davis's Journal

March is off to an okay start. We did have some people over for dinner and also went out to dinner once, so my $10 a day allotment is quite a bit over, but I also did a marathon cooking session last night and made five meals for the next five days, hoping to avoid food purchases and get caught up.

I enjoyed potting up my dahlias and cannas to give them a head start for summer. I also am wintering over about 150 geraniums, so this summer I should not find myself at the Walmart checkout with quite so many flats of annuals, though I probably will get some petunias as I can't over winter these.

We got a new Sienna Mini-van from Toyota today. We did without any extras and shopped around a lot and got almost $3k off the initial price we were quoted. This will be great for hauling things, but it was painful to pay for a new car. My DH hit a deer with my Saturn wagon and fortunately he's fine, but the car is only scrap value now as we dropped collision. THank goodness he is fine.

I still have far too much stuff. My goal today is to round up at least 20 more things to donate.

DH and I are going on a trip so today I went and got $13 worth of snack food so we would avoid the overpriced/unhealthy food at the airports. This will surely save us time and extra calories.

A good friend of mine who makes lots of money but spends lots of money finally read this book. I'd given it to her about a year ago. She loved it and is starting to rethink the concept of "Big Hat No Cattle." This should aid in her early retirement plans.

I've been trying to find ways to reduce our insurance costs, but it seems there are so many variables that it's hard to get a good comparison of apples to apples.

I had been quoted 45-50 for having the drive plowed when the snow is too deep for the snowblower and put up a sign at the grocery store and found a guy to do it for $25. Good!

Not wanting to pay the high costs of typical repair shops, I posted a sign at the local grocery store for someone to fix our snowblower. A guy came out, fixed it in now time, and only charged us $30. I was so happy not to have to haul it all over and to get it done cheaply.

We just renewed our insurance and the costs are so high! We will pay almost $400 for DH's one year car insurance, $300 for mine, $250 for my life insurance, $500 for house, and $250 umbrella. That's $1700! Yikes. Next year we'll have to shop around.

I've found as I'm decluttering more, I feel more in control and less likely to lose something, buy a replacement, then find the old one. So that's encouraging.

I had to pay 330.00 today to have cleaning and a filling. That's always discouraging. I then went to the grocery store where the total was 89.00. Then accupuncture for 65.00. Then gas for 17. It was an expensive day. I did get a refund I hadn't expected for $57, so that was nice.

Have been listing items on a free local classifieds and sold a $5 painting earlier and $8 worth of exercise tapes. This has been a nice boost.

Have been putting hot water for tea in a thermas rather than using the stove to warm water as I've read it is very inefficient to use electric for heating.

We needed a new electric can opener and rather than heading to Walmart, I checked two thrift stores and found one for $3, saving at least $10. Also found a pepper grinder we've been wanting for 75 cents, saving at least $4.

One thing that has been interesting in my ongoing goal to reduce our electric bill - which was almost $150 last month - is learning to read my own meter. What I've been doing is going out at the same time each day and recording the numbers. I did a google search to learn how to read the meter. In addition, when I go out, I now am conscious of how fast or slow it is spinning and this makes me more likely to go and shut off some lights or rethink hanging a load of laundry verses putting it in the dryer.

Thanks for the info back to the $5 offer. It is an awesome offer. DH and I have been continuing to save money. We had the electric company come and they did a free audit. It was interesting to see how much money went to lighting verses ceiling fans, oven, etc.

We made several changes based on what we learned. I had been overwintering geraniums in the basement and learned I was paying $16 a month to keep the grow lights on 24/7. So I reduced the time to 6 hours per day and will thus pay only $4. Hopefully they will survive. If they don't, I'm not out a whole lot as I got them (all 95 of them) for $12 from a greenhouse where they were being thrown out.

I can't find the original offer of $5 for a certain number of journal entries. Could someone please point me to that great offer? THanks.

My family has been spending an average of $700 per month on food. Ouch! So this is my main area to reduce in the year ahead. In addition, I would like to start tracking our spending daily rather than monthly, thinking this immediate feedback will have more impact. I would like to get our food bill down to $10 per day, or $300 per month. In addition, I want to use solely cash.

Today, I spent the following.

1. $3.29 Diet Coke
2. $1.99 milk
$1 off coupon used.

Total $4.46

Decided to forgo the special calendars that would have used our own pictures. They were almost $20 to make up and we can get a free calendar from the bank.

Used up some left overs to make soup and also made some homemade banana bread.

Returned some items and got $21 back! That was sort of "free money" in that we weren't using the items.

Used up some left-overs to make a delicious casserole.

Have been donating a lot of stuff lately. This not only reduces the clutter which makes it less likely I'll buy things I don't need because I can't find them, but it also allows me to get a tax deduction. This is a win-win situation.

I've been getting behind on posting. It's been a busy stretch. Today I shopped with a list at the grocery store and stuck to it pretty well. I've read that for every 30 seconds, you spend on average an extra dollar. yikes. I'm trying to be more speedy in the store.

Am making my son's lunch from a pack of frozen pureed squash rather than the gerber's portion. Gerber's is about 50 cents per serving; dividing up a package of frozen squash is 10 cents for the same size serving.

Organized a cupboard in my kitchen, finding a few items I didn't realize we had and avoiding duplication during my next shopping excursion.

Put storm windows up in another room. By doing a few rooms at a time, it doesn't get overwhelming, and should help with our heating bill.

Did all my errands in one fell swoop to save gas. Passed on a book sale (so tempting but all the way on the other side of town). Sent an email rather than a planned card (saving 37 cents and some time).

Saved calls to friends/family till today, when we get free minutes from our cell. Also learned from the cell phone company that I can check the minutes by simply punching #646, and getting an instant text message of minutes used. This should help reduce the times I go over minutes.

I made 3 casseroles today, spinach, bean, and broccoli using up items we had on hand. In addition, I made pumpkin bread. So we have a week's worth of food at a fraction of the cost of eating out, and healthy stuff too!