Day Two

Day Two of my 25 day financial journey tells me I should track my spending for thirty days.  Well, I am far too impatient for that!  But I DID look at my online checking account statement to see what it had to share.  It has little nickel & dime purchases, mostly for household maintenance.  This made me realize I need to reevaluate my wonderful envelope system.  For anyone who happens upon this but has never read anything else, I believe strongly in the envelope system as suggested by Dave Ramsey.  The basic idea is that you have envelopes for all the different categories you spend money on, you put a predetermined amount of cash in said envelopes, and you only spend what you have in cash.  This makes life much easier because you don't have all these itty bitty charges on either your debit or credit card, which can add up and are easy to lose track of.  I currently have envelopes for Groceries, Pets, Car Maintenance, Gift, Clothes, and Medical expenses.  When I began this system, we didn't own a home, we rented a townhouse.  It wasn't that big, and any issues we had were dealt with by the staff, so having a home maintenance envelope wasn't worth it.  We also weren't actively homeschooling (which has also been a major source of income drainage), so no envelope for that either....  So here's the problem:  I already feel like I should be putting more money into the envelopes I already have, how am I supposed to add MORE envelopes?  AND still be able to pay my bills??

....when I figure that one out, I'll let you know.  Methinks it might be time to revisit Dave's Total Money Makeover book and see what he has to say on the subject.

I also began really scrutinizing our bills and seeing if there is anything we can do away with.  Unfortunately, I didn't find much.  Well, that's sort of a lie.  See, I'm a bit spoiled.  There are certain things that aren't necessities but I just cannot live without.  Like Netflix.  $10 a month and I have all the movies and tv shows I could ask for.  We love it and watch it daily (it's streaming through the Wii now!) and, though that $10 could probably be used elsewhere, I just can't let go.

While meditating over my spending habits, I did however come up with some ideas that would save money in one area:  Groceries.  The biggest is my Coke addiction.  It started with Coke Zero.  Man I love that stuff!  I drank at least two a day.  Then I decided that artificial sweeteners were probably bad for me.  But did I give up my soda altogether?  Hell no!  I switched to the (waaaaaay more expensive) pure cane sugar sweetened stuff.  So not only am I consuming hundreds of empty calories, I'm spending (at least) twice as much money at the same time!  All of the sudden it hit me:  why not give up soda?  Sure, it's a tasty beverage and gives me that much needed afternoon caffeine kick, but maybe I could get that elsewhere?  I already own an iced tea pot, and tea bags cost, what, like five cents each?  I can sweeten it with a little "all natural" sugar, and boom!  Acceptable in its health qualities AND super cheap!  I've just saved myself at least $20 a month!  ....now if only I could find about ten more simple, $20 saving solutions.  THEN we'd be getting somewhere!