Thursday, January 1, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Hello All!
Happy New Year!!
Hope you have gotten off to a great start.

I will postt some of my Goals for myself in the next few days.

I have also decided to take the "30Days of Nothing" challenge. I explain soon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year! I'm interested in hearing about the challenge! I've got 'frugal' on the brain now that I'm at home more. We have had less meals out, many more meals in. Joe has taken breakfast & lunch to work, which has saved us a lot this week (about $30-$40 for 3 days). Also, instead of shopping on a manufacturers site and comparison shopping to save time, I have been looking at the manufacturer's sites, then taking a lot of time to shop. For example, our splurge for Christmas for each other was to adopt a dog from a shelter. She needs some supplies, but while we are waiting for them to arrive, we are borrowing a baby gate to block off wires in our living room and we also borrowed her book Cesar's Way (on pet training). For her playpen, we bought online at Walmart.com, rather than in the store. The shipping was 97 cents vs driving all the way to the closest location that had it (about 50 miles away = a few gallons of gas). Before choosing Walmart.com, we shopped on ebay, target.com, homedepot.com and nextag.com. Walmart was significantly lower than the others for the same product ($20-$30). Also, the little puppy took a chunk out of our laptop power cord, hence I am on our very slow laptop tonight. We had to order one this evening. I shopped around, including Dell.com ($70-$80 plus shipping), some aftermarket sites, ebay, radioshack.com, etc. Found a new power cord, which is an actual Dell brand, for $30 including shipping.

Jen, I'm really finding your tips helpful and I'm feeling excited about certain things that I used to say "but why? we can afford to...". I like staying home and feel great saying "You know what? Let's not order Chinese tonight. Let's cook something up and save $25 towards another really nice 'date night' out, or towards something for the house... OR... better yet... SAVE IT AND DON'T earmark it for anything else yet!" It was hard at first, but I like sending my hubby to work with something homecooked, rather than bought at Wendy's or Burger King.

In the process of leaving my underpaying, stressful job, learning about saving money and in getting the new puppy, I have lost a few pounds also. I am on my feet more at home than I was at the office (I was sitting on my tush all day). I am also eating whole grain toast for breakfast, instead of a bagel most days. If I have a bagel, I usually only have time for 1/2 running after the puppy. Lunch is much healthier also. I was eating things like Wendy's, Burger King, McDonalds, Grilled Cheese on white bread, cookies, etc. I have cereal before most regular food and feel better doing that then the bagel and/or bread with taylor ham and cheese or a grilled cheese with sausage on the side, etc.

So far, so good. This new life is much less stressful!

Anonymous said...

Oh, and one more thing --- Joe came in the room and mentioned how much we are saving now that he has a Sony E-book. The e-book was a gift ($0 from our budget), which adds to the wonderfulness. Instead of spending $20-$30 per new, hardcover book for my hubby the bookworm, he gets to download about 100 classic titles free and the Sony library offers free special downloads. Most of the books coming out can be downloaded for $5-$10 and he can save them on our computer(s) forever! Savings per book $10-$25.