Our Family's Finances - Weekly Wrap-Up

Expenses – I spent $8 at Whole Foods – still using a gift card that I received. I did my monthly shopping at Trader Joe’s and spent $53. I spent $24 at Safeway and my husband spent $17 at Costco. So we spent $94 for food this week plus the gift card. I spent $12 at a used book sale at our local library. I also spent $11 at a thrift store for more books and an American Girl nightstand. So I spent a total of $23 at thrift stores, mostly for resale and a few things to keep.

Deals – I bought great books at the book sale – 25 cents for children’s paperbacks and 50 cents for hardbacks. I am building up a lot of books for various popular series to sell on eBay. The bigger the lot, the more per book you usually get. I got such good supermarket deals at Safeway. I read about them on several different blogs. Basically, if you spent $30 on certain items, you got $10 back for a future purchase. And you could use coupons to bring the $30 price even lower, which I did. In total I spent $24 and stocked up on cereal, toilet paper, dishwashing detergent, baby wipes, laundry detergent, juice, peanut butter and a few other things.

Income – It was a slow week income wise. I received a check in the mail for $10 for some surveys that I completed and $3 in PayPal for another survey. I only sold one item on eBay for $9, but put a whole bunch more up there for next week.

Investments – I put in $1,000 into a mutual fund for my daughter’s education fund. So now I have $2,000 down for the first quarter of the year and $2,000 more to go. That part is definitely going in next week. I am a bit behind on this since this should have been done by the end of March.

Giving – I generally think of giving as donations to charities, but giving to friends and families are just as important if not more important. To that end, I gave a bit of my time this past week. Carpooling helps everyone, and in the past I have relied on people to give my daughter rides to activities while my younger children are napping. My parents were visiting this week and while they watch my other children, I was able to give back to others by driving their kids around as a “payback”. A friend also asked me if I could watch her daughter after school one day this week and next. This is the best type of giving at this stage of my life. When my children are older, I hope to do more direct giving – volunteering of time to those less fortunate. We also gave a bag of donations to Purple Heart. I know we have more around here that I can donate; I just need to take the time to gather the things up! Oh and we gave some homemade chocolate chip cookies to a girl in the neighborhood for her birthday. She’s always so sweet and plays with my children.