Saturday, May 2, 2009

Our Family's Finances - Weekly Wrap-Up

Expenses – I didn’t do too much food shopping this week. I did two small shopping trips at Giant, spending $32 total, I think. (I didn’t write it down.) We are gearing up for my daughter’s birthday party next week so I made a third trip to Giant for ice cream ($11) after realizing it was on a good sale. We got takeout from a local burrito place for $12. I also made a trip to Michael’s ($3) and CVS ($4) which are in the same shopping center. I spent $30 in gas and $5 for my daughter’s teacher for Teacher Appreciation Day. I went to a yardsale that advertised American Girl things. I spent $83 there – yikes. We also had a $95 vet bill, which I will talk about more in another post this week. I realize that these expenses that I write down each week are not really reflective of everything we spend. My husband buys gas and who knows what else when he is at work. Plus we pay all of our utility bills that I don’t write up here. The food is pretty accurate, though since I do most of the food shopping other than Costco which is near my husband's job. I’m going to try to keep better track of everything including what my husband spends. I know it sounds like we don’t spend much each week, but in reality we paid for a lot of the activities at the beginning of the year that my kids do each week - two dance classes, piano lessons, Girl Scouts, gymnastics, and Hebrew School.

Deals
– I did great at CVS using $5 compensation I got for completing a survey for them and by rolling some Extra Care Bucks into the deals. I bought some crafts at Michael’s using a coupon and will go back next week to get more things for the party with another coupon. For my daughter’s party we are doing “make your own ice cream sundaes. So I made an extra trip to the supermarket to buy Breyer’s ice cream, which was Buy One Get One Free. We used a coupon from the Entertainment Book for our "night out" at the burrito restaurant. I did okay at the yardsale. The prices were certainly below retail for the American Girl items, but there were a lot of people there who wanted to buy the doll stuffs, so I just bought a few things – and not necessarily the best things. I will keep some of it for my daughter and sell what we decide we don’t want, although I probably won’t get much more than I paid.

Income – I was back on track with eBay this week. After going slowly for a couple of weeks, they had a 15 cent listing fee one day that motivated me to put up more things. I sold over $125 worth of merchandise, although not everyone has paid me yet. I have even put up some more things as well as some stuff on Craigslist. No surprise checks or surveys this week.

Investments – I still have $2,000 that I need to put in our retirement or education fund from the first quarter of this year. And I was absolutely going to do invest it this past week, and I never got around to it. It is definitely going in next week so I can get started on the second quarter which is now 1/3 done!

Giving – I gave my change to some people who were collecting outside Giant this week. That’s it.

1 comment:

Herbalife Las Vegas said...

Good job writing some of it down and thinking about it. Its much better than just spending money recklessly.