YAY! It's Almost June...

I don't know about anyone else, but dang May was a LONG financial month in our lives! Seemed like payday was never gonna arrive! But, alas, here we are! :)

It feels strange that school is getting out and yet we haven't hit a really hot day yet. I think we made it to about 95 degrees one day but that's as hot as we have managed to get here in Siskiyou County, CA. Today we will be lucky to see the high 60s and no rain... At least if it has to rain we could get some thunder and lightening out of it...

June is a month of goals and re-budgetting. We are still adjusting to our new gasoline bills for Willie's dialysis, and to the weird diabetic-dialysis diet.

Yesterday I cleaned out the deep-freeze and tossed some seriously petrified meat and veggies. I had a pork-loin in there from 2004! Gack... I am on a mission now though to really watch what's in there and to continue to stock up on things we use. I definitely need to work on rotating the things in the freezer a bit better.

What are your goals for June?

Start Your Frugal Journey With a Plan

If you are going to drive to an unknown place what do you do? Get a map? Ask for directions? Most likely you formulate a plan of how to get there. In the world of money, income, and spending this plan is called a budget.

Budget a scary word for many of us because when we read it we think “restriction” or “control.”
I would like to offer you an alternative way of looking at a budget. Think of your budget as a map to get you from financial point A to financial point B.

I get paid today so I am at point A. I have bills to pay and groceries to buy which leaves me at Point B. Like a map.

Just like while driving I have many options on how to get from one point to another. I have control over where I go and how I get there. By making a plan, a budget, for my income, savings and expenses, I am not letting that plan control me, but rather I am making the plan to control my money!

My budget is helping me, not controlling or hurting me.

To start making a realistic budget it is best to track all of your income and spending for a month or two. Write down all of your income, and write down every cent you spend and what you spent it on. This can be a very eye-opening experience. You might be amazed as how much money you spend on the things that are not important to you.

Off I Go, Into The (Unknown) Wild Blue Yonder...

I made a decision yesterday. I decided that in addition to blogging and working at the day job, I am going to make a serious run at trying to do freelance writing. I have enough going on in my life, and in my frugal journey, that I know I have things to share! And, I love to write. So, the combo works for me. We shall see if it works for others and I land some (paid?) writing gigs! :)

May is turning out to be a very LONG month. Our expenses this month have risen and we just haven't done well on the budget. It seems with the price of gas (locally now $3.49 a gallon for 87) and the rising costs of food and other items we shop for, we just plain didn't budget enough cash for the month. I am working on revamping the budget for next month, and looking at where we can save, cut-back and modify.

One of the ways we save is to do a monthly stock-up on groceries and other items. Generally this includes a trip to Costco, a lower price food warehouse type store, WalMart, and maybe the Grocery Outlet to fill in. (While I don't agree with many of the business practices of the WalHell, it's pretty much the only game in town for many items - and my only place to shop within about 80 miles of home...)

For the rest of this month, my plan is to work on using up all the "pre-dialysis diet" foods in the house and to really see what I need to buy and stock-up on next month. Our diet has changed so much that it was really hard to shop this month and know what to buy.

Hubby and I are contemplating getting a Costco membership for him (I use a free one from a relative's account) so that while he is in Redding getting treatment he could hit the Costco for fresh fruits and veggies. That would save us a lot of money and I believe easily cover the cost of the membership.

I started selling our eggs at work. Right now we get about 6 free-range eggs a day. We eat some, but still have a few dozen left over. At $2 a dozen they are easily paying for our feed and eventually my hope is to take the extra "egg money" and do something like make an extra house payment with it. Right now as I sell the eggs I am transferring the cash into an ING account. This way I have a good track of what we actually made on the eggs. And, I can ear-mark the cash rather than it getting lost in the day to day household spending.

I ordered 15 blue egg laying chicks a couple weeks ago. So far they are all doing well and starting to get feathers. Looks like the egg business will be picking up nicely and I will be able to sell as many eggs as they can produce. :)

Honey, I'm Home!

Anyone ever watch that 1990's show "Dinosaurs" where the dad dino comes in the door and says "Honey, I'm home?" That's been our family saying since watching that show because at the time both hubby and I had red flannel shirts that matched the dino's! :)

I have been away for a while from blog-land. Thank you to all of you who have stuck around... I'm deffinately trying to blog more now that life has settled down a bit!

As I posted before, hubby was in the hospital and is now in renal failure. For him this means a trip 170 miles roundtrip three days a week to the nearest dialysis center. It sucks because it's a long drive, it's tiring, it's boring, it's expensive, etc... but it's definitely helping Willie to feel much better. It's nice to see him working in the yard and playing with the pigeons again! The gas price is killing us (It's now $3.49 a gallon here for 87 octane!) but he feels better so it's worth it. At some point we need a small car or something though for the commute. If/When gas hits $4 or more a gallon that's going to quickly become our biggest monthly expense after eating! :)

The last three months or so have been killer on our budget. We first bought a new dishwasher, range and washing machine. That was fine, planned, and saves us a ton of water. The old range was gross and dying so that was also fine and planned.

Then it was hospital and out of area stay for me. Since then it's just been gas, the special (BORING!) dialysis diet, and the fact that it's May and almost the end of the school year. (Both at work and for our own kids.) This seems like a more expensive time of year in our lives than the holiday season. Amazing...

Right now I am working on re-doing our family budget to include our new expenses. It's a challenge, that's for sure.

Anyway, thanks for visiting. How's your month going?