Big Changes

Ah, where to start? Well, I'm pregnant! My husband and I are due to have our first child in August.

When I started this blog two years ago, I subtitled it "Preparing our finances for starting a family". Well, the family is on it's way, are the finances prepared?

I think we are about as financially ready as we can be for having children and becoming a one-income family. Our emergency fund is where we want it to be. We have a good-sized home improvement (repair) fund and enough in our car fund to buy a late-model used vehicle. We will also still be able to fund our retirement accounts, although we'll probably be putting in a little less than we are now. We even have two vacations planned (and money to pay for them) before the baby arrives!

I've always heard that if you wait for the "perfect" time to have kids, it will never happen. I can definitely see how that's true. There's a part of me that thinks, "I wish we had just a little more in our emergency fund, car fund, home improvement fund, etc." Overall, though, I think we're well prepared.

I say all of this to lead up to letting you know that I plan to stop writing on the Family and Finances blog. The bill for renewing the domain name is coming due, and this seems like the right time. I'm going to try to move the blog back over to blogger at familyandfinances.blogspot.com, but it may not work and I might lose everything! I do not plan to continue writing here, but if you are interested in keeping up with my personal life, you are welcome to follow along at my personal blog here.

Thanks for joining me in this two-year journey!

The Great Thing About Home Depot

Did you know that Home Depot takes competitor coupons? My husband and I found this out about a year ago and have saved hundreds of dollars over the course of the year. In fact, we saved $100 just the other night!

My husband has been wanting a table saw for quite some time, and has watched Craigslist for the right deal for months. He finally came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to find what he was looking for on Craigslist. He did some research and decided that he wanted a Ridgid table saw (Ridgid is only sold at Home Depot).

The table saw costs $500 on never goes on sale. There is occasionally a rebate available, though, plus we knew we could look for a competitor coupon.

Then, a few nights ago, my husband randomly decided to look through a AAA magazine we get. He noticed a Harbor Freight coupon for 20% off a single item with no dollar limit! I convinced him that it was time to get the table saw.

We had to borrow a pick-up truck and go to two Home Depots, but we came home last Friday night with a $500 Ridgid table saw for $400 (bought completely with Christmas and birthday money, yay!).



My husband couldn't wait to get it out of the box:
...and he's already gotten a lot of use out of it!

We use Tru-Value coupons all the time, as we get $2 off $10 and $5 off $25 coupons from them in our community mailers every month or so. The 2010 Entertainment Book for our area also had a 15% off Menards coupon and 10% and 15% off Harbor Freight coupons. Perfect for all of the home remodeling we've been doing!

Good News and More Good News!

I posted awhile back about the cost of getting oral surgery done. The good news is that last week, I received a letter from my health insurance company (Aetna) saying that the surgery is approved! That would have been a huge relief had I not received even more good news about 3 weeks earlier. :)

The other news is that I might not need the surgery after all! My orthodontist took me completely by surprise last month when he told me that. You can read more about that here.

Whether I end up needing the surgery or not, I really am glad to know it's covered.

What I Got for $1.49

I picked up some amazing grocery deals lately by combining sales and coupons. Check it out!

My grand total for this deal was 99 cents! I picked this up a couple of weeks ago at the local Piggly Wiggly, which I never shop at. I read on a blog that there was a great deal available if a person had some $1.60 off a bag of nut clusters coupons. I had received a bunch in the mail, so I cashed in :)

I got all of this for 50 cents last night! Whoo-Hoo! I love when things work out just right.

I had noticed a really good deal in our Copps/Pick N Save ad yesterday. I thought about trying to make a deal out of it on Wednesday (double coupon day at Copps/PNS), but then noticed that a bunch of coupons I needed to get a good deal were expiring on Oct. 11th. I talked the hubby into grabbing some backpacks last night and taking our nightly walk to the grocery store :)

I thought we were going to get these items for 25 cents each after coupons, but I had a free item coupon for the Rice Krispies. The cashier took off the full price for the Rice Krispies, which is how my total got so low.

There you have it. I got everything in those two pictures for $1.49. Deal shopping is so much fun!

Teeth Are Expensive

As I've mentioned in the past (and talked about more on my personal blog), I am in the process of getting my teeth prepared for oral surgery (in other words, I have braces). As of my most recent conversation with my orthodontist, the surgery is looking to be early next year.

Since I'm now about 6 months away from surgery, I'm starting to think about it a lot more. As a result, I've joined some online forums and groups for people going through jaw surgery (this is a nasty surgery - trust me, support groups are very helpful!). While reading through these forums, I've come to the realization that I never really got any hard numbers for how much this surgery will cost.

When I first discussed oral surgery with my surgeon (almost 2 years ago), his office sent a "Request for Benefits" to my insurance at the time. That came back with a cost of just under $10,000 for the surgery. I've kept that number in the back of my mind all this time.

As I've been reading through the forums lately, I've discovered that the $10,000 is just my surgeon's fee! The big cost is actually the hospital bill, which could run up to another $25,000! Yikes!

The reason this is a big deal is that it can be difficult to get this surgery covered through insurance. It gets submitted to your medical insurance, not your dental insurance. From what I hear, medical insurance companies like to deny it on the basis of it being "cosmetic". I may need to submit extra documents/xrays/etc. to try to prove to them that I need surgery because of a jaw deficiency.

At any rate, I called the oral surgeon's office last week and asked them to submit for approval from my current medical insurance company. Please say a little prayer that they will cover the surgery. I really don't want to have to try to come up with $35,000!

The Frugalest Strawberries Ever!

Two nights ago, at about 9:45pm, my husband and I were in the kitchen, just about ready to head to bed. Suddenly, our doorbell rings. Very odd. My husband goes to the door and there stands our elderly neighbor with a box of fresh strawberries!

Our neighbor's name is Dot and she's a real sweetheart. She explains that her daughter is visiting from out of state and they went strawberry picking that day. They picked more strawberries than they could handle, so they dropped the extras off with us! So thoughtful!

The coolest part of the story is that I was just telling my husband last weekend that I wanted to go strawberry picking so I could freeze some fresh strawberries. I thought it might be cheaper than buying frozen bagged strawberries at the store. Instead, free strawberries showed up at our doorstep :)

Here's a picture of the strawberries I froze:


I re-used two frozen strawberry bags I had kept in the freezer after using them up. They are crammed full, with the extras going into a Ziploc bag.

This is what I make with my frozen strawberries:


Yummy!

Part Time Has Begun!

I am in the middle of my first week of working part time! A young woman who has done some temp work in my company was interested in the position and she started on Monday! She will be working Mondays and Tuesdays and I'll be working Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I am really excited!

I am going to be training with her a little bit this month. My boss doesn't want to have to pay either of us overtime, so I went in for one hour on Monday and one hour yesterday. Then, she went home an hour early on Monday and I'll go home an hour early on Friday to make up for it. Not ideal, but we're working with it.

I can already tell that I am not going to have any problems filling up my two days off. I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished this week. I think my biggest challenge is going to be to not waste too much time on the Internet :)

Financially, I should be getting a lump sum payout of my unused vacation time in with my next paycheck. I plan to use that to top off our emergency fund, which will then be at our goal amount! Anything left over will probably be split between the car fund and the home improvement fund.

I'm a little nervous about the large decrease in my paycheck. We've never relied on it for living expenses (it's all gone into savings funds), but I've become really accustomed to growing our savings accounts fairly quickly. We have a lot to save yet before we'll be ready to replace our old vehicles, and that's going to go a lot more slowly now. I know I just need to have faith, though, because I'm really sure that this is where God wants me.

I'm looking forward to a productive summer!

Part Time Update and More Free Stuff!

First, an update on my hopeful move to part time work from full time work. The job share position is now officially on my company's website as an open position. According to my boss, the hr department has already received 24 applications. They found four that they phone interviewed and only one was interested in the small number of hours we're looking to fill (16/hrs a week). We'll see what happens!

Also, I received more free stuff in the mail! Check it out:


I got this sweet box of stuff from a community that I am a part of called BzzAgent. I haven't been very active in the community, so this is the first thing I've gotten. I might have to get more involved :)

It's Official - I Am No Longer Cool

I know, you hadn't even realized I was cool before. Well, I was. For my eight years as the owner of a Ford Mustang. As of Tuesday, that time is over. We sold the Mustang for about Blue Book value.

I lowered the price on Monday, and that seemed to do the trick. I had three people contact me (two through Craigslist and one through Carsoup), and one of the Craigslist guys drove up from southern Wisconsin on Tuesday night and bought it!

About half of the money went back into our emergency fund, which is how we paid for the Mazda. The other half went into our New Car Fund for our next vehicle(s)!

To put salt in the wound, the wonderful state of Wisconsin sent me new license plates for the Mazda, which showed up yesterday. I was really fond of my old plates, which had been on my Mustang and we transferred to the Mazda. You see, Wisconsin license plates used to be three letters, a dash, and then three numbers. The three letters on my old plates were "RBL", which I took to mean "Rebel"!

A couple of years ago, they changed the plates to read three numbers, a dash, and then three letters. They are slowly moving all of the old plates over to the new system.

The letters on my new plates? "PUY"

Not cool.

Car Selling Tips?

As I mentioned a few months ago, my husband and I bought a new (used) car last winter and were waiting until spring to sell my really sweet Mustang. Well, spring has arrived and the Mustang is up for sale. We put it on Craigslist last Sunday (speaking of which, I should re-post it today) and have also put it on CarSoup.

So far, I've only had one reply, and that was from a kid who wanted to trade it for his 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse (umm, no thanks!).

We have some wiggle room in the price, so we'll probably drop it down soon. I priced it above Kelly Blue Book, but way below anything else comparable on CarSoup.

I'm beginning to wonder if we should also list the car on Cars.com??? I know our local newspaper links to Cars.com and so does Yahoo!, so the traffic is probably a lot heavier.

Anyone have any advice? Are people even buying cars right now? Should we list it on Cars.com? Any thoughts are appreciated!

A Little Update

Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you for leaving me, I haven't been very faithful around here!

I haven't had much to post about lately since life is still kind of in limbo. I'm hoping to scale back from working fulltime to working parttime and still don't know if/how that's going to work out.

I've had it in the back of my mind since last summer that I wanted to cut back my hours and spend more time being a homemaker. I was originally planning on doing it as soon as possible after the first of the year (I'm covered under my husband's health insurance plan now). Then the economy went haywire, and I was uncertain as to what I should do. I've decided to go ahead with my plans, and I've talked to my boss. Now we just need to find someone to job share with me! I'm hoping to be working parttime by June. We'll see how it goes!

An Ambassador? Sure!!!

Sorry to post two articles in a row about things I received in the mail, but this is too cool to not post about. Check out what was in the box I received in the mail the other day:


The box contained a full-size bottle of Jergens Naturals lotion, plus ten sample packs and ten coupons! Jergens included a letter asking me to be their ambassador by handing out the samples and coupons to my friends. How fun is that!?! I think I received this because of a survey I filled out awhile back, but I don't remember exactly.

Anyway, I'll try to post something more substantial on here soon :)

Fun Mail Day

I received a ton of fun stuff in the mail today!


Here is what I got:
- Two $2.00 Purina coupons that I received after emailing Purina and letting them know how much my cats love their food!
- Two Home Made Simple coupon books. I'm not sure how I got two of them, but I'm not complaining!
- Nexxus shampoo and conditioner samples - but no coupons :(
- Two samples of Pamprin and coupon. Only one of the samples is in the picture because I used the other one already - how's that for perfect timing!
- $5 off any purchase at Famous Footwear coupon
- the best of all: three coupons for free items!!! I got these from a Kraft sweepstakes. It includes a coupon for a free Nabisco Cracker item, a free Planter's Peanut item, and a free Kraft Cheese item.

I love awesome mail days like this :)

A New (To Us) Car

Ok, before you get excited, I'll be straight with you - the new car is actually a downgrade.

If you've read this blog for awhile, you know that one of our 2008 financial goals was saving in our "New Car Fund". My husband and I have been discussing our car situation for quite awhile now, and here's what we've come up with.

My husband doesn't like driving my Mustang (I know, isn't he crazy?!?), but since he works so close to home, he ends up driving it a lot in the winter. Also, we won't know what kind of vehicle I will want to drive next until after we have kids (if we have kids). If/When the little one arrives, I'd like to try using a four-door car first and only buy a minivan/SUV if the car doesn't work well. But, I don't want to buy a newer four-door car only to sell it again a few months later.

The answer we came up with was to buy a cheap car to replace the Mustang. Then, once we know what we want to upgrade to, it will be pretty easy (and inexpensive) to sell the cheap car.

Our original thought was to sell the Mustang and buy the cheap car next summer/fall. My sister-in-law just had a baby, though, and bought an SUV to replace her 1998 Mazda Protege. She bought the Mazda new and has taken great care of it. We couldn't pass it up!

So, we are now the proud (sort of!) owners of a 1998 Mazda - paid cash, of course!


Since winter is not the prime time to sell a rear-wheel drive Mustang, we're going to park it out at my parents' house until spring (thanks, Dad and Mom!). We should get more for the Mustang than what we paid for the Mazda, so hopefully we'll be able to make a nice boost to our car fund at that time.

Below is a picture I found online of a similar-year Mazda Protege. This isn't the actual car, though our car is blue (darker than the one in the picture, though).


As you might guess, I am pretty sad at the thought of selling the Mustang. I've owned it for 9 years and loved every minute of it! I always knew, though, that someday I'd want to have kids and that the Mustang just wasn't going to fit in with that lifestyle. *sigh* I'm going to miss you, Eleanor!

The One Where a Bonus Saves the Day

In my last post, I mentioned that my husband and I were going to try to max out our Roth IRA's at $5,000 each by April 15th. Well, my husband received a nice bonus and we decided to put it all toward our Roths, so we will be maxed out by December 22nd! I'm really happy about that.

My plan is to take some time before the first of the year and discuss Financial Goals 2009 with my husband. I thought I'd be throwing any extra money for the first couple of months toward the Roths, but that's obviously changed :)

Some options will be: getting a jump start on 2009 Roth contributions, beefing up the emergency fund, putting extra money towards the mortgage, and/or working on the car fund. I'll let you know what we decide!

Financial Goals 2008: Where Did the Year Go?

I can't believe how quickly 2008 slipped by me! Less than two months left! I am way overdue for an update on our financial goals.

1. ROTH IRA's. My goal for 2008 was to contribute $4,000 into both my husband's and my Roth IRA. We are currently at $7,050 contributed. We've been putting most of our "extra" money toward this goal, so it's growing quickly. My husband and I have also decided that we're going to put emphasis on this goal and try to get to $5,000 in each Roth by the deadline on April 15th.

2. New Car Fund. I don't even want to look at the balance in this account! It's invested in the stock market, so I'm sure you can guess what that means. Yuck! We have been continuing to put money in this fund, so at least we are now buying low (I hope!). We've hit our goal of adding $3,900 to this account. We have actually added $4,025 so far this year. I doubt we'll meet our stretch goal of $4,500, though, since we're really concentrating on the Roth's right now.

3. Emergency Fund. Our goal for this fund was to increase it by $2,600 this year. This goal has been met and then some! We have currently added $2,900 to our emergency fund this year! So far, $500 of this has been moved to a cd. I'm going to continue to do this in $500 increments about every other month (called a cd ladder) since we should never need all of this money all at once. At least some of it can earn a little bit more interest!

4. New Siding Fund. This is another completed goal... sort of. My husband and I ended up hiring to have the house painted instead of getting new siding. It turned out fairly well, but I'm guessing we'll go with vinyl siding next time. At any rate, the paint job should last 5-10 years and we can make a decision at that time. Hubby recently informed me that new shingles will be next on the list!

I'm pretty happy with the progress we've made this year. We will have met all of our 2008 goals and some of the stretch goals! I'm thinking of making some income-related changes next year (more on that later!), so I'm glad we've been able to accomplish a lot this year. Pretty soon I'll start working on some 2009 goals!

Favorite Blog Posts: 11/21/2008

I haven't done a "favorite blog posts" article in awhile, but I came across some stories recently that I really liked.

Glblguy over at Gather Little By Little shared a thought-provoking tax story he received in an email. Interesting way to look at things!

I recently started reading a cute, fun blog written by Big Mama. She just came back from a trip to the Dominican Republic with Compassion International and had one last story to share. This one is a real tear-jerker!

Lastly, Rocket Finance is starting a new series on Finances and Freedom. He leans right, so you may or may not want to keep up with this one ;) I'm really enjoying it so far.

Have a great weekend!

Recipe Websites and 100th Post!

I'm a picky eater and usually just buy the same couple of things to eat for dinner all the time (namely, potatoes!). My husband, on the other hand, likes everything (except beets and sauerkraut). I have been spending some time over this past year and four months of marriage locating recipes that are easy to make and that my husband will love. I've found quite a few winners. The problem is that a lot of recipes call for just a little bit of a fresh produce or dairy item that I buy and then most of it goes to waste.

I'm going to try to get better at locating different recipes that use some of the same vegetables. For example, last week I made a chicken rice casserole dish for my husband that called for fresh celery and onions. Of course, I had to buy a whole bunch of celery even though I only needed 1/4 cup of it!

Determined to not let all of that celery go to waste, on Sunday night I went internet searching for an easy recipe that had celery as an ingredient. I ended up at All Recipes, which seems to be one of the largest databases of free recipes out there (this is not a paid advertisement, by the way!). I was able to do a search by ingredient. I found another casserole dish that looked easy, but it also had chicken in it, so I thought it might be too much like the original dish I had made.

Searching around some more, I came across this Golden Potato Soup recipe. It looked pretty easy, and I definitely already had the potatoes on hand ;) It even calls for onion, so I was able to use more of that up!

I made it tonight, and it was a definite hit. From now on, whenever I make the chicken rice casserole, my husband will know that potato soup will be for dinner a few nights later :)

I really love the idea of grouping recipes together to keep food (and money!) from going to waste. The next time I make a dish that calls for a produce or dairy item that we won't use up, I'm going to go looking for a matching recipe to make later the same week.

Does anyone else do this? Do you have some favorite recipes that you like to "lump" together? I'd love to hear about them (with links if they're online!!!).


ps- Wow! This is my 100th post on Family and Finances. Craziness :)

Best Financial Advice I've Received

Peter at Bible Money Matters posted on Friday about the best financial advice he's received. Peter says:

So the advice I got from my parents by observing them growing up:

1. Be content in life by focusing on important things like faith and family.
2. Live frugally, spend less than you earn and pay cash.

I thought I'd share the best financial advice that I've received!

When I was in high school, I took an accounting class. In it, the teacher taught a little about IRA's and other retirement accounts. I don't remember any of the details, but I do remember coming away from that class knowing that you should start investing when you're young and compound interest will work in your favor.

Because of this lesson, when I turned 18, I decided to put a little bit of money in an IRA. I didn't know anything about investing, so I just went to my credit union. Here's some advice for you: credit unions are not the best place to go for investing advice!

The woman I spoke with didn't tell me the difference between a Roth and a Traditional IRA, she didn't mention anything about mutual funds, she seemed to have no opinion at all. She just took my money and put it in a cd in a Traditional IRA. Looking back, this was about the dumbest thing she could have done. I was 18! I belonged in a good growth mutual fund in a Roth IRA! *sigh* (ps- that IRA has since been moved out of the credit union. I love banking with credit unions, but I don't keep my investments there!)

A few years later, I was working in an insurance office in the same building as an Edward Jones office. My bosses were friends with the Edward Jones adviser, so he'd come over and chat with me sometimes. He kept telling me that I should start doing a monthly investment, no matter how small, into a Roth IRA. He said that since I was young, time and compounding would work in my favor (hmmm, starting to sound familiar!). I eventually headed his advice and opened up a Roth, putting in just $25 a month, which was all I could afford at the time.

Fast forward another year or so, and I came across the book "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach. In it, there is a really neat graph showing how investing when you're young pays off.

The message has stuck, and it's one I've passed onto my brothers and anyone else who will listen: Start investing when you're young because time and compound interest will work in your favor!

What's the best financial advice you've ever received?

Hope Chest Legacy

Just a quick note:

I just read a post on MoneySavingMom's website today about Hope Chest Legacy. There are a group of women collecting items right now to send to orphans in the Ukraine. Items are due by October 15th to be included in the shipment going to the Urkaine. If anyone who knows me personally would like to send something, I'm planning on mailing a box out early next week. There is a page discussing the clothing needs and a page discussing the medical needs.

Remember the New Balance shoes I won? Well, I don't really care for how they fit, so I'm going to donate them! Fun!!!