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!!