Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Budgeting Sheet

I have created a budgeting sheet that I absolutely love! It helps show us what we could actually have in our account if we stick to our budget and tells us exactly what we will need by a certain date to cover our montly expenses. This is just a sample picture of the cd I have created. The cd has step by step instructions. I find this budgeting sheet to be very simple as it calculates everything for you once you put your information in. I am selling these cds for $30 if anyone is intersted. I will also help walk you through the process when doing it for the first time. Contact me or leave a comment in this blog if you would be interested in purchasing one of these cds.
Let me know if you have any questions and hope this can help some of you with your finances! I currently have 3 people using this spreadsheet and they love it!

Here is an example of my budgeting spreadsheet. You fill in everything that is highlighted. The pink is your estimated average weekly paychecks. Everytime you get paid just update it to actual spending. The blue is your bills. Yellow are you budgeted items: it will take this amount each week until you put in your actual spending in (see sheet 2 on picture below) The green is for you to be able to add or subtract money to be able to reconcile it with your bank account if you get off. Then in the gray area you would put in when each bill was due. If a bill was due by the 18th you would put the amount under the 14ths paycheck. See examples below.
Sheet 2 is where you would put in your spending each time you would make a purchase. This will then change it from what you budgeted to what you actually spent.


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Target Deals

Wow!! Yesterday at the Urbandale Target they had some great deals in the baby section. I was able to get 4- 2 pks of the nice thick flannel pjs for $2.48 each- 2 for Clarisse and 2 for my nephew Stephen. On the package there was a coupon for $1 off a package of onsies when you bought 2 pj packages. Well, they had little boy onsies on clearance for $2.48- so I got 2 packages of these for Stephen too! They also had little boy athletic pants on clearance for $1.50! I was also able to get a 5 pk of flannel receiving blankets for $1.74! I also found those socks that have the grippers on them on clearance for $3.54. So I bought 2 pairs- a girl pair and a boy pair.



This is the breakdown:

4- 2 pks of pjs $2.48 x 4 = $9.92 Origianlly $9.99 each

Receiving blankets $1.74 Originally $6.99

Boy's athletic pants $1.50 Originally $6.99

2 socks w/ gripper soles $3.54 x 2 = $7.08 Originally $12.99 each



Total Spent: $20.24

Total Savings: $59.68



Also check the bras- they had some really nice ones for $3-$5 on clearance!



Look all over the store as Target has alot of clearance right now making way for the spring/summer inventory!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

How to get Cheap Diapers!

There are a couple of online sites that I like to get some cheap diapers. One site is diapers.com and the other is Amazon.com.

Diapers.com

Go to diapers.com and when you sign up enter my referral code SARA618159 if you will please! I will get a credit to my account and I believe you will too! At diapers.com you can use a coupon code for your first purchase for I believe 15% off your first purchase. I will try to post the code once I get home. Diapers.com accepts manufacture coupons. All you have to do is mail in your coupons and they credit them to your account. When you purchase an item that qualifies with a coupon you have sent it, they will deduct it from your purchase. When you make a purchase at diapers.com follow the tab at the top left to soap.com and add any time to your cart to get free shipping once your total reaches $25, if you only order from diapers.com you will have to spend $50 in order to get free shipping. In the past I have purchased $25 worth of diapers and then purchased a $.99 travel face wash at soap.com to get the free shipping. You also get 1-2 day shipping at diapers.com. I have gotten my purchases the next day in the past! I only like using diapers.com if it is your first time using them so you get a % off or if you have referral credit, otherwise they aren't the cheapest place you can get diapers. Now before you order diapers at diapers.com go to ebates.com. If you are not already signed up with them, follow my link so I can get referral credit, please and thank you! When you sign up for the first time you can choose to get $5 cash or choose from a number of $10 gift cards. I got a $10 Target gift card when I signed up. Once you make your first purchase through them you will get the the $5 or $10 gift card. Search for diapers.com on ebates.com and you get a % of cash back from your purchase.

Amazon.com

I love buying diapers on Amazon.com! Go to amazon.com and sign up for AmazonMom- this is $79 for a year, but if you purchase $25 worth of diapers in a month the fee is waived another month! I have been using it the past 4 months and have not been charged yet, because I spend $25 worth of diapers each month. The great thing about this is- you don't really have to spend $25 a month on diapers! Confused??!! The $25 a month is BEFORE coupons!! You can get coupons for amazon.com for diapers in the Parenting magazine and in the Baby Talk Magazine. Follow the Baby Talk link to sign up to receive this magazine for FREE!! Click the free magazine subscription and opt out of all the other offers if you don't want them. You will never receive a bill for this magazine. In the February 2011 magazine there is a coupon for $10 off diapers when you purchase them at Amazon.com. A lot of time you can find the Parenting magazine in your Dr's office. This month the Parenting magazine had a 20% off your entire purchase of diapers on Amazon.com. You can order the Parenting magazine pretty cheap sometimes at Tanga.com. I will try to post when I find a good deal on this magazine. Now, another neat thing about AmazonMom is: you get 15% off of all of your baby purchases, 2 day shipping and free shipping on ANY order from amazon.com. Also if you sign up for subscribe and save you get an additional 15% off! What subscribe and save does is: you purchase an item that qualifies for subscribe and save, then you choose how often you want that specific item delivered to you. You can choose anywhere from 1-6 months. I always choose 6 months, because then I can cancel subscribe and save if I really don't want that specific item delivered again. What subscribe and save does it deliver that item every month, 2 months, 3, 4, 5, or 6 months without you ever having to go back in and add those items to your cart. Now- between having AmazonMom and Subscribe and Save you are saving 30% off of your purchase of diapers, but you can save even more! Add in the coupon code from your Parenting magazine to get an additional 20% off of your purchase to get a total of 50% off of your diapers!! This is great and makes for some really cheap diapers! The other day LivingSocial.com had a deal to buy a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. I purchased this deal and combined my AmazonMom, Subscribe and Save, and 20% off Parenting magazine to get 1512 wipes for $10!! This comes out to less than a penny for wipes! My sister also did this deal, used AmazonMom, and Subscribe and Save to get 204 diapers for $18.84! This is $.09 a diaper! Another way to get Amazon gift cards is by signing up for swagbucks. Once again, if you could click on my Swagbucks link to the right of this post on my blog for me to be able to get referral points I would really appreciate it! What Swag Bucks are are points that you can get for doing searches through their toolbar. You download their toolbar and it shows up just like a google toolbar does, but instead of going through google go through Swagbucks and you may get points for the searches you do. I signed up almost 3 months ago and barely ever do searches and have gotten enough points to get 2 $5 Amazon gift cards. You can purchase a $5 Amazon gift card for 450 swag points. Once you get enough points redeem the for the Amazon gift cards and these can then be added to you Amazon account.

Well, I think this is about it for tips on how to get diapers cheap online! I will post if I find a great deal elsewhere. Sometimes you can get diapers really cheap by stacking coupons at Target or Walgreens. By stacking coupons, I mean you can use a store coupon with a manufacture coupon.

Well, that is all from me for now! Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them. Hope you all are able to get some cheap baby items!

Sarah

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Target Deals

Yesterday we headed out to meet my sister to let her borrow a suit for Stephen and make sure that Brian could make it to work since at one point he was having trouble with his car. While we were out we decided to stop at Target! There were some really great deals!

If you head to a Target check for the Scotch tape (purple kind) are on clearance! There are no signs stating that they are on clearance, but when you price check them they are! Also make sure they ring up this price at the register, some of mine didn't. The single tapes are on clearance for $.20, 2 pks for $.49, and 3 pks for $.75. The 3 pks also had coupons for $1 off a gift wrap cutter and a 3 pk of refillable pop up tape. So I price checked each of these and yep, they were on clearance too! The gift wrap cutters were on clearance for $.75 plus use the $1 off coupon and the refillable pop up tape was on clearance for $.50 with a $1 off coupon! I was able to get 3 gift wrap cutters (which work great for cutting out coupons!), 3 3pks of tape, and 5 3pks of refillable pop up tape all for $1!! I was so excited to se ethe refillable pop up tape on sale like this plus the coupons. At one point last year I was able to get 3 of the actually pop up tape containers for FREE and I almost used them all up this Christmas!

Watch for all the Christmas clearance! I was able to get a 200pk of Bounty paper towels for $.74!! They were a lone pack sitting amongst all the Christmas decor and everyone was walking right past them! I quick grabbed them and then price checked them later. I think everyone thought they had just been thrown there, but they were on clearance because they have snowman prints on them! Watch for other items like this that may still be on the shelves example: paper towels, ziploc bags, napkins, holiday ziploc containers, etc. Sometimes they won't be marked just like the tape wasn't marked. The way I knew the tape might be discounted was because they said great for gift wrapping, which then makes them considered as a holiday item! This was the same for the napkins- even though we are still in the middle of winter, everyone is putting their winter items on clearance to make room for the spring/summer items. Also watch for toy clearance. I saw a post on Totally Target's blog that said twice a year they clearance toy items to make room for the new season items. Right now they are on clearance for 30% off so I will wait for them to go on clearance a lot more. Josiah's birthday is coming up so I am hoping I can find some good deals for him!

Also check out the turkeys! I was able to get 3 turkeys stuffed with stuffing and included gravy packets for about $5.50 each!! They were on price cut for $.50 a lb instead of $1.79 a lb! I now have 4 turkeys in my freezer, well actually only 2 because the other 2 won't fit! I will be cooking turkeys today! I plan on cooking them and then freezing the meat in individual ziploc bags of about how much our family would eat for a meal or how much would be needed to make a meal.

There is also a coupon on Target's website for $1/2 lunchables. They are currently on sale until Saturday for $1 and with the coupon you can get 2 for $1!!

Here is what I got yesterday:
4 Milky Ways- $.50/2 coupon used (these were snacks for the kids after we shopped)
2 Oscar Mayer Lunchables- $1/2 Target coupon
4 Oscar Mayer Combination Lunchables- I believe this was an old coupon I had printed
1 Oscar Mayer Deli Creations- also an old coupon I had printed (on sale for $2)
3 Butterball Turkeys- $5.50 each
2 Market Pantry Chicken Sandwiches-
$3/2 Market Pantry frozen chicken item
$2.98/3 after coupon
2 bags Market Pantry Boneless Skinless Chicken Tenderloins-
$3/2 Market Pantry frozen chicken item
2/$8.88 after coupon
2 Suave shampoos- on sale for $.94 (used old Target coupon I had printed) FREE!!
200 ct Bounty napkins- $.74

3 gift wrap cutters (see above)
3 3pks tape (see above)
5 3pks pop up tape refills (see above)
$1 total for all above items
2 Kikkoman Soy Sauce-
Buy 1 get 1 Free
$1.42 after coupon
4 Ortega Taco Shell kits w/ sauce and seasoning included-
$1/2 Smartsource coupon
4/$3.96
10 Market Pantry Mac n' Cheese- these were on sale for $.42 each as a substitution to the Kraft Mac n' Cheese that was on sale for $1 which they were completely out of (we like generic brand better anyways and this was a way better price!) If you are wanting to get the Kraft Mac N' Cheese for $1 there is also a coupon for $.50/2 on the Target website

All together I spent $49.99 minus a $6 gift card Adam received from work for being safe!
Total OOP: $43.99
Total Savings (sales & coupons): $117
For a 70% savings!
I am pretty well stocked up on turkey and chicken now as we now have 5 turkeys when you add the 3 I bought yesterday to the 2 I already had- that is over 60lbs of turkey! They are being cooked right now to be cut and individually packaged for the freezer. I can only cook 1 at a time and it takes 5 hrs for 1 to cook- guess I will be cooking for awhile! Chicken is also in the crockpot cooking to be cut up and packaged in family serving sizes for the freezer.

I love having all this cooked ahead of item and in my freezer! Last night after I got home from shopping, Adam wanted Potato Cheese Soup. All I did was pull out on of my already frozen packages, microwaved it and ate! He also wanted homemade bread. So he made some really good potato bread that used potato flakes and put it in the bread machine. It didn't get done until 9 that night, but Adam and I enjoyed eating a few pieces of it and then he took some to work. Now he wants homemade potato bread made everyday!

Well, I had better be going and organizing my house- there are tubs everywhere upstairs while I am sorting through all the clothes we have and organizing it in the attic by sizes. Have a good day and hope you find some good finds!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

New Year's Budget Goals!!

Ok so with this new year I have a few budget goals I am going to try and do!! Since it is a start of a new year I am completely starting from scratch. I have decided to make a list of every item I buy and for how much I bought it- hopefully for the whole year! I am wanting to try and find out what the lowest cost I can buy and item at is and how much of that item we use. Like: do we usually eat on average 10lbs of hamburger or 20lbs each month and what is the cheapest price I can find it?

I have now been majorly couponing since June of 2010 and have seen a huge difference in our grocery budget! We shopped cheap to begin with, but it has gone down even more with couponing and I get way more stuff than I ever did before. There are things I never would have thought of ever buying because they are so expensive, but I now have a stockpile of 10 of them!!

Last year in July- I bought two huge packages of toilet paper when they were on sale, I had a coupon for each, and I got a $5 gift card for buying 2 of them. We are just now running out of this toilet paper and will have to soon go and get more toilet paper. Which means theoretically I can go a whole year on 4 of the huge packages of toilet paper! My goal is to get this much toilet paper for as cheap as I possible can!!

My hopes in doing this is for me to get a better understanding of what and how much stuff we actually go through and what is the bottom dollar I can spend on that product. If I at one time bought toilet paper for $.25 a roll then I don't want to buy toilet paper unless it is on sale for $.25 a roll, which means if I find if for this price I want to know how much I need to buy to get us until that item will go on sale again.

So far my spending report this year is:

Movie- Inception- $.99!

2 Redbox movies- $2.07

Total savings: $9.00

We are trying to also follow Dave Ramsey's guide and only use cash! I purchased the billfold a couple months ago (seemed to have miss placed it over the holidays :( hope I can find it soon!)

Last month we paid the last of my $1,200 medical bill from 2 years ago when it showed up I had a slow ejection fraction when I was pregnant with Kellie (my heart is now showing nothing!) We are hopefully paying off our Geothermal bill in Feburary. We have already paid half of it, but have to pay the other half by the 15th to not accumalte back interest. We can't wait to start using the monthly payments we were paying for these two bills and start snowballing them onto another bill! This is really going to help us start knocking down our debit!

Hope you have a few goals set for you during this New Year and that we will all be able to accomplish them!

Sarah