Counting our pennies

I have never been one shy of shopping.  I have actually always loved it.  (No I'm no millionaire) More like champagne taste on a beer budget.


A recent talk with my dad talking about when my mom and him were first married he told me that my mom taught him to save up for the things (He actually went in depth about budgeting and being frugal in many aspects - but I will spare you of his "life lessons").  I am all about saving a dollar.... trust me.  I thought we were pretty good about budgeting our money until I signed up for www.mint.com , it is a website where you enter in your bank accounts and it pulls every transaction on your account allowing you to see EXACTLY where your money is going.  When I first looked I was shocked, as I looked into how some of the transactions were categorized I learned that some needed to be corrected (and once you correct them you can select that all future purchases for that vendor show up in that category).   It allows you to set goals (saving up "x" months of expenses, saving for a "goal" such as a car or vacation, etc).  My favorite thing thus far is setting a budget and each time you log in you can check how that budget looks and adjust your spending based on the budget.  I have learned quite a bit about our spending habits in the short few weeks since we have signed up.


The biggest shock to me was how much we spend on food/groceries.  Mint.com allows you to break it up into "fast food", "restaurants", "bars", and "groceries" (pretty much however you would like).  I thought we had been doing significantly better than we were in college.  We cook at least 5 days a week for dinner, we take out lunches at least 4 days a week, and never buy breakfast out unless it is a weekend treat (aka. Bojangles on Sunday mornings).  Our goal is to only go out to eat once a week.... now here comes our issues with this goal.  Typically it all goes as planned, however, if we forget to prep something (take meat out of the freezer or forget to stop by the grocery store for veggies) we typically grab something quick.  Most times when we do grab something quick we do use a coupon (typically BOGO).  I think the biggest issue with our food budget is alcohol.  By no means are we alcoholics,  we may enjoy a beer or glass or wine while cooking dinner one night a week during the work week.  It is the weekends or when we go out that kills the budget.  We always keep wine and beer in the house (never know when someone might stop by!).  Because we know we need to be saving in the future we are going to make sure we plan better for our meals (and by "we" on that, most likely means be sitting down each Sunday and planning meals out and making sure T takes anything out at lunch to thaw).  While I would love to go out and have a drink with a friend or go out for appetizers more often - that kills our budget, typically we try to entertain at our house or at a friends to save on money - so we aren't horrible in that department.  I need to start couponing - but surprisingly a lot of what we buy is in the produce, meat, and cheese area of the grocery store.... how many times do you see a coupon for these items? :(


Now, obviously we do spend money while updating our house into our home.  Typically we try to decide what we want to accomplish on the weekends and decide how to fit that into a budget.  We usually wait until the week of payday or save up for the larger purchases.  Paint, small repairs/parts, and plants are not significant purchases but we still try to budget it to where we only spend a certain amount on each trip.  Unfortunately paint and parts aren't usually a popular find on craigslist.  Speaking of craigslist I love it.  We have sold many items that did not fit into our new home the way we envisioned and we are always on the hunt for pieces to enhance our home.  I really like the idea of repurposing and bringing new life to items.  We have found some pretty sweet deals over the past few years.

I believe I paid $15 for two of these tables.  They were originally a dark wood stain.  In the townhouse they served as nightstands but now bring a nice pop of color to the living room. 

This Ektorp Tullsta chair was free :) 

I was super excited to get this Crate and Barrel Table with the chairs for $250

This dresser was T's in college, it went in our old guest bedroom (with the orange nightstands) 

I hope to paint this yellow in the future - sooner than later as long as there isn't another hurricane! 

I fell in LOVE with this about two years ago, it had already been refinished. 

It is uber HEAVY though. 

I want to start working on budgeting our future projects and trying our hardest to stick with it.  Most likely it won't be easy but it is a challenge.