So the family rented a lakehouse for the weekend. With Hurricane Ivan upon us it seems most of the time will be spent indoors watching movies and playing games, but still, it'll be a fun time. I bought my share of the food out of our weekend spend money (T also bought food for home AND necessary baby items, so unfortunately the bill was 75. Blech.) But it's looking like that'll be most of our spending right there until we get back Sunday early afternoon. So here's to hoping for the THIRD cheapy weekend! Woohoo!

Has anyone tried this card? Just received info about it in the mail yesterday. My one concern with these credit card offers...has anyone found out there's a minimum amount of time you need to keep the cards open before cancelling them after you get the rewards? I keep reading the paperwork but seeing nothing...

So if anyone has/had the Chase Freedom card...once you charge the $500, how long did you have to wait for the bonus points to be credited to your account?

Another cheapy weekend - Hooray! This makes two in a row, so I hope we're developing a habit of it. With the lefotver moneys I was able to give my mom $25 towards some rental fees that came up, $20 for T's cash for the week, extra money to savings, and the rest into house/cash savings. More to come later!

So my weight is directly correlated to my finances. When we were doing atrocious with money (the last few months of part-time maternity leave) I was doing GREAT with my weight loss goals. Since I've gotten back on track with our budget and started saving, weight has climbed 10 (yep,T-E-N) lbs in the last two months. UGH!

Can't wait for Friday..it'll be nice to have a little padding in savings.

I really need to bring in a voided check so I can set up the 529 for baby girl. It'll be awesome to get her education funding started at an early age.

We are SOO close to hitting 50k in debt payoff..it'll be super exciting to hit that mark in the next month. It's way too fun getting things paid off!

My friends all think I'm a dork. Maye I am. :P

SO happy with our weekend spending. Weekends are normally atrocious for us. When all is said and done we normally blow about 300 dollars (gas, household items, restaurants, etc.). This weekend I told T I wanted to try and experiment and keep it under 200. We took 180 out of the bank Friday night, then stayed in that night for dinner. Saturday I cooked breakfast, then we had lunch at the music festival and spent the afternoon there, and dinner at CiCi's (9.99 coupon for two adults including fountain drinks!). Tonight we splurged on chinese food take out but we're still left with 100! Well, actually 150! I sold a baby swing we had never used for 50 bucks on craigslist today. So yeah, a super awesome money weekend for us! I figure I'll give T 15 for week spending and keep 5 for myself. Then the rest we'll put in our cash savings in the house. yaya!!

So Lancaster is out for this weekend. Mini Efund isn't where it needs to be and we have plenty to do around the house. I'm hoping we'll at least get to the music festival in the next town over. We're hoping to keep plans on the cheap side too. Things are going to be lean until next Friday!

took out 280 for the weekend and here's the breakdown...

30 PJ's - wings (yum)
15 Home Depot - new sink part
45 Baby gate, baby safety items
80 car maint - oil, spark plugs, etc
20 dinner - pizza
40 allergy medicine, bc pill refill, household items
15 T kept cash for week

~32 left to SAVE! We're thinking of putting extra weekend money towards the addition to give us a heads start. Won't need the money for another year, but it can't hurt. Counting extra money we found laying around the house we're up to $40.

Last week: 0
This week: $40

!

So I brought in the pontiac to get inspected and there were no scary problems! My mom had owed me a hundred (something to do with the rental) so I was able to pay for it with that money.

So our new weekend plan goes into effect tomorrow. We normally spend 300 a wkend on household/eating out/gas/etc. My plan is to take 280 out in CASH this weekend. The extra 20 we woudlve spent will go towards debt repayment. Then we can spend the 280 cash on the above things, but whatever we have leftover we're setting aside towards a separate goal. I think it'll be fun to see how much we can put towards this goal each weekend. I think it'll come easier too when we figure out exactly what it is. T says it should be for enclosing the patio but I'm still not sure.

I'm really trying to focus on using coupons for restaurants. I've got $10 off for a local chain restaurant, so maybe we'll use that. Lately it seems like Restaurant.com hasn't been so great. A lot of restaurants insisting that you spend at least 45 or 50 on meals to get the 25 off. I miss the old days when you could spend 35 to use the coupon! :/

No real plans this weekend which is exciting. Might go to a car show on Sunday and see my parents and that's about it. I swear, ever since we had our daughter, our social calendar has been way fuller than ever. Lots more time spent with family and friends than this hermit couple could've ever imagined :P. Ok, back to work..

Ok, so we're STILL trying to muddle through all the unforseen bills and get back on track with finances. Obviously it's been a major adjustment now with a baby, but I'm starting to get it under control. As of right now we've got an extra 520 a month. We really have 770 coming in but 250 a month just hangs out in our savings waiting for the oil/school/xmas bills to come knocking. It's a decent amount but I'm used to the 1200-250=950 that we had before...

So I've been racking my brain with how to come up with the difference...A ha! Working for the state, I have an incremental raise coming up in January that I had forgotten about. So there's $50 a month more right there. Then my escrow payment SHOULD go back down 100 dollars a month (barring any major changes in taxes). Then once that student loan is gone (anywhere April - June I'm guessing) that's an additional $165. Plus another incremental raise in July which should be smaller, maybe $40 a month?? So if all this comes to pass (a very big IF, but we can be hopeful!) that's an extra 345 a month by next July!! WOOHOO!! Not quite where we were at before, but CLOSE!

Plus there's that whole issue of my husbands salary...he is horribly underpaid for being an Asst Manager but he still doesn't have his college degree and the industry is doing poorly and he can't jump ship and go to another company. So he's brought up a raise multiple times to his boss who agrees with him but says the "higher ups" won't allow a raise in this economy. So blahh, who the heck knows if he's ever going to get a raise, but there's always a slim chance that they'll come through and that'll help us out as well. I guess we'll see. For now I need to beef up the savings because it's been decimated and get on that student loan payoff. It's down to 7k!!