Friday, May 9, 2014

Random thoughts and thoughts on frugality

Random Thoughts

It is funny that, as a public school teacher, the blogs I gravitate towards are frugal blogs where the authors typically home school their children. I think my love of cooking and grocery shopping intertwine with the authors of such blogs. I have a love for take-out too, but I am trying not too. Part of me wishes I found these blogs earlier. For many years we had an old computer in our cold basement. Logging onto the internet was a chore that included going to the basement. We did not get a lap top until I went back to work full time. I wonder if I had been introduced to the frugal community earlier if I would have tried to hold off on going back to work.

Frugal Thoughts

We will be renovating our house within the next month. We have taken on a lot of debt in order to do this. Yes, I know many frugal bloggers would disagree with this choice, but I see it this way. A mortgage is debt. Most people have a mortgage. For us to buy a new house we would have to sell our old house, take a loss and start a new mortgage. Not to mention, we had to come up with a down payment. The average house in our area would have cost us well over $400,000. We opted to take out a variety of home improvement loans, proceed with the renovation, and pay the loans back. We refinanced last year to a fifteen year mortgage. We plan to pay everything off early. Once our child care costs have ended (yippee June)we will be able to easily make our loan payments. But back to frugality. I did make some frugal choices this week that I am proud of and some that could have been better. I also needed back brakes for my car, but what can you do about that? Yes, be prepared for those situations, which is what I hope to start doing.

What I really wanted to say is that frugality is hard. I have been working my tail off to make dinner each night, and pack four lunches each day. It is a lot of work and a lot of food. Last night, after a late night of school events we got the kids to bed and ate take-out. Since we had not eaten take-out for awhile it was pretty enjoyable. There was a time (not long ago) we were eating it two or three nights a week. That take-out money could have paid for my brakes this week.

This month my goal is to be frugal and make the best financial choices I can.

Monday, May 5, 2014

I have been sooooo good

for me anyway. I like to read blogs that are pretty frugal. I am really not that frugal. I did try to make yogurt once, and I thought it was good. However, I can be lazy, or scattered or just plain busy. My new plan is to make my own laundry detergent.

I spent all of yesterday morning getting all stocked up. We can eat for two weeks without food shopping. Yes, I will need to grab some fruit on Sunday, but overall we are set. I am so sick of wasting money on take out. It makes me feel so much better after we eat a home cooked dinner. It also sets a much better example for the kiddos.

I also got a great deal on two birthday gifts because I had some Kohl's coupons. So I bought two gifts and only spent $13.00. I was thrilled.

Now I have some medical bills to pay, and my brakes don't sound good. I am worried. That means absolutely no extra spending right now.

Not too mention the home renovation that will be starting soon.