Fearlessly Frugal Giveaway!

To celebrate my month of painful sacrifice, or as I've been calling it, my month of no spending, I'm hosting another giveaway! I've contacted businesses all month long to try and get someone to host a review and giveaway but no dice. One of those companies was Sophisticated Shoppers. I wanted to try out one of their stylish coupon organizers and give one away to a lucky reader. I was told they would review my blog and get back to me but I never heard from them again. So I decided to buy a Deluxe Coupon Organizer anyway. I was just itching to have one, especially since they're so cute. It turns out looks aren't everything and I was sorely disappointed. The organizer is made of fabric and the coupon storage area doesn't expand in the way I had hoped it would. It just looks a little too flimsy for me. The only good thing about it was that it came with a pocket calculator, which I'm going to keep. I'll give the coupon organizer to my grandmother or mom if they want it. I was thankful that I had also ordered another coupon organizer from a different company, hoping that I would like at least one of them. This one is called The Couponizer and it is DA BOMB! It's a spiral organizer which is just like the one I have now, only it's bigger, more sturdy and they have many more pockets for coupons, and not just grocery ones! They have pockets for entertainment and travel, fast food, and a bunch more. It also comes with a shopping list, a coupon tracker to track your savings, a small pair of scissors and a plastic bag for carrying (though I don't plan on using that).

So you may be thinking that this giveaway is a coupon organizer, but it's not! It's SO much more than that! It's a Budget Prize Pack which includes the books The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Living on a Budget and The Coupon Mom's Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half. If you haven't heard of it, The Coupon Mom is a great website that shows the deals at your local grocery stores as well as coupons you can find in the local Sunday paper. In addition to the books the winner will receive their own Couponizer along with over 100 coupons to get you started on your new budget!
HOW TO WIN:

Open to US residents only. 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 what you think was the most interesting/funny/helpful/sad/clever part of the Fearlessly Frugal experiment. **You must do this entry first or all other entries will be deleted!**

Additional Entries
1) Become a public follower on GFC or leave a comment stating that you are a current follower
2) Blog about my giveaway and leave your link in the comment field
3) Follow me on Twitter or let me know that you're a current follower
4) Tweet about my giveaway and leave your link in the comment field

Entries will be accepted through midnight EST on Tuesday September 14, 2010. A winner will be selected on Wednesday the 15th. I'll be in NC in the midst of our IVF by then but I'll bring the prize pack with me and mail it from there. Good luck!

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!

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.

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!!

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!

A Little Experiment

fEver since our last IVF failed and I had to quit my job to move 3,000 miles away I've become a bit more thrifty. Actually Brandon would probably call me a tightwad. But whatever you want to call me, I'm concerned about saving money. And not just saving money but keeping it around for the long term.

Brandon and I would like to have the option of doing adoption if IVF doesn't work out for us. But he also plans on getting out of the military in 5 years. Before he gets out he hopes to have his engineering degree but that will be difficult to achieve while working full-time in the military, especially with deployments during 2 of those 5 years. So we expect that he'll need about a year of schooling after getting out to finish his degree. So someone will have to work to keep us covered by health insurance, not to mention day care costs if we do end up with children.

Finding a job might be tough for either of us so we decided that we need a good amount of savings to keep us afloat while Brandon finishes college. We estimated that amount to be $12,000: $1,000 every month for a year. Brandon will get his GI Bill while he's in school which should be about $1,500 a month. That means I'll need to make at least $12 an hour at a full-time job to make ends meet. The problem is getting that $12,000 saved up, along with emergency savings and adoption savings.

See now why I worry?

So for the past 3 months I've turned into a Frugal Fanny, clipping coupons and signing up for deals at restaurants that we frequent so that we can save $5 on our dinner. But all that saving is working. I've managed to save an average of $30 a month from grocery coupons. That may not sound like much but it adds up to $360 a year. But I'm looking to save more.

As I said in my last post Brandon and I had an awesome time in Maine. I really hope to go back some day. But that awesome vacation came at a price tag of about $1,000. That's a lot of money for a birthday getaway. Money that we could be using for more important things. Like making babies. After getting back and looking at our credit card statements I knew that something had to change.

Last night I sat down and took a look at our budget. I type up a monthly budget to see where we stand financially and where our money is going. For the purpose of this experiment I will share our general monthly budget with you.

Income
Brandon (and military housing pay)- 3,750 (1,875/paycheck)

Expenses
Rent- 1,295
Electric and Water- 150
Cable/Internet- 120
Cell Phones- 100
Groceries- 320 (80 per week)
Gas- 240 (30 each per week)
Allowance- 160 (20 each per week)
Car Insurance- 120
Misc Spending- 300
Gym Membership- 55
Netflix- 10
Charity- 35
IRA- 100
Savings- 600
Total: $3,605 ($145 left over)

I deliberately left out my unemployment income because Brandon and I are trying to live as though we only have one budget, especially since unemployment is only temporary. Now you may be thinking to yourself "Wow, she can save $600 a month?!" But I don't. Because somehow we're never able to stick to our budget. Even though we budget for miscellaneous purchases money gets spent and before you know it, we're staring at a bill for $2,160.43 on our Citi card (in my defense $250 of that was for embryo storage which I'm deducting on our taxes). Needless to say, our budget isn't doing its job, hence the reason for this experiment.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I have an idea on how to save a ton of money (borrowed from this article). The idea is to not buy anything for 30 days. It seems easy enough, right? I mean, it's not like we're going a year without spending. So I figured I would give this a try. Not only to save money but to make our family (and my readers) realize what's really a "need" and what's just a "want". I also want to find things to do with our time that don't cost money and to hopefully bring me and Brandon closer together.

I pitched my idea to the husband after he got home from the dog park. His response? "So does this mean we'll have more sex? Cause that's free." Thankfully it wasn't his first response. His first response was to ask questions about my definition of not spending. Here's the list of rules I came up with:

1) Groceries don't count but we'll be cutting back on junk food (especially because of our upcoming IVF).
2) If we can buy it with a gift card we already own, it's okay. So Brandon bought some new running shoes with a Kohl's gift card we have
3) Purchases of Sunday newspapers are allowed because the value of the coupons outweigh the cost of the newspapers
4) All monthly payments already set up will not be affected (Netflix, gym membership, and charitable contributions)
5) Haircuts for Brandon don't count because he has to keep his hair short for work

Starting tomorrow everything else that is not a necessity is subject to the spending purge. No more eating out, no more purchases for the dog, and no more buying things we don't need. Instead we'll start going to the library for new books, attending free events in our area and volunteering. At the end of the month I hope to have saved about $400. I'll post updates throughout the month as to what we're doing to keep ourselves busy and debt-free. If all goes well then maybe we'll try this for a month every year to get on the right track for our savings goals.

I'm looking forward to the month that lies ahead and hope that I can trim the fat from our budget AND my waistline. Wish me luck!