Leanest, meanest, maddest, baddest body

It's that time of year. Not only am I getting my groceries and my home in order, I'm getting my body in order! This of course means the normal attempts at running, weightlifting and generally healthy eating.  But I'm doing two things differently this time that I've always said I'd do ONE DAY.

My last bottle......

First, I'm giving up the Diet Coke.  :::moment of silence:::  I've been drinking Diet Coke for years. Maybe ten? At once point a couple years ago I got up to 5 cans a day. What a drain on my budget! I've been better the last year or so about only drinking one, maybe two a day, and sometimes even skipping a day. But it's junk. Pure junk. Tasty, calorie free junk. But JUNK! I'm not trying to give up caffeine, but I am giving up the chemicals and the artificial sweetener.  I've been reading about how Diet Coke can mess up your metabolism, and while none of it is totally proven, I think it's worth steering away from.

I had run out of my stash of 12-packs this week and been buying individual bottles from the machine at work and finally decided, this is the time. I drank my last one yesterday. Today I had a nice cup of tea (with actual sugar) in the morning and then some spa water with my lunch and through the afternoon. Now, that spa water might not have the magical metabolism boosting properties it claims to have, but it's tasty and I know it's not bad for me.  Sounds like a win/win to me!  Next week I'm making the mango ginger water. 

Second, I'm going to break the Lean Cuisine habit. Pretty much the same story. Been eating them for ten years, but lots of sodium and junk. I missed out on the MAJOR stock up I planned to do the first couple weeks of January when they were on sale for $2. I bought some, but not the freezer full I planned.  So again, I've decided, this is the time. I need to make my own lunches. I can have that boxed meal for $2 or I can have an entire pound of lean chicken breast for the same price. Split that up over the week with some sides and salad and VOILA!  Healthier and cheaper.  The hardest part is going to be getting in the routine of pre-making lunches.  I'm hoping (I know) I can find some freezer recipes that I can divide up and still have the convince of the Lean Cuisine.  I know I do better eating a hot lunch, so this is going to be my goal.

Now, what about YOU?  What are you doing to CLEAN your body?  How are you working towards your leanest, meanest, maddest, baddest body?  How do you feed yourself at the office all day without getting bored and hitting the vending machines and convince store?  I'd love to hear it all!  Comment and let's get some dialog going!

Pass my crown please!

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who loved busy work. I remember spending time each week clipping coupons out of the Sunday paper for my mom.  Loved it. Did it very neatly. I'm weird.

Fast forward to adulthood and grocery coupons never made it into my housekeeping.  I mean, how impressed was I supposed to be at saving 40 cents off my toothpaste?  Zip up another ten years (oy vey how did ten years of adulthood pass???) and now I'm a little bit in love with coupons. I have a hard and fast grocery budget for the first time EVER and I was shocked how much I spent just to feed myself and occasionally the boyfriend.  $250-300?? No thank you. Plus I was cheating on my numbers and not putting things like toothpaste and toilet paper in that budget. Now I can stay under $175 and all those non-food things are included! (and I feed the boyfriend a lot more too)

Took all of this home for free!

Yesterday I played the grocery store coupon game and finally hit the jackpot. $35 of groceries for free! You may now call me the Coupon Queen!  I'll break the details down at the end, but for now I just want to hit the highlights so YOU can save more money on your grocery budget too.

To save a LOT on your budget, you need two main things: coupons and a sales match-up listing.

I get most of my coupons from the Sunday paper (http://www.discountednewspapers.com/ to find CHEAP delivery) and from coupons.com

A sales match-up list will show you what is on sale THAT week that will match up with the coupons that are out there. So you don't just use a coupon to buy Cheerios or just buy them on sale. You do BOTH and save the most. I have two major stores to choose from near my home and I've settled into shopping at Harris Teeter because there are GREAT match-ups online and almost none for the Giant stores. I mainly visit http://moolasavingmom.com/category/grocerystores/harristeeter/ and the forums at http://www.afullcup.com/forums/harris-teeter/  Those links are for the sections on Harris Teeter, but you can explore the sites to see if YOUR grocery store is included! (plus you’ll find all kinds of educational info for couponers on those sites)

It really helps too that my store doubles coupons, with special coupon events about 10 times a year. They double coupons up to 99 cents every day, but during a coupon event they’ll double coupons up to $2! That’s part of the way I got everything in the pic for free.

I told a little lie up there. I said you need two main things. You need a third. You need to throw out your fear of stockpiling.  I’m not an “extreme couponer” or a hoarder. But after the sale this past week, I do have enough pasta sauce for 3-4 months. It was 16 cents a jar when all was said and done! Buying more now, allows me to avoid buying it when I need it and paying $2 a jar. Sales come and go in cycles and you start to see that when you watch the ads for a while. I freaked out the boyfriend a little when I started because 5 boxes of cereal looked crazy to him. But I’m keeping it all in check and he’s happy that he hasn’t had to buy soup (his go-to bachelor food) in a long time.
 
I hope you’ve enjoyed my coupon adventures!  Feel free to close this post now unless you want the DETAILS of my $35 jackpot deal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here we go! To start, I got everything in the pic at Harris Teeter during last week’s coupon event. The chicken, rolls, veggies and V8 were part of a “meal deal” sale where if you buy all of them, they take $9.98 off your total. That brought the total for those items down to $6.29. I had a $1 coupon each for the rolls and the chicken plus a .50 cent coupon for the veggies. Double those, take them off the total and now those items cost me $1.29! Moving onto the soup. The cans were on sale for $2 each. I bought 4, totaling $8. I had two coupons for a $1 off two, plus a store coupon saved on my loyalty card for $1*. So I spent $3 for all 4 cans. The microwave cups were on sale for $3 each and I bought 2. I had two coupons for $1 off. So I spent $2 for two cups. Looks like I owe the store $6.29 plus tax!  I also had two of those coupons that print at the register** from my last trip. One was for $2 off my order and the other for $1 off my order. The $2 coupon doubled! (they double at random and the policy doesn’t say if they should or shouldn’t, so you go with the flow) So now I’ve saved another $5!  It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the manager who came to approve my coupons scanned one of them twice***, saving me an extra $2. That brought my final total with tax to negative .44 cents!  Since the store doesn’t know what to do with a negative total, I grabbed a single serve bag of M&Ms and added them to my order. I now had to pay 57 cents for what would have cost me $36 and change if I had paid full price for all of it!  As an extra bonus, I got another one of those register coupons for $1 off the NEXT time I go shopping.

*At Harris Teeter the loyalty card is called a VIC card (very important customer) and when you register it online, you get extra bonuses. http://www.harristeeter.com/promotions/e-vic/e-vic_benefits.aspx The e-VIC coupons are referred to as ZVRs (pronounced like savers, but with a z). You can also link your card to savingstar.com for more saving that won't show up until later in your Saving Star account.

**these are actually called Catalina coupons, because the company that makes the printers and runs the promos is named Catalina. Mostly the machine prints coupons both at random and based on what you bought. But sometimes they run specific promos like buy 3 Classico pasta sauce and get a Catalina for $2 off your next trip. 

***Ethical dilemma time. Do I go back to the store and return those two dollars? I say no because I didn't notice the error at the time, I in no way tried to work the system, and I also extend grace when the store makes errors that lower my savings and don't demand the change I think I'm due. If I had noticed at the register, I would have had them fix it. After the fact, it all comes out in the wash. 

**** And LAST, if you have a smart phone you should get the new ibotta app. You choose deals, buy them, scan the UPC and take a pic of your receipt and you get the cash in your PayPal account which you can send to your checking account, so it's all secure.  You should of course use my referral link, and if you do it by Friday 3pm you get a $5 credit once you use it the first time.  ibotta.com/kxKBJQ 

Well hello there!

So nice of you to drop by! I thought you'd been avoiding me. What? I've been dead silent for four months and you thought I was ignoring you? Nonsense! I was just, um, a little bit, um, well, it's been.... Summer! There, I can blame everything on a the glorious summer I've had. Can't be cooped up blogging when there is summer to enjoy, can I?

Now that we have that out of the way, hello! Overall, life has been very good and I'm excited to get back here sharing music, hospitality and Jesus with you again. I have a few posts rattling around in my head about the amazing new music that's been released this month, the bible study I'm starting next month, and the autumn party hosting plans I have which will all come pouring out in the coming weeks.

I left you all on the rather heavy topic of finances. Since that time, I've paid down 7% of my debt, made two major repairs to my car and paid/saved for a week trip to Florida (taking The Boyfriend home to meet the fam!) I've been learning to coupon and so far I've reduced my grocery budget by 33%.  My goal is to bring it down more to reach a full 50% reduction from what I was spending at the beginning of the year. Being the organizational freak that I am, I'm actually having a LOT of fun with couponing. Fits my personality well. I've been slacking off on that adventure that was not-to-be-named, but with the summer over, I'm going to kick it into high gear and show that debt who's boss!

Enjoy your holiday weekend if you are in the US of A, or your regular weekend if you're anywhere else.  See you next month!

P.S.  If you're new around here, be sure to check out that link up there ^ that says FAVORITE POSTS because really, they're my favorite for a reason!

Emotional Money

I need to study Dave Ramsey. Can anyone tell me, does he cover money and the emotional single girl?

I grew up with a family that never had extra cash. I learned lots of good budgeting and frugal living lessons from my mom. I might have been the only person doing the envelope system with my 50 cent allowance at age 5. I made it most of the way through my 20s with a savings account and no debt. I was on top of this stuff! But then I encountered real grief for the first time. No one mentioned emotional health and it's effect on your finances.

My dad died every suddenly in 2008. I went through all the emotional stages. They took longer than I thought. And I wasn't prepared that the resulting depression meant I wouldn't care. I am not the type to not care. I didn't budget. I didn't track. I didn't care.

For the rest of the year and the following two years, I didn't track anything. I traveled, I shopped, I ate out. I had never carried a credit card balance in my life, but somewhere in there, I let the balance roll over. I budgeted sometimes, but only to make sure I could make the next minimum payment. (I never missed any of those thankfully.)

I finally started to care again in 2010. I was scared by what I saw in my accounts. I moved to find cheaper rent at the beginning of 2011. I cracked down and restarted my mint.com account several months later and studied where my money was going. I found a LOT of money in my budget that is now going towards erasing those credit cards.

You might ask what being single has to do with anything.