Budgeting: Food Shopping

I am not a coupon-clipper. First of all, I don't subscribe to a newspaper, and second, I often feel like coupons are for things that I wouldn't buy anyway. I know that's not always the case, but I usually can't be bothered to use them.

However, here are some tricks I have been trying to save some money on the grocery bill:

1. Make my own bread. With my new cookbook, this has been pretty simple, and has saved $1.50/loaf (at least). I just bake it, slice it, and freeze it.
2. Buy in-season produce as much as possible.
   
3. I've started buying dried beans instead of canned (when practical). It's a 50% savings.
   
4. Shop at Trader Joe's. You can find some really awesome deals at TJ's. I think the tofu is like $1.50 cheaper than what I get at Target.
   
5. I always make a list.
6. Buy store-brand when possible.
   
7. Don't buy processed food (I still need Morningstar Farms sausages, though!).
8. Join a CSA farm.
   
9. Tony and I eat less. Really.
   

I tried shopping at Aldi once, which is REALLY cheap (22% cheaper than Wal-Mart), but the experience was pretty tragic, and I can't bring myself to go back. If things get worse, however, I might just suck it up.

Budgeting: Review of Mvelopes

OK. I'm pretty in love with this program/service/whatever it is. Maybe I'll ask my mom for an early Christmas present?

The Good:

• Easy to set up and link accounts. I had no problems linking my checking and savings accounts.
• Great Tech support. I did have a bit of trouble linking my credit card, but Mvelopes tech. support helped me right away. They even have live chat.
• Effortless to track expenses! When I make any purchases with my debit or credit card, they are posted into my Mvelopes account, and I just click and drag them to the appropriate category (groceries, medical, education, etc.). It's always a pain for me to print out bank/credit card statements, and separate all of the entries into different columns and add them up with a calculator. Mvelopes saves me LOTS of time, and I can assess how we're doing on our budget any given day.

The Bad:

• If you don't already have a budget/spending plan, it will still be useful for you, but it may take a few months of spending to figure out what your spending habits are.
• It takes awhile to log in and refresh my accounts, especially with Mozilla. I've had much better luck with Explorer.
• Mvelopes makes me a little too obsessed with the budget. I need to limit myself the number of times to check it in a week! : )
  

Budgeting: Mvelopes

For some of the more flexible items in our budget, like haircut money, clothes money, etc., we use the envelope system. I first learned about this budgeting method through Ruth Hayden's wonderful books, but many others tout this method as well.

How does it work? Well, for clothing, we budget $20/month, so I put $20 cash into a designated envelope every month. When I go to buy clothes, I can use the cash that is in that envelope, and no more. I could take some cash from the Met Opera envelope, but that would mean we'd miss an opera.

Some people use this system virtually. They set up spreadsheets and divvy up their paychecks that way, but don't have actual cash in hand. I've recently seen a product called Mvelopes that intrigues me. You pay a subscription (about $14/month), and it guides you into setting up your virtual envelope system. Mvelopes links to your bank, credit cards, 401k, etc., and it keeps track of your spending for you! The subscription also includes on-line bill pay, and some other cool features.

Although I'm not sure I want to give Mvelopes $14 every month, they do have a one month free trial that I WILL try, and then report back to you. It seems like a really cool idea!

Budgeting: Our Budget

So, I quit my job. We were able to swing it by paying off the car early ($237.61/month saved), and postponing our student loan payments (a little more than $500/month saved).

Side note: our student loan payments are the bane of our financial existence. They really eat up a huge chunk of our income. Advice: do not take out lots of student loans to pay for an education that will not allow you to make a decent living, like, as a singer, for example.

Ironically, I will be going back to school for 15 months, and will definitely have to pony up to the student loan counter. However, my new chosen field (I will earn a B.S. in Clinical Laboratory Science) has an average starting salary of $47,000. That really seems like a TON of money to me.

I digress. Here WAS our actual monthly family budget (post-job):


INCOME: 2400.00 (Tony's take-home pay)
EXPENSES: 2408.87 (Hey! Not too bad!)

With the increase in food and gas prices, here is our current budget:

INCOME: 2400.00
EXPENSES: 2717.87 (Yikes!)

Umm, wow. We're working on the food bill (truly, we're not extravagant shoppers: no soda, no snacks, no ice cream), but the car expenses have to stay. Tony HAS to drive to work and FOR work (he sometimes has to drive over 100 miles in a day). He does get reimbursed for mileage, but his non-profit reduced the rate about 6 months ago, and, of course, gas prices have climbed steadily ever since. I drive VERY little...not much to cut there.

These are the expenses that we could possibly cut (along with comments about our willingness to cut said item):

1. Contribution to Hal's 529: $75 (no)
2. life insurance: $65.39 (scary!)
3. internet service: $63.15 (umm, no way)
4. clothing: $20 (yes, that's really our clothing budget)
5. haircuts (Hal and Lauren): $20 (this one often goes to food instead)
6. Medical $50 (with Tony's HSA, we usually don't have to spend this...hooray!)
7. Entertainment (WOW and Netflix) $21.33 (I'm tempted to get rid of Netflix, but I'm not sure my husband could part with World of Warcraft)
8. Tony's lunch money: $40 (We often tap into this, as well)
9. Gifts: $40 (this is for birthday gifts for our immediate families and ourselves...maybe we will reduce the amount...sorry fam!)
10. Met Opera tickets: $28 (this will go up next year to $39...hmm

The good news: Tony is up for a raise pretty soon (it ought to be a good one...he's pretty awesome). Also good: no credit card debt, no car debt, no foreclosure (that's one nice thing about living in an apartment)!!!!

The bad: I'll be taking some night classes this summer and this fall (we have the money saved), and the thought of working on my off nights is kind of a HUGE drag. Also, we aren't making progress on our student loans. I probably just need to stop being a baby, suck it up, and get a job. There are certainly people in more difficult situations than we are.

What financial struggles have you faced, and what did you do to try to overcome them?

Budgeting: Some Back Story

I love to listen to Marketplace Money, and similar shows, that try to guide everyday folks like me to financial security. Chris Farrell makes it sound so easy. Just do this, trim so-and-so, and then you'll be fine.

The problem is, money isn't just math. There are lots of emotions tied up with money, at least, there are for me and my husband. Both Tony and I remember our parents fretting about money in the 70s and 80s, and it certainly shaped our financial views, although we do think pretty differently.

Because his parents really stressed about money, Tony likes to take a laissez-faire approach. He is of the opinion that there isn't a debtor's prison anymore, so why worry?

Because my parents really stressed about money, I worry about every single dime we spend. Seriously, I finally bought myself some new socks the other day. It had been at least 5 years.

Neither attitude seems particularly healthy or useful.

Enter into the equation, our chosen career paths. Tony and I were, once upon a time, both professional opera singers. I probably don't need to tell you that we didn't make a great deal of money. We were both successfully employed in our chosen fields, but the only way to be moderately financially successful as a singer is to be pretty famous. Even singers at the Met I know still teach on the side. It's a difficult path, and not at all family-friendly (all nights and weekends...lots of travel).

After Hal was born, I decided I couldn't bear the thought of going back to a job I didn't like very much (both Tony and I had left the arts by this time), so I did my best to figure out a budget where I could be home with Hal during the day, work part-time on nights and weekends at Starbucks, while Tony worked his new cool job at a non-profit. And you know? It worked pretty well. We were able to pay our bills (especially our horrifying student loans!!!!), save some money, and were even prepared for a few car-repair emergencies. We payed off our car loan two years early!!!!! Wow! Success!

Unfortunately, I never really got to sleep very much. I would get to sleep at about midnight, probably do a feeding or two, then get up around 4:30 or 5AM. Brutal. I was walking around in a fog for the first 2 years of Hal's life, and I still feel like I'm recovering. I really had to leave my job.

So, I did.

Coming up Next: what happened to the economy???!!! when will we ever pay off our student loans???!!! why are groceries so flipping expensive???!!!

Budgeting tip of the day: if you get paid bi-weekly, there are two times during the year that you will earn THREE paychecks in a month instead of two. Trick yourself, and do not budget for it (meaning: don't plan on spending it!!!!!!). Put this money directly into an emergency fund/savings account/IRA/529/whatever.

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