Fearlessly Frugal Day Twenty-Five: The Homestretch

Thank GOD this experiment is almost over! I'm starting to go a little crazy and so is Brandon. Even though this month wasn't entirely true to the idea of no-spending since we did splurge a little on small things here and there, it was a hard month nonetheless. Last night Brandon and I went to Goodwill and he bought two books for $1.06. Brandon is the kind of person that won't read a book more than once so we try to buy his books used or trade them with family members. I, on the other hand, can read mine over and over again so I usually prefer to buy my books new. Right now I'm reading Harry Potter, the same thing I did during my last IVF. Call it my new relaxation technique (aside from my meditation CD's). Today I also spent some money for an upcoming giveaway for my lovely readers. I honestly tried getting some companies to let me do a PR review and giveaway on their products but the responses were either non-existent or not interested. So that meant buying stuff for the next giveaway and to HELL with the review! Oh, and tonight we're ordering pizza from Domino's. We're saving money by picking it up instead of having it delivered. They have a special right now, 2 medium two-topping pizzas for $5.99 each. Not bad considering pizza lasts us for days in this house. I had planned on cooking Manwich tonight but we seem to have run into a problem in the Singleton household. You see, we started buying 2 lb packages of meat and splitting them up. The commissary sells them for dirt cheap (like $1.19 a pound) in this increment so one package can last us for two meals. The problem is that for some reason Brandon decided to freeze the meat in saran wrap instead of some other practical way such as FREEZER BAGS. So when I went to thaw the meat today it was frozen and brown. I hate throwing away food but I think today I'll make an exception. I'm actually considering investing in one of those vacuum sealer things, especially if we plan to make this a habit. Does anyone own one and does it fare better than Ziploc freezer bags? Are the refills expensive? I have to do some more research before I'll buy it.

Only 6 more days left of this experiment. I counted our money today we have about $290 left from the $424 we put into the Baby Fund. So there's about 70% left which is much better than I thought we would do. I do have a growing list of things I want/need to buy, like the vacuum sealer. I also want to buy the tax software called It's Deductible. For those of you who don't know what it is, It's Deductible lets you list items you've donated and gives you the fair market value of those items. So that bag of clothes you donated and wrote off as $40 in value could actually be worth $100. I used it before, a very long time ago, and my ex-husband kept the software so I need a new one. With all the medical expenses this year we plan on itemizing and writing off a ton of stuff. I also want to buy a new and improved coupon organizer. So as the month draws to a close and I come up on the day when I can start purchasing stuff guilt-free, my list keeps getting longer and longer. But at least this experiment has taught me to think harder about what I'm purchasing and has prevented me from impulse buying. But still, I can't WAIT for it to be over!

Random Thoughts and Musings

I feel like such a freaking loser. Aside from one neighbor who we occasionally hang out with (but not often because her husband is an officer and Brandon isn't supposed to fraternize with him), I haven't made any friends since moving to Connecticut. I remember when I moved from North Carolina to Washington the first friends I made were the wives of Brandon's co-workers. Then when I got a job I made some more friends, though most were older than me and we didn't have too much in common. But that was okay because we would still go out to lunch together and do other things outside of work, it's just that we never went whitewater rafting together or anything crazy like that. Now that we've moved here I haven't met anybody. Brandon hasn't made any friends at work so I haven't gotten to meet any Navy wives in the area. I asked him to find out who my new ombudsman is so I can at least start going to the spouse get-togethers (that's how desperate I am) but he said that I don't have an ombudsman for shore duty billets. WTF?! How do I meet people then? I haven't gotten a job and it's all getting very depressing for me. I hate not working and not having anyone to talk to. I tried keeping in touch with my old friends in Washington but with the exception of a few people, everyone I was friends with seemed to forget I ever existed. I post comments on their Facebook status and they don't respond. I don't get text messages or phone calls from them, it's like I've fallen off the face of the earth. What gives? It's sad that the thing I'm looking forward to the most about this upcoming IVF is getting to interact with the other ladies cycling with me. I don't even care about trying to get pregnant anymore, I just want someone to hang out with! Maybe we'll even go out to lunch or something. Now you see why I feel like a loser?

I finally started my period Saturday which means I start birth control pills today. I just hope I'll be on them long enough. I think Nurse D said we're supposed to use them for at least two weeks before starting the meds. The problem is that I DON'T HAVE MY CALENDAR OR PROTOCOL so I don't know when I'll be stopping the bcp's and starting Lupron. I'm supposed to start my meds around the 9th or 10th. My baseline ultrasound is scheduled for Monday the 30th. Other than that, I'm just taking it one day at a time, hoping someone will let me know what the hell is going on.

Brandon used to read my blog religiously. Every time I would check my mail and read my comments, he would know there was a new blog post and go read it right away. The problem was that he would always say stuff to me about it like "Those weren't my exact words!" and "You never told me you felt like that!". It got tiring so I banned him from reading my blog. Well last night he confessed that his feelings were hurt that he couldn't read my blog anymore. I told him that it's okay to read what I write but what I write isn't up for discussion. It's meant to be a journal entry, not a conversation starter. So I have a question for you ladies: does your husband read your blog and talk to you about it? Do you feel like you have to censor yourself, knowing that your family/husband will eventually read what you write? I guess I just feel better knowing I can write what I want and only my blog buddies will comment. Honestly, if I started getting phone calls from my mom or grandmother about my blog posts, I would probably make my blog private. But that's just me.

I've decided that I'm going to go back to school. I went to see a school advisor (my neighbor, haha) at the local community college. She evaluated my old transcripts and it looks like I'm 10-12 classes away from an Associates Degree in Finance & Banking. I chose that degree over Business Admin because I think I would be happier in a finance job than a business job, though I'd have less classes to take if I chose the BA degree. I might even be able to get degrees in both fields if I sign up for a few more classes. I'm still debating. It looks like the total cost will be about $5,000 with books, which is almost all the money we had set aside for domestic adoption (if we ever decided to adopt after this IVF). But I'm hoping this degree will lead to a good job and then we'll be able to afford adoption again, later down the road. But I'm really looking forward to school because that might give me the chance to meet new people and (hopefully!) make new friends. I plan to graduate by the end of next year but a pregnancy could delay that considerably.

Other than that, not much is new in my life. It's pretty damn boring out here so if anyone is passing through Connecticut, you can always hit me up for a lunch date! I'd love to meet my bloggie friends!

Anji Meditation CD Winner!

Unfortunately the first winner never responded so I had to pick another. This time we've got....#3, Melanie Swan!

"I have also bee doing acupuncture 2-3 times a month (wish I could go more often!) in order to relax!"

Congrats Melanie, please check your email and respond for instructions on getting your free Anji meditation CD.

Fearless Frugal Day Twenty: Free Stuff!

Check this out: Visit this website for some free rewards codes on RecycleBank. You can enter up to 5 codes (or the same code 5 times) for a total of 75 points. New users get a bonus of 25 points for signing up. If you also sign up for the eBay Green Team you'll get 50 points for a total of 150 points. With that you can go shopping for rewards. They have a selection of 5 magazines for 115 points for a one-year subscription! That seems to be the best deal but they do have other stuff like a free ice cream cone from McDonald's for 100 points (if you choose not to do the Green Team sign-up on eBay). *Update* You can also enter TakeSmallSteps as a code, select Marcal as the partner, for another 15 points.

Here's another way to get a free magazine subscription. Follow the instructions here to get free bonus miles when you sign up with USAir. With those 1,500 points you can get a free subscription, though the selection of magazines was pretty crappy. I ended up choosing Money Magazine because nothing else appealed to me. The points do take 24-48 hours for them to show up. This offer expires September 30th.

I'm still waiting to announce the winner of the giveaway. I might have to pick someone else but I'm giving the person one more day to respond before I choose someone else.

Fearlessly Frugal: Day Eighteen

Frist, I want to thank everyone who commented on my last post. I don't know why I let her words bother me but you're right, she shouldn't have said those things to me. I guess it's times like these that remind you of your true friends.

Second, how is everyone liking the new layout? I just need to figure out how I can post a giveaway on my main page and have it link to my giveaway page too. And I want to try and get my headers to be a bigger font.

Now, on to my Fearlessly Frugal update. The Outdoor Art Festival didn't really turn out to be free. I mean, come on, is anything free these days? It cost us $10 to park, we ate at the festival which was only about $9, and then we bought some dip mix (I know that was a want but it gives me something to do with leftover sour cream, which we always seem to have). They're supposed to be having a Dog Days Festival at the end of this month and I'm not sure if we're going to go. I don't want to have to pay for parking again.

We also bought a couple things on gift cards that fell into the "want" category, but we didn't spend any of our cash except for $1.50. Then last night I made a big purchase...I spent $60 on Norton Anti-virus for my computer. It's been almost a year since my subscription expired so I should have done it a long time ago. The good thing is that the software can be downloaded on up to three computers so I'm going to put it on my laptop as well. I think it's been about 5 years since that computer was updated! That purchase was made on a credit card and we'll probably use some of that extra $90 we earned to pay for it.

Some of you asked whether I'll keep up with this after the month is up and what I plan to do with the money. To be honest, this is probably just going to last a month because it's quite boring to go without spending but I do have a plan for the future. Remember our $300 of miscellaneous spending? Well I decided that when we get that money at the beginning of the month I'm going to automatically deduct $220 to put into the following envelopes:

School (for books and school fees)- $40
Car Maintenance- $60
Oso (for toys, vet appointments, flea meds, grooming, etc)- $40
Hair Appointments- $40 ($20 for each of us)
Vacation- $40

The remaining $80 will be our discretionary spending for clothes, eating out, movies, stuff for the home, etc. While that may not sound like a lot, keep in mind that Brandon and I get our own "allowance" of $20 per week to spend on individual stuff as well as gas money. The $80 is for things that we will both use and enjoy. Still, large purchases like furniture and electronics will have to be planned out well in advance and will probably require some money from savings. At the end of this month, whatever cash we have left in the Baby Fund will be equally distributed into the envelopes mentioned above to give us a head start.

So that's our plan! Only 13 more days to go.

Why Does it Bother Me?

Today I had one of those eye-opening situations where I realized that infertility has turned me into a cruel, horrible bitch. I had an old friend from high school who was on my Facebook friend list. She was a few years younger than me and about six months ago started trying for a baby. She got pregnant right away, probably within the first two or three months of trying. I remember reading her post, knowing she was pregnant but she hadn't officially announced it. After her first ultrasound she told everyone the news and I just sort of lurked around, not saying anything. Then June came and I deleted all my Facebook friends, remember? It mostly stemmed from an argument I had with Brandon which I won't discuss here but eventually I started to add some people back, starting with my closest friends. There will be some people, however, that I will never add back and that's okay. So I thought about this high school friend and decided that I shouldn't let her pregnancy bother me so I requested to be her friend again. After all, I had already added other pregnant friends back on the list and was doing pretty good with their announcements and updates. Well today I received an email from High School Friend:

"Christa,

Let me first start off by saying that, I realize and am sorry that you have had/are having a difficult time conceiving. I realize how heartbreaking it can be to want a child and it not be as easy as you've always dreamed or thought it would be.

With that being said, it does not make it okay for you to act out towards those of us who have conceived or are currently pregnant. I remember before I got pregnant, I wanted a baby so badly it felt as though it would eat me alive. It seemed as though ALL my sorority sisters and other girlfriends from college and high school were all getting pregnant and starting a family of their own and here I was, still childless. I would read their announcements and my heart would ache and I would be envious of their "luck". BUT, I ALWAYS made a point to go to their wall or their announcement post and tell them "CONGRATULATIONS!!! I'm so happy for you guys!". And as much as it would kill me b/c I didn't have a baby yet, I was still genuinely happy for them because they were going to experience something amazing and I didn't want to ruin their special moment of happiness. I blindly thought that you would have the same class. You've NEVER told me, "Congratulations", or anything along those lines. In fact, what you did was delete me from your friends list and then apparently made an announcement on your board about how all the baby announcements were getting to difficult for you so, you just thinned out your friends list. Let me be the one to inform you, if you don't already know, that there is a thing called a "Hide" button on your status feed so that you don't have to get people's status updates on your news feed and the only time you have to see their status is if your personally go to their page!

I'm not going to be made to feel bad b/c I got pregnant and am having a healthy pregnancy! How DARE you treat me like that! A real friend would not have responded in such a manner. Shame on you for treating your pregnant friends like that.

I am denying your friend request for the second time because, I WILL be posting updates about MY baby and about MY pregnancy and since you apparently can't handle that, I'm going to spare you the grief."

I don't know why, but her email made me feel like total and complete shit. Maybe it's because she's right, I never did congratulate her and I should have. But there were people who never congratulated me on my pregnancy, never said they were sorry my baby died either. But I'm not holding a grudge, it is what it is. I don't comment on my pregnant bloggie friends' posts because there's really nothing to say. I can't comment on their experiences because I've never been there. And then I find that those bloggie friends who get pregnant stop visiting my blog as well, maybe because of my attitude or maybe because they no longer have anything in common with me. It sucks. I know I should have said congratulations to her and to everyone else I might have missed congratulating on their pregnancy, but I can't do anything about that now. And apparently it cost me a friend. Who knows, maybe it's cost me more than one friend and that's the reason I have so few.

Infertility is such a shitty thing. It turns you into someone else, someone that's completely different from the pre-TTC you. As you try to preserve your own sanity by avoiding situations that cause you grief, you end up alienating yourself in the process. And then if or when you do get pregnant, there's no one around to congratulate you because you pushed them all away. It almost doesn't seem worth it, really.

So to all my pregnant friends, both bloggie and real-world, I'm sorry if I have ever been a bitch to you, pushed you away or ignored you. Please know that I'm still lurking around, checking on your status and posts, even if I don't always comment on them. I'll try to make a more conscious effort to be there for you in the future and to celebrate your blessed occasion.

Fearlessly Frugal: Day Thirteen

Hooray, I'm almost halfway through this experiment! I thought I'd give a little status update. Out of the $160 we had in grocery money we had $1 left over from this pay period! You may be laughing but we usually go over our budget so it's a good thing that we had a dollar left. Out of my $40 for gas I had $20 left over, though I'm running on empty right now. But that's okay because Brandon got paid today and I plan on using all $40 this pay period for gas. So the $21 that was left over is going into the Baby Fund. We started out with $344 at the beginning of this experiment and we still have....$327! Not bad!

Of course, we did spend some non-cash money that came out of our bank account. $9 was spent on my "free" Picabook photo book for shipping (which came in the mail yesterday and I'm so thrilled with how it turned out!) $5 was spent entering Waiting Lisa's raffle which she graciously allowed her online readers to join! Go check it out, it's for a good cause. Just don't enter the raffles I did! J/K Oh, and $10 is going to be spent today tweaking my blog layout. BUT! those purchases are pretty much cancelled out by the fact that so far this month I've earned $50 from Associated Content and eBay AND Brandon got paid an extra $40 for something to do with our travel from Washington to Connecticut. I think it was a reimbursement of our tolls (though we spent close to $100, they would only give us $40 because we didn't keep receipts. Bummer). So of that extra $90 we only spent $24. Not bad. The rest was already put into savings.

Because Brandon got paid today, we usually take out $80 for allowance ($40 for each of us). We're still taking out the money, it's just going straight into the Baby Fund jar, with the exception of $20 that Brandon needs for his haircut. I'm seriously considering buying a pair of clippers to cut his hair so we can save the roughly $36 a month that he spends on haircuts. Then again, it wouldn't be so expensive if he didn't tip $5 for a $13 haircut!! To me, $2 is sufficient for something he does twice a month. I usually tip more but that's because I only go two or three times a year.

It also looks like he might not have to buy a school book because his class is Art Appreciation and it's online but we'll see. School starts in less than two weeks so if he needs to buy one they should probably let us know soon. I'm thinking about going back to school to complete my Associate's Degree. I went to college for four years and never got a degree. I guess that's what I get for transferring schools. So I requested my transcripts to see what credits I can get for a degree. I want to go for Lean Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management. If I don't get enough credits then I probably won't go.

Other than that, we're just cruising along, waiting for our IVF to start. Less than a month away!!

Now Don't Be Shy....

There's less than a week left on the giveaway, don't everybody jump the gun to enter! There's only 7 entries so far so you've got a great chance of winning the free meditation CD. It really is as awesome as it sounds and even if you aren't into the whole meditation thing, it's a great way to get to sleep when you're tossing and turning (not that I tried it or anything). So click here to enter to win! I hope to start hosting more giveaways, by the way. My goal is to have 2 or 3 a month. They won't always be fertility related because let's face it, we all need a break from time to time about that crappy part of our lives and it's nice to win something that's a little indulgent.

On the fertility-related news, it looks like Brandon won't be able to stay with me the whole time in North Carolina. Bummer. He'll probably miss the first week like he did last time. We need to find out ASAP so we can get him a plane ticket for (semi) cheap. And AF still hasn't shown up. I'm not done with the Provera though so there's still time. Other than that's, all's quiet on the infertility front.

My photo book and a giveaway!

If you're interested in checking out the photo book I made from Picaboo (mentioned in my previous post) here is the link. How cool is that? Spending the $9 for shipping wasn't a "need" but who cares. I got a $40 photo book out of it!

Now on to my giveaway. Since I cut out acupuncture after my last miscarriage I had to find a new way to relax through my upcoming IVF cycle. So I went online to Anji Inc and bought two meditation CD's as a birthday present to myself. They are awesome!! The CD's come with 3-4 tracks and each track is about 25 minutes long. I got the IVF Package #3 which comes with Meditations for a Fertile Soul and Imagery and Meditations in Support of an IVF cycle. It's now downloaded on my iPod under the Infertility playlist and I'm so happy that I can take it with me to Womack for my upcoming IVF cycle. I wrote a review on AC about the Meditations for a Fertile Soul CD. If you want to read it click here. While the majority of her CD's are for women going through infertility, she does have some for pregnancy and women's wellness.

The best part is that Jennifer Bloome, the founder of Anji Inc, has graciously allowed me to give away one of her CD's!! The lucky winner will receive a coupon code for one single CD download from her site.

HOW TO WIN:

Open to residents worldwide. Each entry must be left in a separate comment, otherwise it will only count as one entry. If your entry is not linked to a Google account please be sure to leave a valid email address along with your entry. If the winner does not respond after 48 hours a new winner will be chosen.

Mandatory Entry

Tell me how you relax, whether it's during fertility treatments, throughout pregnancy or just in general

Additional Entries
1) Visit Anji Inc's website here and tell me which product you would be most interested in winning
2) Become a follower or leave a comment stating that you are a current follower
3) Blog about my giveaway and leave your link in the comment field
4) Follow me on Twitter
5) Follow Anji Inc on Twitter
6) Tweet about my giveaway and leave your link in the comment field

Entires will be accepted through midnight EST on Wednesday August 18, 2010. A winner will be selected on Thursday the 19th. Good luck!

Fearlessly Frugal Day 8: Cutting Back

Today's post is about cutting back on unnecessary spending and maximizing savings. Now I know we've got our gym membership when we could be going on base for free but we chose to sign up for this because 1) it's 5 miles from home versus 25 miles and 2) this gym has air conditioning where the one on base does not. Very important when the average temperature is in the 80's and 90's during the summer. But I know that when I start our IVF next month that I won't be able to work out. Which is why I had Nurse D type up a letter that I can present to my gym so they can freeze my account for that month. Money Saved: $30.

Next I took a look at our car and renter's insurance. We use USAA for both, paying $589.13 every six months for our two vehicles and paying $192.14 a year for our renters insurance. Today I decided to increase our deductibles from $500 to $1,000 on our car insurance. My reason for this is because we have the money in a savings account and neither of us has been in a car wreck in 10 or so years (I've never been in a wreck, Brandon had a few as a teenager). So I increased the deductible for collision and comprehensive coverage and then realized something else: our cars aren't worth much. I checked online and it was true. Brandon's car is worth about $2,000 for a trade-in and mine is worth about $3,500. If we were to damage our cars that cost $1,000 to repair then it wouldn't seem prudent to repair the car at all. I read in an article somewhere that if a car repair costs more than 20% of the value of the car then its time to get a new car. So I decided to decline coverage for both collision and comprehensive on both of our cars. Now that I think about it, I should have done this long ago. Our cars have been paid off for almost two years. But hindsight is 20/20. Money Saved: $642.94 per year. I also changed the deductible on our renter's insurance to $1,000. Money Saved: $17.10 per year. That's a total savings of $55 per month just on our insurance.

With that money we plan on putting it into our savings account to save up for the day when we'll need a new car (probably in the next year). By then we hope to have a decent down payment. Now I'm sure you're thinking that $55 a month in savings won't earn much interest but I've done loads of research to find the best interest rate for our savings account. We used to use ING Direct but every time we would make a deposit they would lower our interest rate. I finally got tired of it and that's when I found Capital One's InterestPlus Online Savings. I love it! We earn 1.35% interest APY and every 3 months we get a 10% bonus on the interest earned. With ING Direct we were only earning 1.10% (which kept going down with every deposit we made) and with our NavyFederal Savings account we were earning .40%. There's a few rules though: in order to qualify for the 1.35% rate you have to open the account with $1,000 or more, otherwise the rate is only .10%. Second, in order to qualify for the 10% bonus you have to use a Capital One credit card monthly or have at least $10,000 in your account. This would be especially helpful for couples who have money saved up for adoption expenses and are waiting to be matched. With our account Brandon and I earn about $20-22 in interest each month and about $7 for our bonus every three months. Brandon never thinks it's that much money, saying that we spend the same amount eating out at a restaurant, but it does add up over time. We opened up our account in March and we've earned over $116 in interest so far!!! I'm really happy with this account so far and I hope that the rate will continue to hold steady. In fact, it's earning more than my 401k this year! Not too shabby. If this rate is better than the one you currently have with your savings, then it's worth checking out.

By the way, do you have lots of pictures that you'd like to put together in a photo book? Check this out! Picaboo is offering a free 20-page photography book, now through August 31st. They have different layout options with various costs but you can make your book up to $40 in value, you just pay the $9 for shipping. I love free stuff AND it's giving me something to do! (I know, I know it's not technically free when you pay for shipping) But the whole website Hey It's Free is worth checking out. I signed up to get some other free stuff like gum and a coupon organizer (but I'm still on the lookout for a no-shit, awesome, trendy coupon organizer). I'm scouring the site for free magazines as well.

And while I'm here I suppose I should give a spending update. Brandon and I went on a "spending spree" the past couple days. After driving home from the dog park on Friday we splurged on a couple snack-size McFlurries from McDonald's. Cost: $3.58. It's funny how you remember the cost of things when you on a spending diet. We also had to stop by Staples so I could fax some paperwork and purchase a new ink cartridge for our printer (the result of printing Brandon's credit report and all my internet coupons). Cost: $18.54, though I'm supposed to get a $2 coupon in the mail for recycling our old cartridge. I think that brings our monthly spending total to about $30. Not bad but I didn't realize how many "needs" you have throughout the month. But I'm doing better than I thought I would!

Fearlessly Frugal: Day Six

First, I want to give a shout-out to Jennifer at Do I have to be a DINK? for coming up with an awesome name for my experiment! It's such an obvious name, I can't believe I didn't think of it myself! Today is Day 6 and I'm pretty proud that I haven't spent much in the past 3 days. I did buy a $1 cheeseburger at McDonald's on the way to an unemployment workshop but that's it. Oh, and remember that $15 water filter I bought? Well I found the same filter at the military commissary for $7.50. So I returned the first one to Target and used the difference to ship some stuff at the post office.

I have to admit, though, this past week has been pretty boring. No eating out, no going to the movies. This weekend will probably be spent at the gym and watching our Netflix movie (The Book of Eli). I'm looking forward to the Art Festival next weekend, even if I can't buy anything while I'm there. I'm trying to earn a little extra money by purging the house of crap we don't use anymore. I've got some DVD's and XBOX games up for sale on eBay and Craigslist. Hopefully I'll get them sold so I won't have to stop looking at a stack a junk sitting in the living room.

Today I pulled credit scores for me and Brandon. I always hated the fact that you can get your credit report free once a year (through this website) but I always had to pay the $7-10 to get the credit score, which is what I really cared about. Well I found out in my workshop that you CAN get your credit score for free! It's at this website. How cool is that? No need to give credit card info and no need to sign up for anything. I was very happy to see a high credit score for myself but was surprised that Brandon's was much lower than it normally is. Like 50 points lower. So tonight we're going to pull his credit report and see what's going on. Oh, and a word to the wise....when you pull your credit report you can choose from the 3 credit reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax and Transunion. I usually just pull one report every four months instead of all three at once. That way I can check my report three times a year!

On the fertility front, AF never showed up. I peed on a stick this morning which was obviously negative so tonight I'm starting Provera. Brandon put in his leave request yesterday and I'm going to be scheduling my baseline ultrasound for the last few days in August. I'm getting excited!

My Experiment: Day Three

I should come up with a witty name for my 30-day experiment but I'm not feeling too clever at the moment. Can you help? I'm taking any and all suggestions!

Anyway, back to my update. Brandon and I usually take out our allowance money and miscellaneous spending money at the beginning of the month. That way we only use cash and when we run out we're supposed to stop spending. Of course that never happens but our intentions are good. So when I decided to start this experiment we had already taken out half our monthly allowance ($80) and all the miscellaneous money ($300). We spent a little the day before we started the experiment so on August 1st we stashed the remaining money in a cute jar labeled "Baby Fund". There was $344 total. My goal is keep as much of that $344 as possible this month and get all the credit cards paid off, using my unemployment checks.

So today is Day Three of The Unnamed Experiment. I've bought a couple things so far. Day One I purchase a box of envelopes ($1.50 but I used grocery money because we purchased other food items with it). Day Two I bought a filter for my Pur faucet filter. I'm not sure if this was a "need" or not because technically we had another month to go before our current one needs replacing. But I had a $4 off coupon that expired this month so we bought it anyway. Turns out we bought the WRONG filter so we couldn't use the coupon! I was a bit pissed. But in order to use the coupon we would have had to buy the more expensive filter and then it would have cancelled out the whole point of the coupon. So we paid full price for the cheaper filter ($15 for one damn filter!)

On Day Two we also got Brandon a black sweater. This is clearly a "want" and not a "need" but we didn't pay for it so it doesn't count! See, a few months ago Brandon and I used our credit card points to get some gift cards. One of those was a $50 gift card to Kohl's. The day before The Unnamed Experiment started he went to Kohl's and bought himself a new pair of running shoes and some socks. By spending $52 on that he got $10 in Kohl's cash which was only redeemable August 2-10. We didn't need anything from Kohl's but I wasn't about to let that money go to waste so we scoured the store for an item that cost $10. Brandon found a black sweater that was originally $50 and was marked down to $10. So he got it for free. We didn't even pay tax on it!

Today I haven't bought anything so far and I don't intend to. I've been checking out free things to do in the area and haven't found much so far, other than boring things like visiting the governor's mansion and crap like that. I prefer free events. I did find one event that's happening next weekend. It's the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival (yes, where Mystic Pizza was filmed. Brandon actually ate at that restaurant and wasn't too impressed). So we'll probably end up going to that next weekend. The website didn't say there was an admission so I'm assuming its free. I hope I'm right. I also found this website called the Blue Star Museums Initiative. It has a list of hundreds of museums across the US that are offering free admission to military members and their families until Labor Day. How awesome! Brandon is also going to stop by the base movie theatre to see if they offer free movie showings. When we lived in Washington the base theatre used to show one or two free movies a month but I don't know if they do it here or not.

So that's been the past few days for me. Hopefully by my next update I'll have a cool name picked out for the experiment that I can share with everyone!

Living in New York? Help out a good cause!

A fellow bloggie friend, Waiting Lisa, is having a garage sale this weekend in Rochester, NY to raise funds for her adoption. She's been waiting two years to bring her little one home and hopes to raise lots and lots of money to help pay for that second homestudy she has to do! Unfortunately I'm over 6 hours away and vowed not to buy anything this month so I can't attend. But if you're in the area and want to scour the place for a good deal, here are some of the details:

What: Garage Sale, Bake Sale and Raffle
When: Saturday August 7th and Sunday August 8th, 9am-4pm
Where: Rochester, NY (email Waiting Lisa for full address)
Why: Adoption Fundraising!

You can also join her Facebook fundraising page here. She will be raffling off a membership to the Seneca Park Zoo, a $25 gift card to ToysRUs, a Mary Kay gift basket and a Bath and Body Works gift basket! Even if you can't attend, please help spread the word so she can get as many people to attend as possible.

You might also want to visit her blog and try to talk her into making that raffle an online one so we can ALL participate!! ;)