Arrgghhh

Okay, somehow I was just trying to fidget with my layout a little and then I totally lost all my stuff. I was able to get back to what you see now. I was thinking that I had lost all my widgets....that would have been a total bummer. I will have to play a little more another time to get my blog back to where I want it.

We have been doing good. We have managed to swap some debt around so that we currently are all on zero percent offers....the key will be to pay them off before we get off the zero percent. Emilia got a B on conduct so we are extremely happy. She has only had one A and maybe two B's most of the time she fluctuates between the C to F stage. Her academic grades are great though. We just got a progress report and she still has all A's. We are trying to encourage her to manage her behavior better....but we will see.

Skybus.com

Skybus.com is a fairly new Airline based out of Cleveland OH. The offered flights from Cleveland to select cities in the US for as little as $10 for the first ten seat (on select flights). They are able to offer such low rates because they charge for any extra things you need -- checking luggage, blanket, pillow, snacks, priority seating. If you are someone who just takes carry-ons and don't need all the extras then you can really make out. They have recently started to base flight out of Greensboro as well. I have had some good things and bad things in my experience with this airline.

I was able to fly my parents round trip from Los Angeles (Burbank, CA) to Greensboro, NC for under $400. I did not experience any issues when I booked their flight.

I recently purchased tickets for my family of 4 to fly the opposite way to visit them in June. We had to fly seperately because the kids and I are heading out for two weeks and Steve could only take off for one. After I bought the tickets ($120 going out, $120 coming back) for a total of $256.50 each, I went back to buy Steve's ticket and noticed that the day going out for me and the kids was now saying $100. That means that they over-charged by $20 each. When I bought Steve's ticket it was ($100 out and $120 bac) which should have totaled $220, but was totaling $240.

So all in all, it seems like I paid $80 too much. Even with that overcharge I still was way under any prices that were being offered through any other airline. I have emailed their customer service, because they do not have a phone line (one of the ways they are able to save money) so we will have to see what happens about getting a refund.

Spending Challenge Week #1 Update

So instead of doing a daily blog about how we are doing I am going to do a weekly update.

So how did we do?

MENU - we were invited out on Tuesday for a New Year's dinner - so that saved us money and we didn't have to cook - yeah! Wednesday we had the missionaries over for dinner and we had the breakfast dinner with an addition of cinamon rolls left over from Christmas. Thursday we had to change plans because I could not find split peas. I asked a employee at the Walmart and I am not sure if she knew what I was talking about and I couldn't find any other employees near by. We will have to try again another day. And I forgot to soak the beans for Friday so we ended up eating leftover waffles and pancakes from the freezer. So we did really good.

MONEY - Steve forgot about it and bought a coke....I reminded him that our agreement was not to spend any money....that it should cost him his $50 that he was "earning" for the two week period, he sounded so disappointed that I let him slide. A friend of ours offered us his old couch and we have agreed to buy it for $50. We deceided it was worth not getting the $50 we were "earning" for the two week period to get it. And after 29 years a co-worker is leaving at my work so we taking her out to lunch. Overall not too bad.

2008 Budget Challenge

Crystal over at Money Saving Mom has posted a Challenge to get into Financial Shape for 2008. She first asks us to post our budget. The following is what I budget for monthly; however alot of times the bills come in a little less.

Monthly Household Bills
Tithing 10% gross
ATT 80
Cable/Internet 60
Power 170
Child Support 210
Child Care 180
Water 60
Garbage 20
Auto Insurance 100
House Insurance 40
Mortgage 625
Car Payment 310
Scholastics 20
Food/Gas 400

Total: $2,275


Credit Card Payments
CitiBank 75
Geico 15
Visa 15
Wamu 28
Nelnet 50 (Student Loan)
Discover 15
Capital One 15
Mastercard 27

Total: $240

While we do have eight active CC debt (Yikes) Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. And the bottom two are at 0%. We are currently snowballing on the Citibank because this has the highest interest rate. After that we will knock out some of the other cards. Any extra money is going to our CC debt and within 4-5 months I expect to only owe on two cards.

Some major steps we are taking is a two month spending freeze on anything not necessary. We are also looking to trade in our vehicle for another that would cut our payments in half. We foolishly got a vehicle that was too expensive and more that I wanted for monthly payments. We can afford it - but it is more than I wanted to. We told the salesman what price range we were looking at - he showed us a van that he was sure was in that price range. We liked it alot and said ok. When the papers were drawn up it was a few thousand more than he told us. Because we wanted it so badly we agreed and walked out. It only took a few weeks for me to kick myself in the hiney. I will not be fooled again. (I hope)

We are hoping to get things set to where one day I might be able to stay home. I keep working out plans but the main thing that kills it is that we would lose the insurance that I have through my work and my husbands workplace it too outragous to even consider. Hopefully an option will present itself when the time is right.

Already messed up on the "no spending"

Only three days into our personal challenge and we spent money, now of course it was for a really good thing. We have needed a couch since we first got married. I had an old run-down falling apart sofa and he had a lumpy-bumpy futon. Well we got rid of the sofa and have had to sit on the futon for almost two years. Steve's friend has a sofa that he was trying to sell for $100. He offered to let Steve have it for $50. The deal was that if we spent any money towards anything except food/gas that we would "lose" our $50 each that we were trying to earn towards our wanted items.

We agreed that it was worth giving up our $50 each to have a nice sofa. Hopefully this no spending will get easier.

No Spending Months

For the months of Jan and Feb my husband are entering a "no spending" freeze. We are not going out to eat, to the movies, no extra shopping. Just bills, groceries and gas. We are hoping to put every single extra cent towards our credit card debt. I am also going to restart our goals on the right side if the blog to pay off cc debt. Currently it is showing the percentage of debt to the credit limit. Now it will show the 100% as the amount owed on the card and we will go down by what we pay.
The only event that we are doing is a snow-weekend trip that we are looking for the frugalist way to go and a present for Nicholas's Birthday. But I am hoping to get a great gift for him with all the Christmas specials still going on.
I have made a menu for the whole month of January and have purchased quite a bit from the shopping list. I plan on updating daily any "extra" spenditures and and "pay-off" that we make for the two months.

Debt Reduction

Okay, so Steve and I have decided to really get serious about getting ourselves out of debt. We both have a $200 item in mind to get with our tax returns

(Steve wants a dvr recorder and I want to purchase some backpacking gear)

so we have made a deal with each other. For the months of Jan/Feb we are going on a spending fast. Except for needed items we will not be going to the store, out to eat, to the movies .....anything. We will each "earn" $50 toward the item we want for each sucessful pay period "two weeks" that we abstain from spending. I am going to post how far we get in paying off our debt. Feb is a 3 paycheck month for me and a 5 for Steve so I am hoping that we will be able to get alot paid off. I will keep you posted.

Budgeting

I have been reading alot of blogs/websites from women doing amazing things...Things like a weekly grocery budget of $35, Yikes. I found this website thefamilyhomestead.com about how to make your own laundry soap that cost approx. 1 cent a load. Just around $.70 for a two gallons of laundry detergent vs the $5-$10 that it usually cost. It had alot of other great ideas. While I could do some...like the laundry soap, there were so many other ideas that I unfortunatly would not have the time to do. I am still researching ways to provide income so that I might one day be able to be a stay-at-home mom, but only time will tell. I am looking for ways to improve so that by August 2010 when Emilia starts the third grade, maybe I will be able to be home.