Money Talk

One of our goals for 2010 was to nail down our budget. Before we moved to CO, we worked with a cash envelope system. It worked well until we moved and were living in two separate states. We then moved to a cash back reward credit card for everything. We paid it off every month and that helped Honey track our separate spendings. And because we liked the money we were earning from it, decided to keep it that way for awhile.

Well now we're back to the envelope system. We are hoping to save more using cash than we made with our credit card. It's just too easy to whip out a card! Check out these kyuuute envelopes I made!!

This was my inspiration. I didn't do it exactly like she did b/c I'm not going to carry them around in my wallet and because I don't like my wallet anyway and I need want a new one. I also didn't use her template. I just found an envelope style I liked and took it apart and traced around it. Here's the back.

So I guess mine isn't like hers at all except that I made them out of scrapbook paper. Anyway... I like 'em!
What does that have to do with money? Hmm, not much. So nevermind. Back to budgeting.

~We set up our new budget this morning taking it down to zero dollars.
~We get paid every 2 weeks so I'll work with that dividing it in half.
~I am trying something new with my menuing and doing it every week instead of every 2 or every month.
~I'm thinking I should be able to cut the food budget by $75/mo b/c of my parents' meat and no diapers!
~The tricky thing about not getting paid monthly is dividing up money for stuff that you just buy once a month. Also excitedly buying too much of a sale item and then forgetting that we're out of toilet paper. That's me. So I made a list of everything I could think of that we think we have to have so I could plan around that better and still have money left on the last week.

When I started writing it all out, I figured we went though 30 gallons of milk, 5 lbs of sour cream, 10 lbs of cottage cheese, 20 lbs of butter, and 20 lbs of cheese every month. I'm thinking we should just buy ourselves a dairy cow and call it a day.

Next step is to be more careful with my list making so I can just shop once a week. I figure I'll just blitz it all in one day and be done with it. Aldi, Walmart, and Sams here we come!

And last but not least, we bought a new car! New for us, but really like 16 years old. It was coming time to have a third car for teenager purposes and we got a screamin' deal from a guy at Honey's office. It's super clean, in great shape, easy to drive with low mileage. Honey will drive it to work and leave the Escape for us. They both get better gas mileage than the van and will help us keep the van in better shape longer.