This post is due to a forum post about making tortillas from scratch. I feel like an idiot because I should have realized they would be easy to make from scratch.

Its amazing how many premade things we just accept in our diet because we don't realize that its just as easy to make them. Its also really important to me because we need to be cooking everything from scratch if we are to go organic this next month. It will help keep costs down which I still suspect will go up some.

Ah well, that is what I love about this place. It helps me catch those things I still take for granted.

Thanks everyone!

I will qualify this post by reminding everyone that I came from a very poor family that somehow managed to do well with what they had. I will also remind everyone that budgeting wise, DH and I didn't do poorly until we moved away after college so our current mess was a momentary blip of insanity.

Has anyone looked at various sites about what percentage to save of their income? I nearly popped a gasket when I saw some of them recommending saving the same amount I currently save (which I consider low because I am paying off credit cards)!!

Now I have always known I was oblivious and out of touch but when a savings blogger who thinks he is extremely frugal suggests that 50/20/30 goal(musthaves/ savings/wants and this was the most extreme I could find) is difficult to obtain even for him, I begin to wonder how long I have been in the deepfreeze.

Did I miss something? I understand there are times in people's lives where they can't always save alot but that is why you save when you can. I currently live on 45% of my income and that includes an allowance. Everything else is debt payments and savings. My dh does the same.

I can see why it was a struggle for someone like my father to live on a poverty level income and save (which he still did) but why is 10% the most common advice I see? Don't people want to retire eventually?

I realize that a great majority of you figured this out sooner but for me its a new concept. I see myself as a spender (because in my family I was the spender by comparison) and the concept that I could be considered an extreme saver in the near future is beyond my imagination.

Rant over, I feel better now

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I am thinking of joining one that will provide eggs and any meat I could want (they are a heritage poultry farm but they have alliances with beef and buffalo farms as well).

Obviously this won't save me money over buying the processed stuff but it may be cheaper than the stuff from organic stores. Even if its a little more, its definitely better for all involved.

I will be doing Farmer's Markets this year as well but have to wait till May for those.

Its only been recently that all our groceries have been conventional and I only did that to get our budget under control. Now that the budget is where it should be, its time to see if I can integrate local, chemical free foods without blowing our budget.

Now if I could just find someone to deliver milk...

I have only done it a couple of times but its annoying when you are trying to pay down debt.

I paid one of my credit cards 2 days too early so now I am also coughing up a min payment for the card in addition to what I already paid on it. Not a huge deal, but annoying. Especially annoying is the fact that if I hadn't checked something else on the website I would have never known.

Of course, the other money issue annoying me at the moment is an uncashed check. I was refunding my firm the unused portion of petty cash for my business trip and its now 2 months later and they still haven't cashed it. Guess I am going to have to ask if they lost it.

So I thought I wasn't going to get a bonus this year so we worked with what we had instead. Aka, I don't need this bonus at all. Not a good thing...

I know a couple of ways of using the bonus that are responsible, such as putting it in savings for future travel, making an extra payment on the debt and adding it to the house downpayment pot.

But I got to say, my friend (shop til you drop type) and even my husband (who feels guilty for agreeing to buy me so little this Christmas *rolls eyes*) are encouraging me to spend at least part of it on me.

Now you see why I take money away from myself before I ever see it. *Sigh*

I give myself an allowance monthly, I don't need this money to splurge on myself. I have plenty in the budget for splurges so that they spread out. I think I may go with my original plan to put it on debt. After all, that will save us money in the long run...

Don't you just hate temptation?

If I am in the mood for shopping (always online since I hate stores) I can put things in my amazon wishlist without actually spending money. Then, I forget about them or wait for them to go cheaper (the latter is especially useful for new video games since paying full price is ridiculous).

Later on, I will go through the list and get rid of the things that were really just a whim (usually takes me 2 months to give something the boot) and I have no buyer's regret because I didn't buy it and I don't feel pressured to buy something because I know the list will remember it for me if I really do want it later.

I get to enjoy shopping online without spending and then later on pat myself on the back when I delete things from the list.

I know some people couldn't do it this way because it would lead them to buy more stuff but I am quite content to window shop without spending so it works for me.

I read a lot of blogs that have no spend days. For me, almost everyday is a no spend day. Its easier to count the spend days. Not that this means I don't spend any money, it just means I usually do it in batches, lol.

However, the batches have been getting smaller. This weekend we went to a play (my christmas present) and we spent $35, which included lunch and dinner. We used to spend twice that on just supper so definite improvement there.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Ever get yourself to that spot where you don't need to do anything more but wait for time to finish a job? *Sigh* I am at that point with our finances. Everything is on auto-pilot and doing well and now I just need to wait...

But I hate waiting, I prefer to tinker. My grocery budget is where I want it, I have an allowance which is perfectly adequate, the bills are as low as I am capable of getting them and my husband is debt-free and saving up a down payment for a house.

All I need to do is wait. Blah, how annoying. I know I should be glad to be at this point but I like working on problems or projects.

So Chuck Roasts for $1.49/lb at my local Safeway store.

So how many of you knew that if you buy a cheap roast and cut it in half before you cook it you get a really tender, thick steak?

We tried it the other day because I think someone else mentioned it and wow. So much better than those tough little charcoal steaks.

We now cut it up before throwing it in the freezer and its better quality steak than what we were eating before for at least half the price. Yummy!

He got to the store first after work and so started to pick up things. I was amazed to discover that he had not only stuck to the list but had also compared prices per unit. When I commented on it, he told me that well yeah, he had picked some tricks up by osmosis from me! Lol.
I guess I didn't realize that I talked about that stuff that much or that he was watching that closely the few times he joins me in grocery shopping.

I guess this means that we both have the basics down, now if only I could figure out how to avoid my occasional spendy moods.... I only get them once every couple of months but boy are they bad, they more than make up for months of being good.

I have to be careful not to look at laptop computers. I really really want one and have wanted one for awhile now. But my debts come first. They have to because otherwise I will never pay them off. I am currently living within my means but I need to start living below my means if I want to pay off my mistakes and start aggressively saving for retirement.

Even looking is dangerous, I start getting really interested and thinking how I could afford it and that is when I realize that I am still finding big projects to spend money on.

Right now my best motivation is wanting to buy a house next winter. It works even better than the debt because the amount it would cost for the laptop could be saved up in just two months, but that would put me two months behind on saving for a house and I want the house more. I don't want to have to sign another year lease for an apartment because I bought a laptop.

It does worry me about getting a house though. It would be so easy to find big projects for my house and it would be so easy to make excuses for why we need it. I already know that I will have to budget so that we have a limit to what we can spend on the house each month.

No worries though, my desire for a laptop hasn't resulted in me buying one for the last two years, it won't for another two. I have a plan and I intend to stick with it. After all, I can hit only $2000 in credit card debt by the time we buy next winter which means being debt free two months after. I won't give that up for anything.

So I have survived my 4 flights in 8 days (one set for seeing family for Thanksgiving, one set for a business conference). Still will need a couple of days to regain my energy, especially since I spent all of Saturday doing chores and going to the company Christmas party.

Speaking of which, I have discovered that my friend is a very bad window shopper. Had I realized how much, I wouldn't have had her come with me but she claimed that she had things she needed...

It probably didn't help that she saw us buy things that weren't on our list. They were things we had been planning on buying for awhile and we have it built into our budget to afford them at our convenience but she didn't necessarily know that. Course, I can't blame myself for the fact that the night before she had put herself $78 into the hole by overdrawing her checking account.

Its sort of like watching a train wreck. Maybe the crash she has embarked on this month will help wake her up. She already knows that her next paycheck will be eaten up completely by the car payment and other bills. Yuck.

So this weekend, I called up my friend to see how her new job is going since this was her first week and she told me she had to call me back because she was in the middle of signing paperwork for leasing a brand new car. What!!??!!

This girl had been at my house the weekend before to learn whether she had enough to pay rent because of the transition but she is going to lease a new car?! My dh and I look at each other and just shake our heads and promise ourselves no more money will be given to her to help her out. We aren't paying for her mistakes.

The news gets a little better later on, she got turned down for the lease because her credit is only 620 and now she is across the street trying to buy a new car. She's upset that she has to buy one because then "she will have to mess with selling it while it still has a loan."

1. Why can't she keep the car until it's paid off. (I never got a real answer to this one)

2. Why can't she save up a down payment so she doesn't have to worry about being upside down in the loan when she sells. Answer: she wants it now because all of a sudden she just can't wait for a car. Okay...

The good news is she kept the payments at $200, the bad news is its a 6 year loan and she will pay $4,400 over the life of the loan for the privilege of financing. She also thinks she will only keep it for 3 or 4 years. Given her driving history, we figure she will total it in 2...

She has no EF, the credit cards are maxed, she just started this job a week ago but she couldn't wait two months to get her feet under her.

Sadly, for her, this is making progress and she will be able to afford the car payment. The question is, how many other things will she decide she can afford until she can't afford anything?

So, given that my cupboards were bare, I went a little nuts getting groceries. I spent $133 and got $210 worth of groceries for my trouble. Its nice to have food in the freezer again and in the pantry. Got to say though, even with my husband to help, those groceries were a pain to get home. Its the one time I miss having a car.

Currently looking like we will spend about $220 on groceries this month. Definitely not bad and a far cry from the $600 per month I use to spend. In fact, for the previous two months I averaged $250. Woohoo. I think I am finally getting our food budget under control.

So
fix my clothing budget, check
fix my food budget, check
fix my out to eat budget, check
fix my miscellaneous budget, needs work

My miscellaneous budget this year to date was atrocious. I definitely need to work on that. I think I have a plan that should help but we shall see...

Oh yes, I remember doing this with my mother. What fun we had going to three different grocery stores to get all the loss leaders. Tis that time of year.

I was a little surprised that the only store without a card system had the worst prices. I had always been told that getting rid of card sales resulted in cheaper prices but obviously not. They only had 2 decent items.

So that drops me to only two stores. My normal store and one that I will only shop loss leaders at because their off brand is nasty so only name brand stuff from them.

Now, unfortunately, my normal store is tricky. They like to mark up prices to put things on sale. But they have enough real deals and a good off brand that I just avoid the false sales and call it good.

I need to restock and so I am actually thrilled with the sales. I have an empty freezer and my pantry isn't far behind. I think I will be buying an extra turkey, I really can't beat $0.32/lb for meat.

Well, I wish everyone luck and patience because I am pretty sure its going to be scary out there. The sales in my area began yesterday and today is payday for a lot of people in my area (15th and 30th are paydays, not sure why everyone is that way but it really is most people).

Let the madness begin! So how many of you aren't going out again until Jan 2?

So we decided that husband gets a new laptop (well sort of, new to us for $100 bought from his work) and I get Pride and Prejudice theatre tickets. We are happy and won't be getting anything else for ourselves. Now we just need to buy for his family. I can't believe the holidays are already upon us.

We will be making Thanksgiving dinner for my friend who will be taking care of our puppy while we are gone for Thanksgiving. Funny part is, that is still cheaper than paying for the vets to board him.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but I tend to wear out clothes. I wear them until the hems shred, the fabric stretches beyond recognition and holes appear everywhere. I hate clothes shopping so I keep trying to find brands that hold up over time and I have got to say, they all fall apart equally fast. It doesn't matter if the item cost $2 or $100, I have had both disintegrate equally fast.

So, obviously I am going back to cheaper clothing to avoid the break down issue becoming a money drain issue but I really do hate clothes shopping so frequently. Anyone have any brands that they think will hold up so I don't have to replace them constantly? Keep in mind I have a professional job so my clothes need to be somewhat nice but nothing to spiffy. I am a pretty casual girl.

Well, any suggestions?

I don't know about you guys, but I am incredibly impatient. On December 1 I will get to pay off my first credit card of 4. The next one drops in April. Its going to be such a relief to have those gone. And my dh's last credit card will be gone in December.

Its going to be so nice seeing that down payment for a house start growing in January.

So something for those learning how to cook from scratch to laugh at.

I have been teaching my husband how to cook but there are a couple of things neither of us have ever done so we have to experiment a lot to get it right.

The latest experiment was bread. It flopped bad. We weren't sure why at first, especially since we had no problem with whole wheat pitas but after a little research, I finally figured it out. When we make our pastry crust its very specific, the less you handle it the better. My husband had thought that applied to bread as well. Oops.

On a sad note, to get around our incompetence on this issue, we were attempting to use our breadmaker (never before used) to make bread while we researched what was going wrong with his attempts.

Our breadmaker unfortunately is DOA. The mixer part has croaked at some point. *Sigh* Oh well, it was a Sunbeam one so its to be expected. But at least we know now how to make bread!!

So tonight, we are so going to have fresh bread. Yum!

Anyone who has read my blog probably knows that I have an insane attachment to eating out that I have been slowly cutting down. I don't even know why I have to do it so much since I am a good cook and my food is usually better than anything I can buy at a restaurant.

So the question is, do you have a vice that is spending more of your money than you want it to? And why do you think that is?

I am not talking about the things you do for yourself that you love and could never give up. I am talking about things that are keeping you from acheiving greater financial success with no real reward.

This weekend was supposed to be crazy due to multiple planned events. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for my dh and my friend, 2 of the 4 planned events were cancelled due to other people backing out at the last minute.

Of course one of these things had the potential to be a really expensive dinner but I am not sure how much we will save since our friend will probably still want to do something. We should still come out ahead though.

Okay, so I panicked for no reason. My friend has made sure everyone knows that they are going dutch and that they understand the price of the place.

Its a little weird for me to assume she would let people know these things because she didn't use to be so responsible. She has definitely gotten a better head on her shoulders since nearly going through bankruptcy.

We even set up a budget for her tonight that includes saving and retirement in it as well as mad money. She was really excited when she realized that she could get stuff and still accumulate savings and pay off debts. I gave her the excel spreadsheet so that she can play with the numbers and see what she can do with it.

Feeling a lot better now if a bit sheepish for assuming she was still my old friend who nearly ended up in bankruptcy court because of a clothing obsession. That was a mere year and a half ago.

Blah! My friend wants to go to Benihana's this weekend for her B-day. I am less than enthused as what I have heard about this place is less than complimentary and its expensive. I don't mind things being expensive if they are good as well but when I pay a fortune for nothing, I tend to feel cheated.

I am also a little concerned that she is having some college attending friends coming and I am wondering how they are going to like the price tag. All the people she has invited are new acquaintances because she just moved out here. She can't afford to pick up the entire check and I would prefer not to pick up the entire check for the party. I am really hoping that she made it clear that everyone is going dutch...

*Sigh* I feel really cheap saying all that but I have already spent alot of money on this friend (over 4k) and I really see this party going wrong. 10 people at $20+ for just the entree can add up very quickly. As it is, going dutch at this dinner will most likely mean dh and I don't get to eat out the rest of the month and still exceed where we want to be. I am already paying for a railroad luncheon trip for her and us that same weekend which is $70 per ticket...

Oh, by and by, this is the friend who almost had to file bankruptcy. Are you surprised?

Well, I went to the Pumpkin Harvest Festival and had fun. I only spent $45 of the $100 I had saved out for it so I was quite happy.

However, my friend had one of her new friends show up at it and we ended up being kidnapped for the day and half the night. Between dinner, coffee and a couple hours of pool, we went through another $30. It was fun and I had already saved out the money but it was a very long day.

That said, I now have an extra $20+ to add back into my budget to defray the expenses of next weekend's plans.

Okay, so very happy. My friend who was near bankruptcy not too long ago and who we helped to move out here so she could find a job (which she did) has requested that I teach her how to budget!

Not that I am expert or anything. After all, it wasn't the imaginary fairy who ran up my credit cards, but its nice to know that she is going to make a real effort to get things straightened out. She has been doing pretty good so far but needs to understand what this magic "budget" thing is.

I think seeing how our finances work and how that let us afford to bring her out to Denver and support the entire moving experience really made her realize that a budget helps you afford the things you really care about. I set her up initially on a "if everything goes wrong budget, this is what you need." Being able to know her basic numbers like that really helped her not to freak out when initially starting her job.

Whenever her father said it was time for a budget, he meant that the entire family needed to buy nothing to pay for his financial mistakes. Needless to say, mine was the first budget she ever glimpsed that wasn't about deprivation, its about being in control.

So this weekend sometime I am going to teach my husband and my friend the basics of budgeting and where to find additional information. The reason I am also teaching my husband is because he doesn't have any experience with a budget and all he pays is the rent. Thats a big bill but if something happened to me, he would be in a little bit of trouble trying to figure out what to do.

Oh, and I am going to attempt to set both of them on goal savings because they both like to buy things for other people and that will be the only way they won't blow everything. Its weird and I don't get it. Why do people equate giving gifts with showing affection for people? You don't have to buy someone something for them to feel loved.

So a year and a half ago, my dh's company was going to promote him to a processor position. Then the layoffs came and he survived them but was never promoted. He's been looking for jobs since but the market is flooded with all these people out of work thanks to the bubble burst in the housing market.

I suspect that they figured out that he was jobhunting and instead of laying him off at the next layoff, they decided to finally move him into the processor position. (He does have the best numbers in the company for his position.)Starting next Monday he is training his temporary replacement (who is a temp worker) and starting Wednesday he will be getting trained in his new position.

I say temporary because they are talking of having him in the new position for only 4th quarter but who knows with this wacky company, especially since everyone expects layoffs in January...

Okay, I am a dork. I really don't mind. I love everything to do with fall and this Saturday, my dh, a friend and I are all going to a pumpkin harvest festival.

Its free admission to the 12 acre park and they have rides, activities and food.

I am really looking forward to harvesting pumpkins and exploring the historic park.

On a financial note, I have saved out about $100 which should more than cover all the various expenses and then some. Now I just need to go get it out of my account so that I have it for the big day. (Cash is a rarity for me because I can spend it like no other. Hence, I only allow myself to use my debit card.) It feels good knowing that I can splurge as much as I want because this money was already saved out.

So my husband and I were discussing finances last night because I get impatient about how long it takes to pay debt off and so have to give myself pep talks. I also wanted to make sure that we were actually making progress and not back sliding at all.

So you want to hear the scary number? My husband and I in the past year have paid off more than 14k in debt. And at the start of that year we weren't being extremely frugal. Every time an unexpected (or unplanned for) expense has come up, I have just had us tighten our belts because I was afraid we wouldn't stay on track otherwise.

I really thought it would be a lot less. I mean we have taken a couple of trips, I have bought lots of electronic toys, and I can assure you our personal collection of books and cd's have grown dramatically. We are not the poster children for frugal by any stretch of the imagination.

This past year was all about gradually learning to make do with less so that we didn't feel deprived. I am actually kind of excited now to see what another year of this brings! I mean, if we could pay off that much while still learning how not to spend, I can just imagine how well we could do now.

As the title suggests, I am feeling much better about myself now.