I have very little activity on this site now days however I know a number of you were following my saving and grocery game info so I thought it only right to post an update here since so many can benefit and if I help just one person its worth it. I have plans to start an independant blog but just havent gotten around to it. I am still 'around' the cf community a bit.
DEBT REDUCTION
Anyway on to the update. We started Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace program on Feb1 just by listening to the CD's ourselves and I read his books. We start attending classes next weekend, they are 13 weeks of classes 1 night a week for 2 hours they are the same content as the CD's for the first hour and then activities in your workbooks and small group discussions etc led by a 'FPU leader'. We are very excited to refine our techniques.
NOW FOR THE EXCITEMENT! We payed off our first student loan today, YEAH! We still have one more student loan and our house left but we are doing excellentay! In 7 months and 19 days we have paid off just over $31,000!!!!! And almost as exciting two members of my group at work have gotten involved in FPU and had positive life changes and jsut today a third found out about my success and is talking his wife into joining and is VERY excited about it. This stuff just makes so much sense! If you are interested go to www.daveramsey.com, you can enter your zip and find the classes. or you can read any wealth of information on your own on his site for free OR if you want to start with a book read the Total Money Makeover its excellent and entertaining. I also have cool tools for debt snowball and an awesome excel spreadsheet budget template if you are interested PM me.
GROCERY SAVINGS
My husband is hourly so he is able to get overtime money and we have a side business that he works on computers so we get extra money from that so my way of contributing 'extra' money was to figure out how to cut our budget down. I have done so on groceries. I started out with who knows how much a week I was spending on groceries and everytrhign else for the house, then I went down to $150 week now I am down to $100 week and its EASY to stick to that for everything, food, cleaners, health and beauty aids, vitamins, dogfood, most of our diapers (we have a 'baby' fund but I usually just get them wtih grocery money) EVERYTHING!! I am saving the extra each week to buy our next 1/4 cow we will need in a couple months.
I now use www.hotcouponworld.com exclusively. it takes some organization and getting used to but I save ALOT. I routinely save about 90+% on all my health beauty aids cleaning products etc and probably around 60-70% on groceries. Last week at grocery store I saved 101 and paid 88 this week I saved 66 and paid 48 this week at walgreens I saved 84 and paid 24 12 of which I will get back in rebates. It has gotten so popular in the cirlce of ladies I know at work I know have a 'class' twice a month on lunch hour in a conference room and 'teach' others how to do it.
We have started 3 coupon trains and everyone puts in the coupons they dont want and takes out what they do want whcih is very helpful since everyone likes/needs different stuff. My pantry is full, my closets are full, I get all name brand, I buy stuff I always wanted but never indulged in before, we still eat healthy and I still buy alot produce! If you need any help let me know.
Two months ago at my grocery store I 'made' 90 dollars of a deal they were having that after coupons you ended up profiting so I did it many times, last month I 'made' 35 dollars for transferring my prescriptions, this month I 'made' 20 in target gift cards for transferring prescriptions and got 4 boxes cereal 4 boxes granola bars and a $5 gift card for $5 , I also just 'made' $6 just for taking 30 glade scented products and 5 cans of soup off of the stores hands LOL, whoever says you cant get something for nothing doesnt use enough coupons!
anyway I know some of you tried the couponing thing and some of you were thining of reading some Dave Ramsey books. I hope you will and I hope it will help you. We are to a point now where I am thinking of working part time in 2010 and there is alot instability in my company/field right now so the beauty of it is if I WERE to loose my job right now it would be OK, I cant believe we are at a point where I can say that!
By end of next year if somethien were to go wrong with either of us or our jobs it wouldnt matter! It is such ahuge relief to know that I am maintaining my health simply for my health and not because we couldnt afford to live if I wasnt working. I want to be able to make the decision to work or not based on how it affects my family and my health, NOT my finances. take care and drop me a line if you want to chat, I will send you my personal email so as not to suck up this site's bandwidth
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