Spendy

Kids?  Are expensive.  What with the 'Mama, I'm hungry!' and 'Mama, my sweater won't fit over my head!' and 'Mama, I don't want to drown in a tragic fishing accident!' and 'Mama, I don't want to contract cholera from my own bathroom!' and all.  Needy little bloodsuckers*.

Today's expenditures:

• Swim lessons for one month - $80
• Second season of soccer for Z - $60
• Food for the kids' beasties - $70  Okay, to be fair, they only account for half of the dog ownership, so - $35
• Presents for Q's upcoming birthday - $25
• Pajamas for Q so he doesn't have to sleep outgrown summer PJs - $15
• Leggings to replace the ones Z put holes in - $10
• Shoes to replace the ones Holly ate - $10
• Cleaners for their narsty bathroom - $10

Gah, make it stop!  And that doesn't even touch on the groceries, tuition, ballet lessons, tumbling, and book orders we're already in for the month.  Is it too late to reconsider my decision to become a parent?**


* I know being needy is a kid's job.  I kid!
** I would never choose to not have my kiddos.  I love them more than air.  But the money... anyone want to buy a kidney?

Re-sale

Now that I have hit 40 and the baby-making-factory is officially closed for business, I have to liquidate all of the kid stuff that I optimistically hoarded held on to.  I have kept every stitch of clothing either of my kiddos ever wore in the hopes that there would be a third - and very well dressed - kid.  So, that makes almost six years of girl clothes and four years of boy clothes. Not to mention all of the accouterments two kids require: pop-up cribs (like five of them); monitors; strollers; changing pads; diaper bags; baby carriers; breast pump; boppies.  The list goes on and on.

I have been dressing the kids from consignment sales forever, so now it is my turn to contribute to a sale.  Q had a growth spurt recently, so yesterday I was culling the stuff that was too little as I folded the laundry.  That snowballed into ridding his closet of everything that was too small, which led to dragging out the bin of outgrown clothes.  The poor kid hardly has anything left!  He stayed the same size for so long that I haven't had a chance to buy anything in his current size! 

Once I had sorted all of the clothes into summer and winter stacks (the sales are seasonal, I can only sell stuff for spring/summer in the upcoming sale) I was already tired of the project.  There is just SO MUCH STUFF.  And nowhere to put them until the sale.  Blah.

Oh, my poor laundry room: dumping ground for all things homeless in Casa Critical Mass.  I need a place to hang the clothes until they are prepped for the sale.  With closet space at a premium, the laundry room it is.  The only place available is in front of the window, so that will be pretty.  Or not. Blah.  Maybe I can call it a window treatment?

I managed to cobble together the pieces for a hanging rack from leftover parts of other projects.  The stuff the contractor left on my front porch for a year has finally paid off!  I had a closet-bar-hanger-thingy from building T's closet last year, and another one that didn't work out from Z's closet.  There is about 40 feet of closet rod collecting dirt on my front porch.  Luckily, there was a piece just the right size for my project!

Once my cordless drill is done charging (the cold sucked the charge right out of it!) I will be cooking with gas.  Now all I have to do is attack the many bales of clothes in the attic... yikes!  Once I get them all sorted, all I will have to do is enter them into the computer.  And print the tags.  And iron every stitch.  And pin the clothes to the hangers.  And pin the tags on. And cart them to the convention center.

Man, I am exhausted just thinking about it!

Bah Humbug.

***WARNING***

The following post involves money and bickering and other assorted whining. It is a buzz kill. If you are feeling chipper, move on. I'll see you tomorrow.




















Ah, the Christmas season! The tree! The lights! The annual fight about money! Good times. Seriously, I might just have an aneurysm if T whines about buying gifts for my family again. No, wait. He already did! Arrg!

Like I'm just throwing money out the window! I have a budget for each person and I stick to it. I look for good deals. I use coupons. I. am. responsible. with. money. This year I even cut WAY back on purchases for the kids. Of course, it is easy for him to complain about my spending because he is completely excused from Christmas shopping for the masses. He is only responsible for me and any armaments/hunting gear that his dad might need.

He even came back and apologized after the initial freak out. I imagine it did look like a lot all at once. But even so, I had a full head of righteously indignant steam going for most of the afternoon. On the plus side, you can now get two cars into our garage. I worked off my mood viciously culling the flotsam that has accumulated in the garage since the move.

Also? I unpacked the liquor. I may need it.

Still Learning

I made my second official grocery trip as a 'coupon-er' today. The good news: I saved $28.88 (21%)! You can see how quickly the savings add up in my cool counter in the left sidebar. The bad news: a.) I somehow managed to have the wrong sales flier; b.) I only went to one store and left half an hour earlier than I did last time and I was still late picking Z up from school (Note to self: give yourself more shopping time than you can possibly imagine needing. All that flipping around through the binder - not to mention shopping in a different store than usual - is a total time suck.); and c.) Creepy carry-out guy was totally reading both covers my trashy reading material which kind of squicked me out.

Do you know what makes a rushed coupon shopping trip with a crabby two-year-old even more fun? Shopping while the store is resetting all of the aisles. It was a total fruit basket turn over. There were dollies and piles of junk merchandise choking off traffic at every turn. Good times.

Learning Curve

Here's what I learned on my first adventure as a 'coupon-er':

• If you go late in the week, all that is left of the super deals (read "free") is empty shelf space.
• Shallow shopping carts are the devil.
• I am going to need to allot a lot more time for grocery shopping.
• I am a spaz with my giant notebook o' coupons.
• Sales fliers lie.
• The stockers at Kroger are very friendly.
• If your toddler is cute enough, blue-haired old ladies don't glare at you even if your pirate-int-training whacks their shopping cart with his sword.
• Despite missing out on several great deals, I saved $22.05! (See my new coupon savings tally in my left sidebar. I will be updating it each time I buy groceries!)
  

Coupon Crazy!

After dinner with some friends the other night we were complimenting the hostess on her superior brownies. She said, "Thankyouverymuch. They're from a box."

Turns out she has lately started coupon-ing and one of her big scores was 20 boxes of brownie mix for free. Free brownies? She had T's total attention. Her hubs and sons bragged on her total coupon-clipping/money-saving mastery and the system she had developed to stay on top of everything. She has a whole notebook with dividers and pockets and baseball card pages and has the whole thing down to a science. Impressive!

Since we are currently supporting two households, it seems like a good idea for me to follow in the steps of my newly anointed coupon guru. We made a date for my indoctrination introduction tomorrow afternoon.

In anticipation of the big event, I wasted killed spent a productive afternoon finding every printable coupon the internet had to offer. Huh. Who knew there were so many coupons for stuff I actually use? Erm, I guess my friend did. And all those blogs I read where they talk about feats of coupon-ing glory that I can only dream about. Yeah, those. I am not too swift on the uptake.

The funny thing is, Chica and I were talking about this just the other day. We both know that there are coupons to be had, and that if we were religious about the sales fliers that we could potentially save a lot of money. We are both smart women. If all those other gals are successful at it, surely we would be, too. If we wanted to... But somehow we couldn't be bothered. Looking back on that conversation, I think an alien must have taken temporary control of my brain. Couldn't be bothered to save a big ol' chunk of money? That's crazy talk.

Wow. Nothing like the zeal of a convert, huh? To tell the truth, I am totally in it for the pretty notebook. I love me some office supplies. Especially if I have a coupon!

Speaking of Money

Cops have great job security, so we have no worries on that front, but I feel for everyone else out there. At Sister L's company, they laid off 200 out of 230 people. Yikes! (Not Sister L, though. Phew!) Even though I keep my head in the sand a little as far as the economy goes, I thought this was clever.

$nafu

Before we were married, my husband somehow got the idea that I was not good at handling money - despite the fact that I had lived on my own from the time I was 18, worked a good bit of that time and had purchased a house. (cough, cough, while he lived at home until we were married, cough) Once we were married, it was decided that he would handle the finances. This was fine with me. While I am capable of doing the family accounting, I had no burning desire to do so.

This arrangement has worked fairly well. Until today. Up until now, T kept me up to date on our account balances and we haven't had any problems. Well, with all of the studying/hunting/anything-else-he-can-think-of-ing, he had fallen behind on the data entry. Like several months behind. For my part, I toodled along buying Christmas gifts, shower gifts, cute but unnecessary clothes for the kids, and way too many books without consulting T about the balance. Clearly it was a breakdown in the (faulty) system and we were both at fault.

When T went out to run some errands today, his debit card was declined. He came home all fired up about where had the money gone? How much had I spent on Christmas? Blah, blah, blah. Now we still had money in the bank, so we didn't overdraw or anything, but he was steaming mad (at the situation, not at me. He agrees that we were both at fault). Honestly, I am surprised that it didn't happen before now.

So now we start a new era, where we are partners in our finances. This has to be a better arrangement. Besides, I get to geek out on Excel with spreadsheets and graphs and stuff. It will be good to know where all the money is going. I suspect Wal-Mart, as it is the only place to shop here in Small Town. Damn Wal-Mart.