domestic goddess

I feel like the last few weeks have been filled to the brim with homemaking and other domestic stuff. Well except cleaning. I'm horrible at that. I'll do the dishes every day but I'm no good at the rest of it. Anyhow. I've particularly spent a lot of time in the kitchen the last while and tonight I got thinking about something...

As I was canning some peach-raspberry jam for the first time in my life (!!!) I thought to myself... dang, after tonight I'm going to get a major punch in my domestic goddess card!

Then I realized something... why isn't a domestic goddess card a thing?! I mean men have their "man cards" so why shouldn't us women have domestic goddess cards? I think we should. I'm starting it right now. And here's how it works...

So men get punches in their cards for doing semi-manly/feminine things. And that's frowned upon?? Whatever. So us domestic godddess-folk... we get punches for doing feminine/domestic goddess-like things because getting punches is actually a good thing. 

And that's it!

Super simple. Tonight I got a punch in my domestic-goddess card for making and canning jam. I also made a pretty tasty dinner so that's another punch.

And I think I'll give myself a punch for every *pop* that I hear... 'cause that means the canning is working!

Sweet!!

penny pinching: the envelope system.

We're just finishing up our fourth month on the envelope system so I thought it was about time you guys got an update on how things are going with our penny pinching endeavors.

If you didn't read this post feel free to do so to get a better idea of why we are pinching pennies. If you're not up for reading any more than you have to (heck, you're barely skimming this post) then I have two words for you... grad school.

Yup.

This next exciting phase of our lives is quickly approaching. Come July 25th we will be packing up, heading out, and living off of our savings of the last ~two years. At the beginning-ish of the year I realized that once this time did come we would need to make some serious changes to our money spending habits. K so we're not like huge spenders... but in this situation every penny must be pinched! Our biggest culprit of heavy spending? Groceries. Yeah we budgeted for groceries... but before I pretty much looked up whatever recipes I wanted and made whatever my heart desired and didn't feel bad at all for going over budget. Habits like unto this make for an unnecessary large grocery bill, in case you are wondering. A grocery bill that isn't going to fit into our let's-try-really-hard-not-to-go-into-debt-during-grad-school budget.

I decided that in order to shave down this grocery bill I needed to find ways to be more strict with our grocery budget. I needed a better way to keep track of what I was spending on food each week. And so, to save time, I started by trying out "the most successful" budgeting method perfected by Dave Ramsey... the envelope system. Pretty much the idea is to take out a certain amount of money each month for each category of spending and that's all you have to spend. That's it. No more. Like I said, that's the idea behind the method. How has it been going for us?? I'm glad you asked...

As I mentioned, the "groceries" area of our budget needed the most work and so that's where we started with the envelope system. So far it has been going mostly well. The first couple months were hard... I definitely had to pull out the debit card and spend more than was in the envelope. I soon realized that I needed to work my way down to my desired amount. After about four months of practice I have had leftover cash in the envelope for a couple months now! Woohoo! How did I get to this point, though? Again, thanks for asking! You're so polite, you know. (:
       
After totally botching the first couple of months I learned a few vital things...

1. Sometimes you need to budget for more than just your family. From a different master-budget-er I learned that the average amount of grocery money/month/person is $100. So, if we're having people over, taking meals to families, etc. the dollars add up to a nice extra $40/month. So I tacked on $40 to our budget and decided that $340/month was the most most I would spend. Yes I know some of you are able to make that much cash stretch a lot farther than me but you gotta remember, I'm an amateur.
2. If I wanted to cook the way that I like to cook... I'd only get to do it sparingly on the new budget. I really enjoy cooking. And when I get a meal going I like to have sides, a drink, some yummy dessert, etc. Doing this every night is obviously not money-savvy. So I narrowed it way down to two meals a week. Usually one of those meals we have the missionaries over and the other is a special occasion... like holidays, birthdays, or Sunday dinner even. The rest of the days in the week we either have leftovers or "cheap food" as I like to call it. Things that don't cost a ton to make... like spaghetti, tuna melts, baked potatoes, etc.
3. Using every single ingredient in the recipe is totally unnecessary. Before moving out to Wisconsin and Todd having a full-time job we were both working on campus and bringing in just enough money to keep things going while putting a little in savings each month. We ate a lot of the same food (chopped vegetable pasta bake, so much of it) and we didn't really venture out when it came to cooking. Probably mostly because we were always exhausted and didn't want to make anything. It also didn't help that we never decided what to do for dinner until the night of the actual meal. Bad move. Anyway... since we rarely ventured out with cooking we never had a need for all of those extra special ingredients. Since then I have had a lot more time on my hands to develop some cooking and baking skills and now we have a lot more things in our kitchen that have become "standard." Things like limes, cilantro, Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, 14 different kinds of vinegar, butter (used to just use margarine), any fruit outside of bananas/apples/oranges like grapes and strawberries, heavy whipping cream, quinoa, couscous, and so on and so forth. You get the point. How am I supposed to go back to cooking like a college student?? Well, next to only making two "extensive" meals a week I am going to try to only buy the exact ingredients that I need for that week and only if those ingredients are absolutely necessary. So far this has been working well enough. (:

Here are our last four months of envelopes... March, April, and May's envelopes now just have receipts in them while June's is full of $135.85 as you can tell by my little custom made mini spread sheet friend. At first I printed out a fold-and-glue-yourself envelope that had a spreadsheet right on it but upon filling it with cash I found that the envelope was smaller than the bills. Yeah that wasn't going to work... so I just made my own. (p.s. I am more than willing to send this one to anyone if you want to give this envelope system thing a try) For the first couple of months I just used the envelope that the bank gives you when you make a withdrawal... which I loved because those envelopes have that resealable sticky stuff on them. Unfortunately our bank just opened a new location that doesn't have a drive through! What the heck, right? So yeah, no more cool envelopes... cause heck the point of the drive through was so I wouldn't have to get Peter out of the car. Now that I have to get out of the car I'm only going as far as the ATM next to my car. Anyway, unnecessary rant is now over.

Other things that have helped us save money...

1. Eating out... we don't do it too often. Once, maybe twice a month... definitely more in the summer when we're out and about and on vacation and what-not. But yeah, not doing this a ton clearly saves money. And for the most part it's much much healthier. But that's a post for another day.
2. Meal planning... now this is what I enjoy doing. Like I mentioned in that other post, I love to grocery shop. I'm not a walk-every-isle-and-compulsively-shop-shopper though. I like to pick out the exact recipes that I'm going to use and plan out our meals for the week. I plan out the meals on one side of my note pad and have my grocery list on the other side. It works great! Some weeks the meals/cooking is scarce because Todd is out of town while other weeks we have people over twice, a potluck to go to, and treats to make for a work party... those weeks both the menu side and the grocery list side are more or less packed.

I think it goes without saying that menu planning and making a grocery list saves money. If it's not on the list, I don't buy it. K, that's not entirely true... cause sometimes I forget to put stuff on the list that we're out of but we won't specifically be using that week... like brown sugar or canned fruit (a big hit with the boss-man). Either that or I forget to put something on the list that I get every week no matter what... like yogurt or milk. Anyway... meal planning is a good thing. And it's a good thing that I enjoy doing it. (:

So there you have it... the envelope system is working! I'm interested to see how things change once we move back to Provo though. Prices will be different and we won't have an Aldi (aaaaand my heart just broke a little more). We love Aldi. So much. If you have one near by and you don't shop there... you need to repent and shop there! haha seriously it's a wonderful place. Anyway, 5 weeks from now we'll really be putting this stuff to use... let's hope it keeps working! 

penny pinching.

Recently one of our good college friends, Autumn, wrote a post on her blog, stay gold autumn, about budgeting. It included her and husbands short and long term goals for their new home and other areas of their lives as well as how they are going to complete these goals while staying on a budget. I really like this idea of prioritizing your goals based off of what your budget will allow. I especially appreciated her post because recently I have also been setting some new goals as well as giving our budget a little more attention than normal. I just haven't combined the two like Autumn has. Why the sudden bonus attention to our budget? Well, you see when we leave for school at the end of July we wont have an income. Matter of fact Todd had to sign a contract saying he wouldn't work during his first two semesters of his masters... that's how busy they are going to keep him! But we'll still need to like... live and stuff. Since we are living now I thought that we could start practicing doing so cheaply so that when living cheaply becomes vital (aka zero income time) we'll actually have an idea of what kind of budget system works for us. And ideally we'll stick to that budget and stay debt free throughout Todd's MBA career. That's the goal part. (:

And because I love getting ideas from you and I want to share the pros and cons of different method's that we test out I thought I'd write about the process on here. I also think I'll feel more accountable this way. Plus being able to compare your budgeting system and such to others is always helpful. Anyhow...

This process is going to be tricky to say the least, but luckily there are a lot of resources out there to help us save every single penny that we can. Really though, there are a lot of resources and I have been scoring the internet for every budgeting/money saving tip to ever exist in order to find the ones that agree with my personality.

So where do we begin? Well, trial and error I suppose! Hopefully there aren't too many errors haha. The nice part is that we already are budgeters... it's the following-the-budget-to-a-tee part that gets us. Another bonus is that many of our expenses are fixed. This means that we'll be all set with those as long as we remember to pay the ones that aren't set up for a direct online payment. And (knock on wood) I'm pretty good about remembering. Mostly because I have a reoccurring event on my calendar that reminds me each month. It's great. Outside of those fixed payments... ya know, rent is always $715 and car insurance is always $96 and sheesh there are just so many things to pay for these days! Good heavens I sound like a grown up... ya anyway outside of those fixed payments we personally have five main categories where our money is spent... utilities, gas, groceries, entertainment, and gifts. These are the five that we are going to give the most attention to since we have the most control over how much is spent in those areas.

Utilities... they're kind of a fixed payment because you just have to pay the bill. Yes you can turn down the heat and keep the lights off and wash your laundry with cold water but other than those little things there isn't much you can do, you just have to pay it, whatever it is. High in the winter, low in the summer. You just pay it.

Gas is a tricky one for us. We drive a lot of miles... mostly because we shop in town (anywhere from 15-30 minute drive) and our church congregation's boundaries are pretty big. I think the farthest member lives 40 minutes away from us. It also doesn't help that one of my bestest buds moved from just up the street to a beautiful home 25 minutes away. That'll definitely add some miles because I can't just not go hang out! Come on!

Groceries. This is a huge one. I'll save it for last. So next, entertainment. All of the entertainment that we indulge in is redbox, going out to eat, and attending sporting events. Luckily for us, my mother ever so graciously gave Todd and I a redbox gift card for Christmas so we can take that completely out of our budget for a couple years. As for eating out and going to sporting events BYU and Giants games... it doesn't happen a whole ton but it's still an expense that we have complete control over so it will get some attention.

Gifts... I love to give gifts. I'm not the best at doing so cheaply but I am getting better. And there are only going to be more and more people that we love and want to give to so we need to get better at setting aside money for these occasions.

Okay so back to groceries. I love going grocery shopping guys. Some people dig doing laundry, some are dish washing pros... I am a grocery shopper. Maybe because I minored in nutrition so being around all of the food and comparing and picking the cheapest, healthiest options is a way for me to use my education. Maybe because I just like spending money and doing so on stuff we actually need is awesome. I don't know... but I enjoy it quite a lot. I also love to bake and cook. I love trying new recipes and sometimes if I am feeling a little bold I just make stuff up to some extent. Unfortunately this means that I buy lots of ingredients that I don't necessarily need to splurge on. Like poppy seeds. Definitely bought those last week for a fruit salad of all things. Probably the silliest purchase I have ever made in my entire life. I'll have to make some copy cat Winco poppy seed muffins to make up for it. Yum... oh my heck that sounds so divine right now...

K I'm back... I had to go look up recipes for poppy seed anything on Mel's blog. She's got poppy seed bread, bundt cake, and cookies. I think we all know what I'll be eating for dessert tonight! (all three of course!)

a 9-month old Peter helping me shop at Costco

Anyway, grocery shopping really is going to be the biggest challenge for obvious reasons.

Alright, let the journey begin! Five months until game time and endless budgeting ideas to try out. To save myself from failing too many times I am going to start with "the best" out there... the envelope system. Wish me luck and stay tuned for an update on how things are going... the pros, the cons, and the etc. of this famous budgeting technique.

p.s. I want to hear about your ideas too! so lay 'em on me!