2010 Money Saving Challenge

Precious at Frugal Makes Cents has inspired me. I'm up for this one! I've started a 2010 journal to keep a record of everything that is spent. Darlin Dan isn't too thrilled about this, but I told him I can pretty much track his spending from the debit card. I think that this will be a real eye opener for us. (I started out the New Year by spending $75 on Dr. and medine for my BAD cough.)

2009
We have really tried to be more frugal in 2009. We paid some very large bills and kept our heads above water. I convinced Darlin Dan that couponing was a very good thing by 1. making great money at 2 garage sales by selling my drugstore game deals, 2. being able to set up a stockpile "Jeri's convenience store" in a spare bedroom, 3. being able to give bags and boxes of items away to family and friends, 4. almost never having to run to the store for something we've run out of because I've stocked up on it when it was on sale at CVS, Walgreens, Target, and sometimes Walmart using coupons, RRs, EBs, and gift cards. We have eaten more at home. Before starting the money saving challenge in 2009, we would not think twice about "picking something up" for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. We started grabbing breakfast bars for breakfast, fixing a to go lunch, and just plain old eating what we have in the fridge, freezer, pantry for dinner. This puts a bigger burden on me to come up with something to prepare. Darlin Dan is a sweetie and would be happy with a good old sandwich.

2010
We do spend some money on travel. We have already discussed 2010. We have decided to limit our travel to 2 big trips this year that are already planned and paid for. We are going on a cruise this month that is already paid for and our spending money is in savings. We have booked a week at the coast in the summer that is paid for. I plan to do what I did last year and stockpile the food for our trip to the coast. We hardly spent any money last year during a whole week at the gulf coast! It was so much fun with the kids and grandkids. One big sleepover for a week.

We decided to start saving for some big bills that crop up. We have never been successful at being able to save for the future other than a 403B that is automaticallly taken out of my paycheck! We are starting small. $25 goes into the savings automatically-everytime one of us gets a pay check. This adds up to about $125 a month. We've decided that if we have no problems with this, we will increase to $30 a pay check. Darlin Dan gets a check for any usage of his truck and he automatically puts this in savings for our travel. The amount is always different and depends on if he actually uses his truck. A van is available for him to use and if it is free, he uses it. This will now be part of our savings too. We plan to have some garage sales this year. This money will automatically go into the savings.

I am very excited about our plan!