My apologies

I know this can be an excuse post on why when I post that I am starting my frugalness I have not done so.

I have had a personal emergency, I will be back as soon as I feel up to it. Right now I'll read and comment on your blogs.

Stay tuned though because when I start hopefully it will be good.

Purging and eating my way to frugality

So I'm working on finances, and part of that is budgeting and practicing frugality. It is a good thing I have been poor (and still am but not as poor) before and I know how to be frugal. This is nothing new to me.

So I decided one thing I need to work on is the food bill, while I still want to eat healthy (as that is a goal this year is to loose weight), I need to do that in an economical way.

Step 1: I will be using up everything I already have in the house and will not replace until I use all of these things, minus perishables like bread, milk, meat....

I have already used almost all of the meat so I will need to make a trip to the store soon. This will be hard not to buy some snack or another, or additional ingrediants to make things we enjoy.

After this I will go onto Step 2, which is meal planning, coupon cutting, freezing meals etc... As I journey through this I'll post some of the great meal finds in the grocery strike and some of the not so great meals too, so you all can read my progress.

Wish me luck!!

Dental work, on the financial front

I have to say it felt so good that my $500 dental work on Friday was paid for by my flex spending card. I didn't have to worry where the money was coming from, its being paid weekly, tax free and worry free out of my check into that account. I put $2,000 into it this year for several reasons, I wanted to put $3,000 into it. Maybe next year I can.

Also this is one thing I can take out of the budget because anything that comes directly out of the paycheck isn't counted as income. I am needing to re-do my budget again anyway. Thanks to Jennifer at Lifestyle of a Divorced Single Mom and her budget spreadsheet things on the financial front are coming along. Pretty soon I may even have a savings account that has actual money in it. Who knows. All I do know is that is no longer a dream but a reality.

Toothbrush Duty!!

A post on a board I recently joined reminded me about something I used to do with my daughter, Toothbrush Duty. Toothbrush duty is when you get in trouble and mom hands you a toothbrush and a gives you a job to clean.

Kiddo's mouth and attitude really stink lately and I've been pulling my hair out. Duh' toothbrush duty time has been needed for a long time here now. I need to get a little more creative though now that she is older. The toothbrush hung for far too long.

Do your kids respond to chores as their discipline? Really, she has a set of chores that I expect her to do when told and oddly enough she doesn't give me much lip about that. She may moan and groan and say 'but we just did that last week' (or yesterday, or whatever), as if it never needs to be done again. She really used to loathe toothbrush duty and I forget why it went away, maybe she got better and I got lazy after that dunno, but its coming back.

What do you do for the mouthiness? Further, does it work?

Flex Spending

One of the first orders of action of getting my life under control is taking care of myself. Since I now have a horrible health insurance plan I haven't been taking care of myself like I should. So I am investing quite a bit into my flex spending this year. Of course that includes off the top the $500 portion of my share of this years payments towards my kiddo's braces. It also includes a $500 temporary repair to my tooth until I can afford the permanent repair which is $3k and is not an option but can wait a tiny bit longer. So those are two planned expenses as it is, then my deductible is $400 another pretty much planned expense and then there is some unplanned money there too for rx's, co-pays (which are exorbitantly high) and other such things.

Now the money will be there without me having to do much to make sure it is. I just have it directly taken out of my check and put into flex spending. They give me a niffty little card I can use it without even having to worry about being reimbursed, me likey that.

More financial stuff to come but I figured I'd start a little blurb

Procrastination and happy holidays!

So I'm an expert at procrastination. It really is an art form, or a sport... whatev' I'm good at it.

Thus so I've been meaning to post some things that I haven't done so, some are in my dashboard, others (most of them) were in my head... all of which I've promptly forgotten.

One big thing is I think I'm going to finally start my financial portion of this blog. See I had every intention of making this blog my life but also having special spotlights on dating and finances (as mine are a mess and I've slowly been working at it). I figured those were two spots in my life that are always chaos and I could use the reflecting back and the discipline in finances and just the reflecting in the dating portion of my life. Since I found someone to be serious about it will mostly stick to finances I guess *shrugs* who knows what the future brings.

So I don't keep procrastinating on that portion of my blog I posted.

Oh, and yes... Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. I will be working but I hope you all enjoy yours!

ETA: Oh, and yes... I have not forgotten the meme Jeanie ;)

She likes a boy

she won't tell me much but his name. I won't share though.

Darn kid told me she'd tell me a little each day because she's embarrassed about it.

I wanna know all about this boy.

I think I hate middle school now!