couponqueenofcorning

I was  thinking about how everyone is trying to become frugal nowadays. It has become acceptable now to be frugal, whereas just a year ago, many frugalistas (that’s the name I made up for us gals who love frugality) would have been called cheap. People are just now starting to understand that saving money isn’t being cheap. Why pay more than you have to for something? I have heard (I don’t know any in person… darn.) that many millionaires won’t pay full price for anything either. They became millionaires by being smart with their money.

So, today I want to start sharing with you the many frugal things I do. I am sure it will be rather long because I want to share everything I do to save money. I believe that with the economy the way it is we all need to help each other. And this is the way I can help. By sharing with others the knowledge that I have gained in the last two years. I hope you can use these tips to help you save money.

• Buy a programmable thermostat. These can be bought for around $30-$40. They are really nice because you set it so it is cooler at night and in the day when no one comes home. Then around the time you are scheduled to be home, you have it so it is higher. It works really nicely and helps you save money on your heating bill.
• Use coupons. Coupons are great. Coupons are our friends!! LOL. I really like coupons, can you tell? LOL. If you can combine sales with coupons, all the more better. You can get coupons from newspapers, print them from the Internet or buy them from ebay or some other seller. I buy a paper, but I also get extra ones from hubby’s grandma (that is when they are not in Florida for the winter ). The other day I was able to get Ragu for $1.50 each and I had a coupon for $1 off 3. So, they ended up being just a little over $1 each.
• Cook at home and don’t buy a lot of convenience food. Learning to cook will save you lots of money in the long run. Find recipes online and try them. Some will turn out great, others will be a disaster. My cooking in the last 2 years has become tremendously better, but I still have some flops. If you are an extremely bad cook or really don’t know anything about cooking, take a class or ask someone to teach you.
• Make a list when grocery shopping and stick to it. To make sure you don’t go over your budgeted amount, take cash with you and leave the debit and credit cards at home to resist temptation. This means you will need to keep track of how much you are spending while you are putting groceries in the cart. Either bring a calculator or a small notepad to keep track of how much you have spent so far. What I do is I use a scratch piece of paper and just write down a rounded number of what each thing cost. I keep a running total going so I always know how much i have spent so far. For example, this is sort of what mine looks like: 3 boxes of crackers cost $1.25 each, 5 boxes of oatmeal at $1.76 each, 2 dozen eggs at $3.10, 2 gallons of milk at 2.45 each,:
  4.00
  1.76
  5.76
  3.10
  8.86
  5.00
  8.86
  I usually try to round up most of the time, because I would rather be prepared to spend less money than more. I am usually pretty close and if I am only buying a few things, I can usually do this in my head as I am putting the stuff on the conveyor belt, as long as I know the prices (which most of the time I do).

OK. So there is part one of my best frugal tips. My next post will have more tips to share with you. Spread the frugality in 2009!

Bleh. I haven’t lost anymore weight. . I was super stressed out on Friday night. My husband called at his usual time and told me that his employer was asking people to take a volunteer layoff (they could keep medical benefits and choose how long they wanted to be off for). If they didn’t get enough people they would have to do a regular layoff. Normally it wouldn’t affect us too badly if he got laid-off, but we are getting ready to do the preliminary closing on our house within the next month. I am sure they would not give us a loan if hubby didn’t have a job.  Of course, I didn’t get much sleep. Of course, the whole batch of No-Bake Cookies I had had so much willpower for the last few weeks NOT to make, got made. Let me just say, I ate A LOT of them!!!! I felt guilty afterwards but oh well.

I actually got the DVD 30 Day Shred opened and I used it for about 10 minutes. I am SO out of shape. I was going to do it again later that night (after the kids went to bad) but later never came. then I decided I was going to try to do some sit-ups on the incline bench. HAHAHAHAH. I did 5!!!!!!!! LOL. My back fat kept getting in the way. Yuck, I can’t believe I have back fat. The next day my abs were a little sore from those 5. lol. It’s amazing how out of shape I really am. I have been doing 10 of them the last few days and I will be doing some more tonight. I also have plans to do some more of my DVD (of course I have a homework assignment and a lab that is due tomorrow). I will try to squeeze it in, maybe as soon as the kids are in bed. Wish me luck. I so want to start getting this exercise thing going.

Recently, I wrote a post about how to do a budget. You can read that post here . It occurred to me today that I did not discuss those expenses that do not occur monthly. These are things like car inspection, car registration fees, any household maintenance you do on a regular basis, and of course, gifts. These are very important to take into consideration when doing your budget.

Many experts suggest that you set up another savings account just for these types of expenses. You can go to ING and set up a savings account, where you can have many sub-accounts. For example, I have a savings account and two sub accounts there. One that is called Christmas Fund and the other is the House Fund. In order to figure out how much I need to be saving out monthly to go into the accounts, I divide the amount of the expense by the number of months left until that expense will be occurred. So, for example, if I know my car inspection is coming up in July (about 6 months or so away), I will take $30 and divide by 6. So, I need to save out $5 a month and put it in the account for that purpose. In order to track what money I have intended for what expense, I use a spreadsheet. Then when I pay it in July I can figure out how much per month using 12 months. So, $2.50 a month goes in to my savings per month for car inspection expenses.

If you have an account for those expenses that do not occur monthly, you will be prepared and will not need to dip into your emergency fund or, worse yet, use a credit card.

Yesterday was an exciting day. The inauguration of Barack Obama was an historic day that I will always remember. We had CNN on all day and all night until the end of the balls. I am really excited to have Obama as president because we need change and we need it now.

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I have been bad…. oh so bad this last week or so. Well not completely bad because I have upped my water intake to 3 glasses a day. I put those freezable mugs that keep your drink cold in the freezer and have been using those. I just keep 2 in there at all times and when I want some water I pull one out, put a thawed out one back in and fill the frozen one. I do usually have to wait around five minutes for the water to get really cold, but that’s no biggie.

I haven’t gained or lost any weight, so I guess it’s not terrible. I really want to lose this weight though. I had to go out and buy brand new jeans because the ones I had (I only have 3 pairs of pants that fit) all are starting to rip along the inside thigh seam. Yep, I’m so fat I’m ripping out of my pants. Kinda like the Incredible Hulk but in a bad way! lol.

I did have good intentions last week though. My schedule for classes and the amount of homework last week kicked my butt. Add on to that my family and household responsibilities and I didn’t have much time. I need to schedule my time and use it more wisely. I did buy a Jillian Michaels dvd. I heard some good things about it and I’m hoping that it will help. Since I can’t have the woman here to kick my butt everyday might as well have the next best thing. lol. The bad part is that it has been sitting on my tv for the last week; still in  the plastic.

I know that I will not have enough time tonight to exercise, since I have homework to do for my class tomorrow morning, but I am hopeful that tomorrow night I will have enough time to let Jillian scream at me from the tv. And if there is no screaming from Jillian then this is not the  dvd I thought  it would be and I will be taking it back. I need her to scream at me! LOL.

Well, my hubby actually picked up a paper, and I’m glad he did. There were some really awesome coupons in there; for stuff we use all the time. Also, Rite Aid has some items on sale this week that correspond with these coupons. So, more savings! YEAH!!! I’m going to Rite Aid tomorrow to take advantage of some of their deals. Unfortunately Target doesn’t have much on sale this week. Though if you are look for ways to keep your weight loss resolutions, they have some awesome deals on weight loss items.

 So here are the deals this week:

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