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?

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

What This Site (and I) Will Not Be

I was re-reading through parts of Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover” before I returned it to the library, and a testimonial caught my eye that had irritated me at first, and irritated me a lot more the second time around. It was about a young couple who scrimped and saved and lived an impoverished life for a long time until they were able to save enough money for a 100% down-payment on a home. I think that planning on paying a 100% down on a home is admirable, but I don’t think that a young and just-married couple should cut out everything but the bare necessities and deprive themselves of almost every bit of sensory pleasure in order to buy a house all-out sooner. Can a lovely honeymoon enjoyed in the first flushes of conjugal love be completely recaptured by a vacation one takes after several years of what appeared to me to be a majorly financial partnership? I think not. It apparently worked for the young couple in question, but I am sure it will not work for me.

And so, I think it is time that I decided what I will and will not do in my journey towards financial freedom. I will definitely be frugal – as frugal as I comfortably can be. I don’t think I believe in never treating myself to anything nice, eating all my meals at home, buying only low-quality clothes, food etc. I will be young only once, and I plan on enjoying myself as much as I can. I know I have wasted a big chunk of my youth incurring debts that I will take a few years to pay off. But I will not deprive myself of the rest of it. I’ll take a few cuts, sure… but I’ll do so without turning into a miser. My answer to the $40 wines I used to buy shall not be drinking water for seven years, but rather shall me the $10 bottle of wine which has been marked down to $8. I shall not replace my hitherto expensive vacations with a no-travel policy, but shall rather plan for shorter vacations, and save the cash for them before I do any of the spending.

And my blog will reflect the same – I shall talk not just about how I make and save, but also about how I spend my money – in frugal albeit fun ways. This is not going to be a blog that talks about how to cut out all expense and live on a shoestring budget, how to manage not eating out in four months, and so on. If you choose to live so, please do. I can afford not to because I know that in a few years time, I will be earning many times more than I am now. I also am able to completely forgo things that have been unnecessary frills in order to splurge on my own special indulgences. I also know that it is essential that I enjoy my financial awareness for it to last any length of time.

What do you think? Should I be cutting out all expense in order to get out of debt? Or is my more lenient approach okay too?