New Start

Hello All (if anyone is out there),

After a long time off from blogging, I am back. Over the past year and a half, I have tried to be frugal and mindful of what I spend, but managed to rake up some more debt. I am back again trying to document my successes and failures in another attempt to stay accountable.

At the moment, I am engaged in the job search process. If I do manage to get a job (which I hope I will), then next year, I will finally be able to put a significant dent in my awful credit card debt. And if I keep the job for two years, then I should be able to eliminate my current debt, start saving, and perhaps purchase a home. But until all that, it is cheap, frugal living.

Monthly snowflake goal: $100. This goes towards my freedom account.

~Azalea.

Cheap Snacks

Hy-Vee is running a 3-day sale of some items at $1 each. One of the items is Chex Mix. Also, coupons.com has a $0.60 off coupon for Chex Mix. I printed off five of these and went to the store. So I got each bag at $0.40. When I got home, I transferred the contents of one bag into serving-sized Ziploc snack bags – five of them. So each serving is only 8 cents. That beats the 85 cent vending machine prices anyday!! I also got two 10-packs of Swiss Miss hot chocolate mixes at a dollar each! I love shopping with coupons – don’t you?

Monthly Roundup - September

End of another month! This is the first month that I have not reached my Monthly Challenge goal, and I am upset about this. My goal for this month was $150, and I have reached $128.01 (85.34%).

Here's the summary:

$20.00 – Textbook Sale
$32.90 - Online Surveys
$11.07 - Coupon Savings
$62.30 - Amazon Sales
$1.74 - Interest
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$128.01 (Goal - $21.99)
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I am quite amazed at the amount I made using Online Surveys, although to be quite honest, some of the surveys were done a month or so ago, and I only got the money this month. Another area I am impressed by is “Coupon Savings”. I was a savvy shopper this month and stocked up on some things on sale and used coupons for these things as well. So that’s good. Although I did not actually reach my target goal, I think I am going to still have $150 as the goal for next month and see how it goes. Since I only was operating on a half month’s salary in September, all the challenge money goes towards my expenses, and nothing actually goes towards savings or debt elimination, but all in all, I still feel proud of myself.

My budget is another story altogether. I went over again this month – by $185.52. The main culprits were – losses at the casino, and when my sister was visiting, I paid for her gas, took her grocery shopping at Sam’s Club and treated her to a nice time out. I usually pamper my baby sister - she is a student too, and poorer than I am, so I don’t feel particular guilty about this. I also had very few no-spend days. Here are my “Pamper Account” details:

No-Spend Days: 8
Spend-Only Days: 13
Eat-Out Days: 9
Pamper account total: -$12 (including last month)

This is horrifying! My resolution for next month is: I will spend money ONLY on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (not including regular, fixed expenses such as rent etc.). My hope is that by holding off on getting something I want to buy until the weekends, I will be able to control my cash-flow better. I don’t know if I can actually pull this off, but I will try.

Scary ATM Recepits

I was at the ATM a few days ago to withdraw $10. I had very little money in my account and was struggling to make what I had last a few more days. As the machine was processing my request, I lazily picked up one of the receipts that someone had not bothered to take with them to indulge my voyeuristic curiosity. What I saw made my eyes pop. I would have $19.22 in my account once the ATM spat out my measly $10. The other person had $46,369.85. I would give a great deal to be able to say that receipt was mine! The difference is starker when you actually see the receipt, so after removing all possible identifying info (though there really is none on ATM receipts), here are the couple of receipts, for your viewing pleasure. Click to view them larger.

My Small ATM Scare and Why It Helps To Ask Anyway….

I was going to do laundry over the weekend and needed to get some cash to change into quarters for doing it, so I went to my local ATM. Now, my university directly deposits my monthly stipend into my checking account which is linked to my university ID card. So, at ATMs, I typically use my university ID instead of a checking card. It’s worked pretty well so far, but on Saturday, after I got my $10, and got to the laundromat, I realized that my id was missing – only about 3 minutes had elapsed and I hurried back. The parking lot at the ATM was empty and I was pretty sure no one had been there while I was gone. When I entered the booth, I didn’t find my card and assumed that the machine had reclaimed my card for safe-keeping. So I called the bank customer service to ask what needed to be done. The lady who answered told me that there was nothing she could do – the machine automatically shreds the cards, the cards are reported as lost and new cards are issued. I told her that it was my university ID that was lost, and she said that my university would have to reissue a card to me. I was quite disheartened – my ID works as a free bus pass, and a new one would cost $20. It all was quite depressing. Anyway I told her I’d call the branch office on Monday just in case. She said she was sorry, but she didn’t think it would do any good.

But I called… and apparently the machine does not shred the cards, and I can go there this afternoon and pick mine up. I’m glad I didn’t take the silly CS rep’s word for it and did ask. I saved myself $20 in new card fees. And, I have decided to make a mental note to make sure to check I’ve got my card back from the machine each time.

The Lowest Checking Balance Ever!

Last night I checked my checking account balance online. I wanted to buy some groceries. I knew that my balance was running low, and wanted to check and see how much I could safely spend. Imagine my astonishment when I logged on and saw that my total checking account balance was $ 0.34! I had forgotten about my insurance auto-payment and was counting on there being at least $75 in there. I could have transferred money from my online HSBC savings account, but that would take a few days. So I decided not to buy anything last night, and to deposit all my online survey checks in the morning. I should also be getting $65.40 from a sale I made on Amazon. So, I am okay after all, but it is terribly scary seeing a balance of only a few cents in one's primary checking account. In the end, I did not go grocery-shopping, but instead went home and cooked stuff I had in my pantry - which was just as good.

I Am Bad At Budgeting

Here is a confession - I am horrible at budgeting!!! I think I have a very arrogant and stupidly positive view about my own self-control. I under-budget for a lot of categories every month and I seem to always go over. I thought I'd do a mid-month round up of where I am at:

Over budget by - $115.28 (I'll get about $30 of this back from a return eventually)

No-Spend Days: 3
Spend-Only Days: 6
Eat-Out Days: 5
Pamper account total: -$10.

Hmm... any idiot can see that I am doing it all wrong. !!GROAN!!

I Feel Financially Depressed

This is a sad, miserable post. Please do not read unless you wish to be depressed too!

I just updated my “debt-o-meters” sidebar and am struck by how slowly I am inching towards paying my debt off. Over the summer, I got paid fewer times and very irregularly, but I managed not to rake up more debt and save some money in my freedom account, but by the end of the summer I was exhausted. My August pay was only for half the month and most of my August snowflakes went towards paying my semester bill (my grad program pays for tuition, but I have to pay for misc fees which come up to approximately $350/semester). A few days ago, I looked at my pitiable bank balance and decided that I needed to dip into my savings account in order to survive the month. So, I transferred $150 from my HSBC account to my checking account. I am perilously near crossing my budget limit thanks to a shopping and casino trip with my sister (it was fun, but I lost at the casino). I know that I spent the money because of an unwise choice that I made, but it has been almost a year since I bought myself any new clothes.

I do make some sensible decisions too, but I feel that this adds to my depression. Take for instance the case of my housing. Early last year was when I started to become even remotely aware of my financial situation. For three years I had lived in a lovely apartment – not extremely expensive, but pricey enough for me to decide that I could not continue to live there anymore. I decided to find the cheapest apartment possible and send the savings towards my debt. I found such an apartment soon – they were the cheapest rooms in town. I would have a large living room, a cupboard-sized space for a bedroom (space enough for a bed and night-stand and nothing else), and a large kitchen. All utilities paid except internet. The downside – the rooms were in the basement of a prehistoric house, I had to share the restroom (no tub, just a shower stall) with another inhabitant of the other side of the basement, no laundry facilities on-site, the basement also turned out to be much damper than I had imagined it would be. Pretty miserable conditions really. I might have found a roommate for a better apartment, but having had some quite negative experiences with roommates before, I decided not to. Anyway, I was saving a large chunk of money, and I was willing to put up with the crappy apartment. I moved in. A month later Murphy struck and my car (which was an old old old piece of junk) died. I decided to invest in a much newer car, took out a loan and guess what? The difference in my rent just about covered my car payment – so a year and a half later, there hasn’t been even a fraction of the movement that I had hoped to see in my debt-reduction. But I am okay with that – I have a lovely car that I can use for another ten years at the very least.

And then something happens to depress me even further - I stayed a couple of days at a friend’s place last week and simple luxuries such as a bathtub, and a bedroom with space for a TV in it, a window that actually lets some light in, ceilings that I cannot touch even if I tried to, and other such things made me want to move right out of my crappy apartment. In a year’s time, I will be off on internship and will be making more money. I could stop trying so hard and allow myself a bit more luxury right now. I make and save so little right now that in the long run all this frugality is only going to knock off 5-6 months off my debt-reduction payment. I show all the signs of depression in the financial area of my life – I feel hopeless, stuck, tired, frustrated and angry (with myself more than anyone else). I wish dearly that I could somehow fast-forward a year of my life!!!

I Successfully Passed My Qualifiers

Two weeks ago, I took my Ph.D. qualifying exams. In my department, this is a day-long (8 hr) written examination - 5 essay questions. I am a BIG procrastinator and although I had been collecting prep materials all summer, I only actually studies for two weeks. This was an extremely stupid and dangerous thing to do since the questions could be asked on absolutely ANY area of psychology (my major). However, I did some real heavy-duty studying those last two weeks and felt okay about my answers the evening of the day I took them. But I still was trying not to hope for too much since I was horribly under-prepared. However, on Saturday my major professor called me to congratulate me on passing my exam. I am ecstatic!!! I still don't know how much I scored on each question, but I don't really care - I passed, and that is all that is required to make me an official Ph.D. candidate so that I can go on to work on my dissertation.

What does this have to do with finances? For me, quite a lot actually. A couple of years ago, my major professor went on a year long sabbatical. The procrastinator that I am, I took this as an excuse to not do any research at all. As a result, other than classes and clients, in all other areas, I am about a year behind my cohort members. In order to go on internship and graduate on schedule, I need to propose my dissertation by Oct 15th. This would not be possible unless I passed my qualifiers. Had I failed, I would be stuck here a year longer - meaning very low pay for another year and postponing debt repayment and savings for a whole year!!! That is another reason I am thrilled to have passed. Now if only I can get my proposal done in a month!!! Wish me luck!

Monthly Challenge - August

I have reached and surpassed my third Monthly Challenge goal of $400.

Here's the summary:

$50.00 - Rent Reduction
$200.00 - New Tenant Bonus
$12.40 - Online Surveys
$60.57 - Amazon Sales
$12.00 - Old Navy Refund
$50.00 - Cell Phone Rebate
$6.30 - Piggy Bank Coins
$13.50 - Won at the Casino
$0.75 - Coupon Savings
$30.00 - Craigslist Sales
$49.00 - English Partner
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$484.52 (Goal + $84.52)
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P.S. I may have reached my snowflake goal, but was nerly $200 over my August budget - I think I live in some fantasy land when it comes to budgeting!

Temptations...

Although living frugally, saving money in all kinds of places, making money from little sidestreams of income, paying off all my bills and watching my savings account grow is wonderful, I am beginning to feel a definite temptation to spend. This is not to say that I do not occasionally treat myself. And I certainly do not cut out all the pleasures of life and live like a pauper. But, I do feel like going out and spending a long day shopping, or moving into a larger apartment which has a washer/dryer within the apartment itself, or taking a week-long trip to someplace exotic without worrying about how much I was going to spend there - all things that I probably will do eventually, but cannot afford to just now. It is having to wait that hurts so much.

Weekend Update

I had an okay weekend money-wise. I am about a $100 over budget this month (I am awful at calculating how much I think I will spend on things). I did sell a piece of furniture on Craigslist for $25, and got paid $49 by my old English partner. I also bought groceries, did laundry and went out with friends. Points to be proud about: only FOUR eat-out days this month. And only a deficit of $1 in the pamper account.

School starts tomorrow. This means less time for myself. It also means many more hours of work and more pay. However, starting September, I'll pay the full rent again. No more automatic $50 towards the Monthly Challenge. So, my Challenge goal for next month is only $100.

My Points @ MyPoints

The postman delivered an envelope from MyPoints today – inside was a $10 gift card for Bath and Body Works. A couple of weeks ago, I had redeemed 1400 points for this gift card, and I must say that it has arrived sooner than I expected. And it comes at a good time too – I have a coupon from B&BW for a free $12 product with any purchase of $10 or more that expires in another week. So I’ll be out shopping for some fragrant goodies come this Saturday. I briefly considered redeeming a Wal-Mart gift card because groceries and food is where I could use a few more dollars, but I figured that I’d cherish some my MyPoints pillow mist or body lotion more than some MyPoints tomatoes or eggplants. And it’ll last longer too.

I am quite excited about online surveys and rewards programs. Since the beginning of June I have received $64.60 in checks and gift cards from my participation in them. Long live the internet!!!

P.S. Should I snowflake my $10 earnings from MyPoints? Since I received a gift card that cannot be redeemed for cash, I will have to use it and spend the $10. Since I was not planning on actually making any purchases, I am not really technically “saving” any money that I can snowflake either. Hmm… What do you think? Should I snowflake this amount or not?

Paying at Pay-Phones

I did not think there were many people who used pay-phones these days. Almost everyone has a cell phone or a land line or in most cases, both. However, as I waited for the bus these past two days, I noticed both times that someone was using the pay-phone close by. I wonder why... My over-active imagination is saying that it's people having affairs arranging clandestine meetings and not wanting to leave a trail back to their own phones. Or maybe some other kind of exciting secret mission maybe? I am surrounded by people who have fun and use pay phones. And I have a lousy cell phone. :-(

Spending Challenge and More Snowflaking Ideas

Thus far in August, I have had three no-spend days, three days of eating out, and seven spend-but-no-eating-out days. In order to motivate myself to cook and eat more at home as well as to spend less in other ways, I have decided to provide myself with a monetary incentive. I have created a new “Pamper Myself” sub-account. For each no-spend-eat-at-home day, I will give myself $2. For each day I eat out, I will take out $2 from the pamper account for snowflaking. And for each day I spend money that’s not eating out, I’ll cut the account by $1. This will definitely encourage me to plan and lump my shopping expeditions together instead of going to the grocery store every time I need some small item. At the end of each month, I will calculate and deposit the money into the “Pamper…” sub-account. If the amount is in the negative, I’ll snowflake it. If I do end up having some money in the “Pamper” account, this money can be used by me at any time with the following stipulations:

1. The money SHALL NOT be used for eating out.
2. The money SHALL NOT be used to buy dull stuff like groceries.
3. The money shall be spent ONLY on myself and not on others.

I think I know what I shall do with it: I probably will revive my suspended Netflix account first (I shall have to fight this urge until January since this coming semester I need to focus on research and internship applications among other things. Netflix only encourages me to procrastinate. I get more done when I am too lazy to go in person to the redbox or library.) Also, I shall buy myself an iPod Shuffle to replace my iPod Nano which I stupidly ruined – that will encourage me to get out and walk more – another one of my goals. I am sure I shall not run out of ideas about what to pamper myself with. I have -$7 in this account right now. :-(

P.S. Another snowflaking idea I saw on some PF blogs is to snowflake any amount saved using coupons. I have to get some milk tomorrow and have a coupon for $0.75 off. So, this snowflake category will kick off tomorrow!

A Shocking Realization

Starting August, I have started to keep track of the days when I eat out and/or spend money in any way. What I observe is quite shocking. This month, I have spent money on all but two days. And those two days happen to be the days when I did not venture out of my home. So, every time I step out of my house, I end up spending money. This is quite insane!!! No wonder I am broke and in debt. The next couple of months look lean – until I get a full month’s pay at the end of September. So, I have resolved to try harder not to spend my money so frequently. Here is the tally so far for August:

Eating Out: 2 Days
Spending Money: 7 Days
No-Spend Days: 2 Days

I’m rather proud of the small number of eating out days. :-)

Over the weekend, I went to the casino with a friend. Now, I don’t have any money to spare, but my friend was all excited about going and the enthusiasm was very contagious. I had just returned some stuff to the supermarket and received about $20. I decided that that would be my limit. Here is an account of my thrilling $20 gambling spree: We started at the craps tables, where I placed two bets and lost both in succession. Then I hurriedly moved to the roulette tables, where the money in hand fluctuated between $5 and $35. I eventually left the table with $30 to return again to the craps tables where I again held at various times coins in the range of $5-$40. Eventually, I withdrew my original investment of $20, and decided to place the rest on the table to either win or lose. The dice rolled a 4 first, and then a 4 again more than doubling my money. Overjoyed, I withdrew the whole thing and cashed out. Just before heading out, I lost a dollar on the quarter slots. I had made a net profit of $39. No such luck for my friend. To cheer her up, I took us both to dinner - $25.50 in all. My profits for the evening - $13.50 which I am snowflaking. This brings me to reach this August’s monthly challenge amount of $400.

August, So Far…

Since my assistantship contract at work starts only on the 15th of August, I’ll have only half a month’s pay at the end of August. I sat down and tallied the expected income and expenses. It’s a horrifying looking spreadsheet. However, I have decided to make a few changes. I am not sending any money towards savings this month, I shall use my snowflake and extra income money to pay for the semester fees and keep the rest in my checking account to tide me over till the end of September. If I am frugal and stick to my budget, I will manage to scrape by without digging into my savings. We’ll see how that goes…

So far, I have not had a single no-spend day this month. However, I only have had one evening of eating out. Taking stock of my pantry definitely helped in terms of planning meals. The pity of it is sometimes I don’t want to eat what is in my pantry. I’ve been busy cooking. I went and bought the silicone baking mats I wanted ($10.63 at Wal-Mart). So, yesterday was baking day – I made raspberry scones and sundried-tomato biscotti from ingredients I had at home. Also, a friend of mine gave me a HUGE bunch of basil that she grew in her garden. I kept a chunk of it to use as garnish, on pizzas and to add to bruschetta topping, and made pesto with the rest. And then, I used up a lot of the pesto in a HUGE batch of olive-artichoke-pesto-pasta (in order to use up more stuff I had at home but was not using). And I made some delicious Baba Ghanouj (using up an eggplant and half of the tahini I have in my fridge), and a large batch of pita chips. So all in all it was a good couple of days of cooking – at least it prevented me from going out to eat! Tonight, I picked up a bread machine from a fellow freecycler. I have never used a bread-machine before, but hopefully I will be able to make fun breads with the machine and use up more of the various flours I have at home.

On a sadder note, it looks like I will not be able to continue with the English speaking partner any more. We met for about a week and then our schedules started to clash. And it now looks like our semester schedules don’t match either. Oh well… maybe some other opportunity will pop up somewhere.

How I Saved $56.12 on Hand Soap

I am feeling rather proud of myself – my second day of well planned purchases. I planned my purchase for today around sales and used coupons. Bath & Body Works has its hand soap sale going on (5 for $15, or 7+ for $20). I love their hand soaps – especially their aromatherapy ones (originally $6). Unfortunately these are not antibacterial, but they smell absolutely heavenly, and I usually grudgingly shell out the $6 to buy them. Anyway, today I had my revenge. I got 10 of them for $1.85 each. How? Well, let me tell you. :-)

I had filled out a survey for them which gave me a code for $10 off a purchase of $30 or more. I also had a coupon for a $12 signature product free with any $10 purchase. So, I got 10 aromatherapy hand soaps, and a Velvet Tuber Rose Body Cream (originally $11). That’s a total of $75.97 including taxes. When you throw in the sale prices, that comes down to $42.27 after taxes. Enter my discount code, and the total is $31.57. Add the coupon for free body cream, and the final price of the lot is $19.85 including tax. That’s ten hand soaps at $1.85 each and a large free tube of body cream. The price of each bottle of this hand soap is now cheaper than a comparable bottle of SoftSoap.

All that being said, it will take me quite a while to get through my assortment of hand soaps now. I think I’ll be okay for hand soap for at least a year and half given that I live alone and use the soap only in the kitchen and one bathroom. I briefly considered snowflaking my whopping savings of $56.12, but since I don’t usually go about buying 10 bottles of hand soap at a time, I decided not to. Also, since summer funding is meager, I can use that money for groceries and other basic essentials.

P.S. Unfortunately, I have had no no-spend days in August thus far. However, I’ve only eaten out one day. Let’s hope that the next week will be a no-spend, or minimal-spend one.

How I Saved $24.84 on Kitchen Utensils

I had a good day of shopping today. I feel good about all the purchases I made (mostly on excellent sales), but I feel best about my purchases at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I walked in to purchase a can opener, but ended up not since they did not have what I wanted. Instead, I made a good purchase of a 11” covered non-stick chef pan (originally $19.99), and an expandable over-the-sink strainer (originally $14.99). That’s a total of $37.08 after taxes. However, I used the store sales leaflet for a coupon of $10 off $30, and a mail coupon I received for 20% off one item to bring the total down to $22.24 after taxes. I also received a mail-in rebate coupon for $10 for the chef pan. So, that’s a total of $12.24 after the rebate (which has already been mailed off). A net savings of $24.84! I hadn’t originally intended on buying these two items today, but I have been on the lookout for a good, affordable stainless steel over-the-sink strainer for some time now, and one can never have too many chef pans. And now I can use my savings to go and buy two things I really need, but did not want to splurge on - a really fancy smooth-edge can opener for $14.00, and a pair of silicone baking sheets for $11.00. YIPEE!!!