September Goals

Goals for September

1. Save half of SNS income, or $500 towards Maternity leave fund.


2. make extra money in the month to pay as much as possible towards School bill


3. stay within budget

Short and sweet this time, lets see how this goes!

Recap for August. Ups, Downs and Networth

Net-worth is still rising!

August wasn't so bad, but it was hard. Taking all of my income out of the budget definately tightened alot of things up. Some things (like the Groceries) came out okay, and some didn't at all(like the medical bills, and gas money).



Positives

• I managed to save my SNS income to put towards the maternity fund. $1000 saved!


• Citicard was paid off!


• Finished online class(with an A!)- should now be able to consolidate Student loans soon to get better interest rate.

Negatives

• Several Medical bills went unpaid because the budget was too tight. These are starting to pile up. :(


• Online class costed $1600. Only $500 of this is paid, so it is either find some way to conjure up another $1000 this month, or put it on credit(EEk!no!no!no!....) I am unable to get the degree until this is paid though.

Budget may be busted for this week. :(

So I stated at the beginning of the month that my goal was to keep this months grocery expenses below $200. Our Grocery budget includes our household items and yes, I know this is crazy hard to do!

BUT...

We were doing it. I allotted $50 for each week and planned dinner with food that we already had as well as cut coupons and watched sales like a maniac. Every time I went to the grocery store I had a list in on hand and my box of coupons in the other. I always came out great, saving more money than I spent every single time!

So what was the problem? Arrgh. It ends up being anytime I send DH to the store to pick up something. I just can't get him to remember to follow couponing rules.

1. Remember the coupons at checkout!
   
2. No need to be so brand-loyal, buy what we have coupons and sales for.
   
3. Bigger packages are not always better value, when you have coupons and sales to match. (And often, we don't have the extra money to buy the bigger package- better to wait for a good sale!)

Here is a look at what our grocery spending has been this month.

Only four of these trips were mine, and they were the ones listed in the coupon savings sidebar. DH was sent to the store in the other trips listed, and each time spent much more from the weeks' budget than I had allotted for the trip.

To be fair, the last one listed was for diapers and wipes at Target for which I forgot to give him the gift card to. But I sent him with specific coupons and instructions to use them, and he forgot to pull them out at the checkout line! *sigh*

He was nice enough to go back with the reciept and the coupons and get it adjusted, but they just gave him cash back instead of crediting it back to his credit card(which he used again! arrrgh!). So of course the cash isn't really going back into the grocery budget.

So that's how we ended up $1.13 over budget for the month, with almost a week left to go. I meant to go to Kroger this week for some things, but it will have to wait. Luckily I have a $30 gift card coming in the mail!

Getting into the CVS game

So I've been studying the sales ads lately from all the stores in my area and of course, one of them is CVS, from whom I've heard so much around the couponing blogosphere.
Thing is, all of the "how-to's" that tell you how to to get started on the sales at CVS talk about making an initial "investment" purchase that rewards you with CVS's ECB's, or Extra Care Bucks. I'm uneasy about spending money in order to get started though because of the tight budget I'm trying to stay on.

However, recently I figured out a way to get into the CVS Bargains without it costing me a thing! My bank at Chase offers rewards points for every purchase you make with your debit (as many banks do nowadays) and I hadn't had a plan for using them yet, so they were just piling up. Well, I went into the rewards list and found a CVS gift card on the rewards list and cashed in some of my points for a $10.00 gift card! This was my ticket to getting ECB's without spending a penny on an "initial purchase".

So today I went over to CVS with my gift card, two coupons for CareFree Pantiliners, and a clear picture in my mind as to what my plan was for getting as much as possible for my money.

My transaction turned out to be:

x2 CareFree Pantiliners
on sale for $3.79
-2 coupons at $1.00 off each
= 5.58
(7.58 ECB back for next purchase)

x2 CVS Notebooks
on sale for $0.99
= 1.98
(1.98 ECB back for next purchase)

+ Sales tax of 6% makes total = 7.48

This comes off of my gift card of 10.00, leaving me with $2.52 on my gift card and a total of $9.56 in ECB!

So today, I really did come out ahead, without spending a dime out of my pocket, and leaving with more money to spend at CVS than when I came in! How awesome is that?

I won a Blog Giveaway!!

I won! I won! I won!



Yep, thanks to Nickels -N- Dimes Kroger Gift Card give-away, I recently won a $30 gift card for groceries! I'm so excited! I almost feel like this is my reward for being so good with the coupon shopping this month and keeping things under budget.

I can't wait to see what kind of sales are on next week so that maybe I can stock up on a few things with the extra gift card money.

I might not use all of it as extra though, it would be cool if that made our grocery spending for this month could come out with $30 leftover!

The funny thing is, I always feel like I'm not the person who wins things, cause heaven knows I've entered SO many things in my life and not won anything. And I always wondered why I try to get things the "easy" way when the odds are against me. But sometimes it pays off to try every avenue!

Can you tell I'm excited just to be a winner? Lol!