everything. I thought I was so disciplined. But, my rationalization is that if I get a few things now that are a STEAL, like diapers and the like, then I won't have to spend money on them in the coming months. Excuses, I know. There were just so many sale items that had MQs and SQs that I was going crazy. Ready for the total? Best yet:

Spent: $27.84 (most of which was stuff we had to get for LeRand to make a white chili for the thing tomorrow, and for me to make a dessert)

Saved: $141.12

A savings of: 83.5%

Good deal. And a lot of it was stuff we'd been needing for a while. So, yeah, I felt the need to post it this time. A man stopped me when he saw my binder open as I was shopping and he asked me a bunch of questions and was really interested. Then after my forever-long check-out, which I was apologizing profusely for, my cashier offhandedly mentioned that I needed to teach her how to save like that, to which I replied that I would LOVE to teach her and that I'll let her know when I'm teaching my class next month. How neat to have an actual Publix cashier there?

February Totals

Thanks to a big boost from our federal tax return we had a stellar month (no thanks to UT state tax, lame-o). We were able to pay a whopping 27.4% of the original total. That means that after two months we have 59.4% of the total to go. And we were thinking it was a stretch to pay it by Dec. 31st! Bah! We've moved our new goal up to the hub's birthday, July 25th. Which, if we attain, we won't be together to celebrate for, due to family vacation reasons. BUT, I'm more than happy to celebrate over the phone, or Skype, or any way, in this case. With his income alone (which is our only constant cash flow at the moment) the numbers don't add up, but we're confident that things will work out, as long as we continue to assess wants and needs and keep trying to sacrifice.

On to how I did this month with the budget:

Shelf cost: $918.30

Coupon savings: $352.79

Savings Rate: 79.22%

Amount remaining in budget: $1.00

:)

January Totals

I realized I forgot to post the totals for January after keeping track of every dollar so meticulously. For now we decided that this is how our monthly grocery budget is going to work: we will set aside $180 for annies (which I am in the process of finding some way to reduce the cost, other than bringing in extra income), and then have $200 set aside for everything else, like diapers, other grocery items, CVS, Walgreens (for the occasional deal on something we absolutely need, otherwise I avoid them like the plague, at least until they revise their rewards program, which is rumored to be happening), and pretty much anything else we could possibly justify buying.

So, here are the totals for January:

Shelf cost of everything we bought: $808.06

Total savings from items on sale: $258.28

Total savings from coupons: $364.34

Total in qualifying rebates from this month: $28.46

Total spent (from the $200): $213.90 (oops)

I went a little over, but I deducted the overage from February's budget to make up for it.

For February I was able to earn $200+ from babysitting and cashing in some savings bonds so that we didn't have to take out any money from the ATM for the beginning of the month. Yay!!

We were also able to skip 3 weeks of Annie's since our garden was overflowing everywhere, so that saved us a bit as well. Thanks to our tax return our Feb. payment to the loans will be substantially larger than we thought.

While it's nice to be paying off debt, it hurts to think that this money could be going toward saving for a house. If only...but better late than never. :)

Publix Italian Days

If you have a Publix near you head over to frugalfloridian.com to enter a $25 Publix gift card giveaway. Yay!

Also, yesterday I test drove the KIA Sorento and submitted the form for the $25 Visa giftcard. Nice car. Maybe one day when we're in the market again we'll consider one that's a couple years old. It's nice to know we'll never have to deal with dealerships again, ever. :)

Payment #1: January

Okay, as 1/10 comes to a close, it's time to report our first payment of the year to the student loan. The hub figured that in order to reach our goal of paying off the entire stupid thing by 12/31/10, we would have to make a payment of 8.6% of the total every month.

After a month of cutting back every way we could think of, watching the final moments of ebay listings coming to a close, not selling another book on half.com 'til we've shipped the one already sold (Murphy's Law, craziest thing ever), eating from our garden and only buying milk, eggs, and free or overage items, walking instead of driving, hosting my in-laws for a week, driving to Miami and back twice, laughing at the CRAZY places money seems to appear, and coming to believe more in our goal, we were able to make a payment of...

13.2%

If you could look at our finances you might be a bit more impressed, but for now, this'll have to do. I was impressed with ourselves. So far we're on the right track, but we're taking things a month (sometimes a day) at a time.

The Garden Secret

Okay, well, it's not really a secret, but one way to save a lot of money is by planting a garden. Before we moved from Utah we helped facilitate a neighborhood garden next to my mom's house. We weren't there long enough to see the "fruits" of our labors, but I heard a lot about it. After our square meter garden flop the year before, my faith was restored in my ability to plant something and have it grow (and taste good enough to eat). So, we decided to build another planter box from scratch, and this time to leave it without a bottom (I think that was our biggest mistake with the first one) so that the roots could extend as far as they needed to. We built a 4x8 box and planted garlic, beets, carrots, onions, green onions, spinach, escarole, and kale. I also decided to make one row along one of the longer sides into an herb garden, and planted basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, oregano, and parsley. There's nothing better than fresh herbs, and nothing more satisfying than getting them from your own backyard.

This formatting is weird, sorry, and I can't figure out how to change it. Anyway, almost everything has grown great. We planted with seeds we ordered from Burpee and Harris Seeds seed catalogs online (transplants scare me, although this next round I think I'll try growing a few of my own...oh wait, I live in FL, it's not cold outside). When all was said and done and the receipts were totaled, it came to about $90 for materials, soil, and seeds (everything). I told the hub that our goal was to have it pay for itself, by skipping at least two weeks of Annie's Buying Club ($45/wk.). I was skeptical, but after things started growing, and growing fast, I became more confident. So far we've been able to skip three weeks and are sticking to a biweekly schedule for a bit. The kale, escarole, and spinach just keep producing (how cool is that? You cut it off and it grows back, amazing!) as well as the herbs. I'm really looking forward to starting to dry a few of the herbs and have bottles of spices that I GREW! And with the cost of spices that makes it even more awesome. Also, it's a lot of fun involving Shiloh in the process. It'll be fun to take him out to pick carrots when they're ready.