Here are the Top 30 deals on sale at Kroger this week. There are a few things to keep in mind when reviewing this list:

• Redplum, Smartsource, and PG (Proctor & Gamble) inserts are all available in each week’s Sunday paper.
• KPC stands for Kroger Plus Card. You can go to www.kroger.com and load these ecoupons directly to your Kroger Plus Card.
• Kroger doubles coupons with a face value of up to $.50 – Click here for Kroger’s full coupon policy.
• BOGO Items – You do not have to buy two items to get the sale price for Buy One Get One Free items. Kroger prices each at 50% off, so you only have to buy one.

If you’re interested in getting started couponing, but don’t know where to start or think it’s too complicated, let me show you how I save hundreds every single month for our family.

Related posts:

1. Southeast Kroger Deals 3/9/09 – 03/14/09
2. Publix Southeast Deals week of 5/3/09 – 5/6/09
3. Kroger Southeast Deals 5/3/09 – 5/9/09

To say that the last few years has been difficult financially would be like saying that there was a little bit of rain at my parents’ house last September.  Now that Mark has a new job that he LOVES and things are going to be settling back to “normal”, we’re all starting to get excited.

Everyone in the family seems to have something they’ve been waiting with baited breath to be able to do when our finances stabilize. The kids can’t wait for their commissions to be paid again.  Mark can’t wait to be able to start making some repairs around the house.  I can’t wait to be able to take a weekend away by myself.

In the back of my head, I just keep flashing this little neon sign that says “Don’t get carried away. Don’t let the freedom and relief cause us to overspend on stupid stuff.”

And since we all know that I’m a teeny bit OCD and Must. Have. A. Plan… I wrote down my ideas on how to keep this from happening:

• Continue to budget EVERY THING
• Ignore the debt snowball the first month
• Budgeting the extra cash for taking the kids to do things we’ve put off for a year and maybe even having a date night or two
• Continue to do fun frugal things with the kids at home and with friends, so that we’re not putting ourselves into MUST SPEND situations

I worry about our willpower and you know Murphy does so like to visit me, but I think it’s a solid plan.  Keeping up with our budget, monitoring the spending, and bumping up our mad money budget for a month will HOPEFULLY keep us all from feeling like the sacrifices we’ve made (and will need to continue making for a while) are never going to end and aren’t worth it.

Have you ever been in this situation before?   How’d you keep things from getting out of control when there was more money in the budget again?  I’m kinda worried about this one.

Related posts:

1. Spouses and Money Talks
2. Changing Income Without Changing Lifestyle
3. Worried about the Economy?

You know what I realized the other day?  The word “JUST” is an evil word we use to excuse everything.  Seriously.  When someone makes a hurtful comment and you call them on it, what’s the standard reply? “I was JUST kidding, jeez.”

What about when you’re in the middle of working hard on something and your significant other decides you’re doing it wrong?  Have you ever told them to back off?  What’s their response?  “I was JUST trying to help!”

In the offender’s eyes, just = only or merely (dictionary.com: adverb – 12).  In the eyes of the offended, it’s not just, it’s JUSTIFYING = to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded (dictionary.com: verb – 2).

I’ve found that this is also true in money matters.  At our house, our money leaks almost always begin with “but it was just…”  We’re defending our poor choices by trying to downplay the impact it’s having on the offended party (our budget, bank balance, credit limit).  Mark and I “just” spend $10 or $20 far more often than I’d like to admit.

We spend too much money in some budget categories and have to use money from other categories to cover it.  Since we don’t borrow money or have credit cards, this means we’re either taking money from other important savings goals (like vacations or home repair) to cover immediate wants (like going for a burger instead of cooking).

The last few months has been extraordinarily taxing on our family, with Mark’s layoff in January.  We got disheartened and let the reigns out a little on our spending … not that there was much available to spend.  We didn’t watch the budget as closely as we should have and ended up going through more of our emergency fund to float us through than we should have.  All because of the word we allowed to take over in our weak moments… JUST.

Let me tell you, I’m kicking that word OUT of our house… out of our spending patterns, and out of our budgeting tactics.  As Dave Ramsey loves to say about a million times a day, we’re back to putting our budget: “On paper, On Purpose, Every Month, Before the Month Begins”.

What about you?  What if you’re JUST spending $20 a day over your budget (lunches, sodas, coffee, chewing gum, cigarettes, gym membership you’re not using, movies on demand, iTunes, amazon.com, kindle books, snacks from the vending machine, HBO, Cinemax, LJ user gifts, clearance office supplies you might use someday)? What if that’s JUST $20 a day per person?  At $20 a day, 5 days a week, you’re justifying a steady leak of $5,200 a year from your goals.

What could you do with $5200 a year?  Pay down on your credit cards?  Take a fantastic vacation?  Send your kids to summer camp?  Take an extra week off work?  Prioritize what you want to spend that money on.  If you want that $10 a day for lunches (or books or coffee or movies or great shopping finds), then make sure you put that in your budget instead of mindlessly allowing your money to drip out of your account… or drip you deeper into debt.

Are you eluding the JUST in your life?  Can you tell us how to?  I suspect this is going to be an ongoing, uphill battle.

No related posts.

Last week, I talked about giving yourself permission to succeed and not being the barrier to your own success.  This is my new promise to myself, and I believe I’m making progress in that arena.

One of the first things I did was log into Google Wave* and delete my To Do List.  I didn’t need that long, insurmountable list of things I should have been doing.  It felt so freeing not to be bound by that intimidating list anymore.

The next thing I did was even more important to me than the first… I opened a new Wave and started a new list.

Wave

• Subject: Current Date
• Body: Bullet point Got Done List!

There is something amazing about seeing the list get longer and longer when it represents things being done instead of things you have to do.  It’s energizing and encouraging.  At the end of the day, I move that day’s Got Done List to the “Daily Completed” folder.

For those of you thinking “yeah, but if I don’t have a list of everything I have to do, how am I going to remember it all?  I have a strategy for that too!  If it’s important enough to be on a Must Do list, put it on your calendar.  This way, you still have the visual reminder without the pressure of an arm long list of things to do.

If you know that every Tuesday you have to do a dry cleaning run, don’t put it on the to do list, put it on your calendar.  Grocery shopping on Saturday?  Calendar.  Need to schedule your annual physical?  You guessed it.

Not only does this take away the pressure of the never-ending list, it also gives you a concrete date and time to get it done and keep from procrastinating.  Then you get to add it to the awesomeness that is the Got Done List!

What are your strategies for getting things done without being oppressed by the dark cloud that is the To Do List?

*Leave me your email address if you want me to send you an invite! I have 10 left.

Related posts:

1. Weekend – The Ramble
2. Say Goodbye to your To Do List
3. Watch The Movie, Nancy!

*This is not a compensated review.  I am a Mint.com user.*

How do I love Mint.com, let me count the ways…

For most people (not me) dealing with finances is a pain in the tush.  Very few people really enjoy checking up on their money every single day.  Mint is designed with both the number nerds and the “reconcile monthly because I need to” factions in mind.. and everyone in between.

Mint is NOT great for people who would rather bury their heads in the sand and ignore their finances.  But then, if that’s the kind of person you are, you’re probably NOT reading this blog.

What I really love about Mint:

• It’s FREE!
• I can add all of my accounts!
  • Checking Accounts
  • Savings Accounts
  • Student Loan through the Dept of Education (Not anymore because it’s paid off.. but it was!)
  • Auto Loan
  • Mortgage
  • Investment Accounts (401k in my case)
  • Credit Card Accounts (Don’t have one of these anymore either.  No credit card debt @ Momma’s house!)
• I can view my entire budget at a glance, and it’s a BREEZE to set up
• It’s simple to categorize my transactions – and the budget automatically updates based on those transactions
• I can set up budget categories that roll over.  This is great for:
  • Quarterly expenses like trash pickup
  • Car repair funds
  • Home repair funds
  • Homeowner’s insurance and taxes
  • Car taxes and tags
  • Christmas fund
  • Lots of other things
• The website calculates ways I can save money on my accounts or earn more money on my accounts and shows me financial products and services I may be interested in.  I have not used any of these yet, but since I don’t carry consumer debt and I’m not ready to invest yet, there’s not much reason for me to.
• Mint calculates our net worth automatically and shows it on the home page
• I get alerts when we go over budget in an area, or when a bill is due.
• They have an App for that.  I can access my account from my iPhone.
• I can see what my trends are and compare them with the national average.

I could go on… a LOT… but if you don’t have a Mint.com account, the bottom line is that you should.  You’ll have an easy to use, easy to track way to get a grip on your finances.  The best part is that it’s SECURE (did I mention FREE?) and available from anywhere you are.  All you have to do is log in.

What about you?  What’s your favorite budgeting service or software?  Why do you love it?

Related posts:

1. Keeping Up With The Accounts
2. Part 2 – Living frugally, yet well
3. Worried about the Economy?

Every time I think that you’re on the cusp of becoming extremely successful in something you’re working on, you stop doing it.  What is making you scared of success?  ~ Jules

Those are the words that have been ringing in my head since yesterday at our girls’ only tea gathering.  They have given me pause and have forced me to think about how many times/ways/things I’m self sabotaging for fear of what will happen if I’m successful at my ventures.

What if I make a ton of money as a writer?  What if we get out of debt as quickly as we can?  What if I AM able to send Anna to the college programs I want her to attend?  What if I DO sell a lot of Avon to people who love it as much as I do?  What if I do lose the 140 pounds I need to lose?  What if I ignored all of the fearful things my brain whispers to itself to keep me from trying and failing… and tried anyway?

What if you ignored your brain’s whispers too?  What if we all stopped paralyzing ourselves with fear and negative self talk?  How far could we go if we stopped asking What If and just did what our heart leads us to do?

Here’s the answer to all of those questions:  I don’t know.  But I want to find out.

I will no longer be the barrier to my own success nor the engineer of my own failures.  I will no longer talk myself out of being and giving and doing the things I love and want in life. – ~ ME

Beginning today, and for as long as I possibly can, I am giving myself permission to reach for those goals and to succeed or just to fail spectacularly and keep reaching anyway.  I’m giving you permission too.

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Since Mark’s layoff in 2007 and starting this blog in 2008, I have spent what amounts to actual weeks of my life budgeting and cutting expenses.  I’ve clipped coupons, made our own laundry detergent, replaced our old light bulbs with CFLs, worn layers and used extra blankets in the winter, and kept windows open and ceiling fans running in the summer.

In the past, when we’ve talked about cutting costs more, Mark points all of those out and says “What more can we cut?”.  All of this has been churning in my brain since Friday when I got the news that Mark’s company was considering a layoff.

I was thinking back to our Financial Peace University classes and got straight to work on our prioritized budget and figuring our our “cut off line”.  For those uninitiated to the wonder that is FPU, this is how you determine your cut off line:

• Write down your expenses from top down in priority, always in this order:
  • Food
  • Utilities
  • Shelter
  • Transportation (car payment, insurance, gas)
  • Everything else – If you have money left at this point, you prioritize the rest of the things you owe line by line.
• Determine how much money you have coming in and spend it (ON PAPER) according to this priority level.
• Draw a line under where your money runs out.
• THIS is your cut off line and nobody under this line gets paid until you have more money.

When I pulled out the spreadsheet and put down our prioritized list, I was surprised by a couple of things.

First, I was surprised at how many things that are below the line aren’t nearly as important to our family as they were a week ago.  The teenagers are (shockingly) just fine with losing their cell phones and cable tv in their room.  Mark is (MORE shockingly) fine with losing the HBO and the HD programming on our cable.

Second, I was surprised to find that our lifestyle had inflated to match our income.  I get that this isn’t a shock to just about everyone else.  It happens to almost everyone.  I just thought that since we were making progress toward getting out of debt, we couldn’t be succumbing to Lifestyle Inflation.  We were living on less than we made and making ground on other things.  It just didn’t occur to me that we could have been making so much more progress toward a debt free life.

SO!  Now that we’ve found out the layoffs aren’t happening, we’ve got a far better idea of where we need to be working to keep any future job loss from being an emergency in our lives.  It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get back to the basics.

I’m going to continue build my new Avon business, keep on saving a ton of money by couponing and shopping wisely, and continue to work on my other side projects to boost our income.  All of the savings and extra income is going to be divided between getting our debts paid off and building our savings.

What about you?  Where would your cut off line be if you lost your job today?  What would you do to make ends meet?  How much can you cut today to build your cushion for that possibility later?

Related posts:

1. Illness and Setbacks

This is a repost from last January.  This past weekend we got our first snowfall of the year!  In Georgia that’s BIG BIG NEWS.  Snow days are much more active than normal cold days because the kiddos want to be outside until their fingers are too cold and their clothes too muddy to go any further.  THEN they want to make you crazy inside.

Once the feeling comes back into their fingers and toes, here are some fun things to do inside to keep the little ones from making you pull your hair out.

1. Head to the Library: Most neighborhood libraries have a separate children’s section with reading chairs, computers, puzzles and games! I only have one child who still checks out books from the children’s section, but she loves getting lost in her own little haven while the rest of us read the boring stuff. If your children are old enough to roam at the library, this is a great choice.
2. Make your own sun room: Take a large roll of clear plastic and use it to enclose your front or back porch. Once the wind is blocked off, and the plastic allows in the light but not the cold, set up an arts and crafts table or reading section on your porch. This can expand your living space by a significant amount, and give you some room to spread out.  This is an especially great idea if you live in a little house like we do.
3. Break out the Wii: This has to be the BEST purchase we’ve ever made. Our family spends a lot of time playing Wii Fit and trying to beat each other’s “best” score on the Wii Sports games. They also get a lot of loud, rowdy, quality family time playing Rock Band 2.  The best part about Rock Band 2 is that your teenagers will even want to spend time hanging out with you!
4. Have a Family Game Night: We have 2 trunks full of trivia and other board games and a full poker set. On those days when you can’t take one more video game or watch any more tv, try challenging the brain with a little Trivial Pursuit or Apples to Apples.
5. Put the kiddos to work: Take the opportunity to teach them how to make their favorite dish.  Fetching the ingredients for a recipe, stirring things, and helping put away ingredients after use are great helper tasks for younger children.  Actually learning to chop vegetables and cook the food are skills that every teenager should be working to perfect while they’re still home with you.   Turning it into a game or a family event will instill a love of cooking in your kids and create family memories you were never expecting.  Not too shabby for just combating boredom!

WHAT ABOUT YOU? What tips do you have for keeping the family occupied when outside isn’t much of an option?

Related posts:

1. BAD BAD Money Days
2. 5 Indoor Family Activities to Keep You Sane
3. 10 Tips for a Great Family Game Night

I just received this announcement in my email and thought I’d share it with you.  I’m not a big fan of credit counseling services because so many of them seem to just want you to stop making all of your payments and screw yourself financially in order to set up payment plans 6 months later and taking thousands of dollars in fees to do it.  But I AM a big fan of financial literacy, and this organization does seem to want to promote that.  So I’ll pass on the info.

NFCC just announced a great initiative!  This is a nice project that gets the kids involved in financial literacy through art and creativity.  It’s been really successful in past years and I hope you find it interesting as well!

“$mart Money Choices = A Brighter Future” was selected as the theme of the NFCC’s 2010 Poster Contest. In an effort to increase interest in financial literacy to our nation’s youth, the NFCC is once again sponsoring the Be Money Wi$e National Financial Literacy Poster Contest.   The contest is designed to get young students thinking about how to manage money efficiently and offers them a creative outlet to demonstrate their knowledge.  It also provides the opportunity for local and national recognition for student artwork.  All finalists will receive a commemorative t-shirt, and each national grade category winner will receive an award plaque and a $100 savings bond.  In addition, the National Winner will be given an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., with a parent or guardian and will be given official recognition in April as part of the Financial Literacy Month on Capitol Hill!

Do you have a child or children in mind that you feel has the talent and creativity to win?  All school-aged children in grades 3-12 are eligible to enter with local and national winners to be chosen from each of three grade categories.   Students from public, private and home-schools are welcome. Entries will be judged by expression of the theme (above), artistic style, creativity, and must be submitted through an NFCC Member Agency for judging. *The submission deadline for poster entries is in February 2010, varying by each specific member agency.

Teachers, parents and students are encouraged to visit www.MoneyWisePosterContest.org to find more detailed information, rules, entry forms, and where to submit.

Related posts:

1. 18 Financial Literacy Websites that aren’t Blogs

I got an email this morning from one of my sisters, linking to an interesting article by Valerie Hoff of 11 Alive.  The article discusses a new kind of Gift Registry website called Billpay Registry.  The premise is that you register to ask your family and friends to send money to pay your bills instead of asking for gifts from other registries (baby showers, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, etc).

I’ve got seriously mixed feelings about the premise of this registry.  On the one hand, there’s no possible way to get a great deal on giving cash.  There’s no 80% off and a 10% rebate when you give cash.  It’s not possible to maximize your gift giving value when you’re giving cash.  In order to stay within your budget when giving cash… you just give less.  Of course, when people do give cash, they often give more than they afford in order to keep up appearances.  I believe that if these kinds of websites become popular, many people who sign up for the service will exploit that.

On the other hand…

It’s a great idea for people who don’t really want or need physical gifts, or who need help digging out of their financial mess far more than they need something from a store (or hand made).  It might be a life saver for a college grad or dropout who have a crushing load of student loan debt hanging over their head as they start their “real life”.

Would I sign up for this service? Probably not as an only option.  I might add it to a list of options, just like my Amazon.com wishlist for when someone asks “What would you like for your birthday or Christmas or Anniversary?”.  However, I’d never sign up and send an unsolicited notification to all my friends and family to ask for bill money.

Would I send money to someone else using this service? I think that solely depends on who is using it and what they’re doing with their lives.  If I get a request from someone who is digging themselves into a hole financially and depending on everyone else to bail them out while they continue to make shitty financial choices… not a chance.  If I get a request from someone who is working toward getting their financial lives on good footing and I felt like I was helping instead of enabling, I would be far more likely to make a cash contribution to their goals than to purchase a physical gift that would have less personal meaning for the recipient.

What do you think?  Would you use a service like Billpay Registry?  Would you send a monetary gift to someone who did?

No related posts.