Free baby food score

This past week at Stop and Shop there was a sale on Gerber baby food pouches for $1.50 each - both the organic 2nd foods and Gerber Graduate pouches. There were also internet printable coupons for $0.75 off of one pouch. So once that doubles baby food is free! Between me and my husband we printed 8 of each coupon - so that's 16 free pouches of baby food. Our baby isn't eating solids yet, but the pouches don't expire until May, so figured we'd might as well stock up now!

Adventures in Cloth Diapering

     So in my latest quest to save money, I've started to look into cloth diapering. And by look into I mean that it's been my obsession for the week.

I'm lucky enough to live close to the Diaper Lab, and I'm doing their "experiment to own" program. I liked cloth diapers in theory but wasn't daring enough to just make the plunge and then end up saying "I hate this! I'm just goint to use disposables... and now I spent all this money on cloth diapers I won't use".

So far at least, I'm really liking it. There is something that just really appeals to my sensibilities to buy something, wash it, and re-use it vs buying something just to end up tossing it in the trash. I don't mind doing a little extra laundry - it's actually quite easy. Before having a baby I thought the idea of washing poopy diapers was gross, but I wash poopy things all the time now anyway. No big deal.

The Numbers - is it worth it?

My baby is about 4.5 months old right now. Most estimates go based on a baby being in diapers until 30 months. So that leaves us with 25 months to go in diapers (rounding down).

Disposables: I'd estimate that we spend about 50 dollars a month in diapers on average. So 25 months = 1250 dollars in diapers.

Cloth: We're looking at start-up costs of around 450 dollars. Definitely there is a lot more up-front cost. But that will average out to a savings of 32 dollars a month vs. using disposables. Theoretically we shouldn't have to buy any more.

Even better, if we end up having another baby and can re-use these diapers that's a whole lot more savings. So I'd better take good care of these diapers!

I'm planning to get mostly pocket diapers - if you went with mostly prefolds and covers this would be a lot cheaper - but after all was said and done I really liked the Babykicks Basic Pocket Diaper a lot - so I decided to just go with that - but still got a few prefolds and covers so I wouldn't have to buy quite as many pockets. That way if I run out before getting a chance to do laundry I have some cheap backups!

August Budget Roundup

     This past week has been crazy somehow - didn't find much time to write about what I did. I feel like it's kind of too late for details, but there were good sales this week. Free Shredded Wheat, free Lunchables, free Progresso Meal Starters, free Totino pizza rolls, catalinas galore. Cooking food for the week was a fail. I did make some Beef Stroganoff and that was good, but there was more I should have made in addition to the fact that we bought some produce and didn't end up cooking it which is a waste - don't know if it's still any good. I embarked on a new cloth diaper journey but that merits a post in and of itself.

Monthly Budget

So onto the real topic of this post: how we did for the budget this month!

Net for the month: -428 dollars.

Now normally I wouldn't be too happy with that, but when you break it down it's actually not that bad.

Where we failed

1) Gas and Fuel: 80 dollars over budget.
     Way over budget but this includes 3 drives between Boston and NY which is not typical - this is really a one time overage. And I'm excited to see what it is next month now that we have the Prius v.

2) Restaurants: 150 dollars over budget.
     Doh! A lot of this is because we went out for a fancy dinner for restaurant week - but I even tried to plan for that and say - knowing we're going out for a fancy dinner at the end of the month we have to not eat out much before that. This was just a budget fail. It's our weakness! Really want to make it within budget next month.

3) Baby Supplies: 240 dollars over budget.
     A lot of this is due to buying a new car seat for 150 dollars. Also a baby monitor for 30 dollars. 35 dollars for cloth diaper trial (more on this later). Even taking out these one time expenses that's still over my 100 dollar budget I set. Probably about 100 dollars on diapers this month, maybe slightly less. I was under budget last month so it may be partly timing, but still a lot of money for diapers!

4) Miscellaneous expenses: 1,000 dollars
     I don't know that this can really be called a fail but we had a lot of expenses mostly due to paying medical bills from my pregnancy so that put us over a lot.

Where we succeeded

1) Utilities: 40 dollars under budget
     Energy costs have been good - we are being efficient with both electric and gas.

2) Groceries: 70 dollars under budget
     I think we did pretty well here - only 180 dollars spent on groceries.

3) Shopping: 125 dollars under budget.
     We didn't do a lot of retail shopping this month and finally made it under budget on this category!

Overall

I'd give us a pretty good rating overall with our budget. Not perfect, but given all of the medical bills we paid and things like that, we're not too far out of line. There's a lot more room for improvement. Let's see how much we can cut it down for September.

Deals for the week

So I had a pretty productive shopping morning.

Stop and Shop Deals!

     Went to Stop and Shop and got 10 Lunchables for free. They are on sale 2 for $6 and if you buy 5 you get $5 off instantly from Stop and Shop. But there is also a catalina from Kraft if you buy 10 you get $10 on your next order. AND in the free Stop and Shop savings booklets they have at the front of the store they have $1.00 off coupons, so I grabbed 10 of those.
So 10 lunchables on sale = $30.00. Get $10.00 off instantly from S&S. = $20.00. Used 10 $1.00 coupons = $10.00 and I got a catalina printout for $10.00 off my next order = FREE! Yay for free stuff. Thanks to HTSFF for alerting me to this deal!

     Also at S&S I had a bunch of Yoplait yogurt coupons to use. Two $0.40 off of 6 yoplait cups coupons, one $0.50 off of 2 yoplait greek yogurt, two coupons for up to $1.50 off of any yoplait cup, and two coupons for $0.35 off.  So I got 14 cups of regular yogurt on sale @ $0.50 each, and 4 cups of greek yogurt on sale @ $1.00 each.  Anyway here's how it turned out.
       4 Greek yogurts = $4.00- two coupons at $1.29 each (they took off nonsale price for some reason - just realized this now) = $1.42- $1.00 from doubled coupon = $0.42. 
      14 regular yogurts = $7.00 - $1.60 from doubled 40 cent coupons = $5.40 - $1.40 from two doubled 35 cent coupons = $4.00
    
     So total It was $4.42 for 18 yogurts. But even better, I didn't know it but I guess there is a catalina on yoplait too, because I got a $2.00 on your next order coupon. So that's like paying $2.42 for 18 yogurts which is about 13 cents per yogurt! So I'd say we did pretty well with that too!

Oh and I bought a big bag of tortilla chips for $2.50. Can't get everything with coupons! But I did get generic brand vs buying Tostitos, so at least I saved some money that way.

CVS

Haven't gone to CVS yet, but I need to go today because they sent me a $2.00 coupon in the mail and it expires today. I just have to figure out what to get with it - preferably for free. I could get a free gallon of milk, but I'm trying to avoid dairy. Which also excludes all the nice milk chocolatey candy I would buy. I could get two 2-liters of Pepsi @ $0.88 each, but that has the disadvantage of both not being especially good for you plus that's like throwing out 24 cents, so I'd have to get something else. Or my husband has been asking me to buy C batteries for a while, I'm sure it will be more than $2.00, but I could just use it toward that. CVS batteries are BOGO so that's probably the wisest course of action.

Meal Planning 8/19/12

So I made the conscious effort this week to try to come up with some food to make that we can eat throughout the week. My husband goes to Haymarket (big open air fruit/vegetable market in Boston where you can get produce for really cheap) on Saturdays so I made sure to have a list ready for him. Apparently we are on sort of a Mexican theme. So I made 2 recipes this weekend - both are ones that I've made before and really enjoy.

1) Tacos! Using Jane Butel's Chile Beef Taco Filling.

1 pound extra-lean ground beef
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tablespoons ground mild chile
1 Tablespoon ground hot chile
1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar or cider vinegar
¼ teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1. Cook ground beef in a large skillet, stirring to break up meat, until browned.
2. Drain off any fat, then add the seasonings.
3. Cook, stirring, to combine ingredients and blend the flavors. Serve hot.

We used ground turkey instead of ground beef because that's what we had on hand. This recipe calls for ground chile, which I had from when I went to Jane Butel's cooking class with my mom. But alas, now I am all out. I never really knew before that "chili powder" is a lot of salt and other spices, whereas the ground chile she uses is just ... ground chiles. I always thought that was what the chili powder you get in the store was, but apparently not. You can buy some online here,

2) Emeril Lagasse's Vegetarian Chili

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions

1 cup chopped red bell peppers

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 to 3 serrano peppers, stemmed, seeded, and minced, depending upon taste

1 medium zucchini, stem ends trimmed and cut into small dice

2 cups fresh corn kernels (about 3 ears)

1 1/2 pounds portobello mushrooms (about 5 large), stemmed, wiped clean and cubed

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 tablespooon ground cumin

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

4 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

3 cups cooked black beans, or canned beans, rinsed and drained

1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce

1 cup vegetable stock, or water

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

In a large, heavy pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions, bell peppers, garlic, and serrano peppers, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the zucchini, corn, and mushrooms, and cook, stirring, until soft and the vegetables give off their liquid and start to brown around the edges, about 6 minutes. Add the chili powder, cumin, salt and cayenne, and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and stir well. Add the beans, tomato sauce, and vegetable stock, stir well, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cilantro. Adjust the seasoning, to taste.

I love this recipe - it's a great vegetarian chili that holds its own even without meat. We were able to get cheap white mushrooms vs portobellos at Haymarket so we used those instead, and frozen corn instead of fresh because that's what we had. I feel like recipe's like this it doesn't really matter if you fully stick to the recipe - it'll turn out pretty good anyway. Haven't tasted it yet, but we made a double batch so we'll have plenty of leftovers.

Prius v: Budget friend or foe?

     So my husband and I recently got an offer we couldn't refuse to buy out 2009 Toyota Corolla. With a new baby, I was thinking maybe it'd be nice to have a slightly larger car to fit all related baby gear and who knows in the future maybe there will be another baby and more stuff. Well, we looked at cars that were supposedly bigger, like a Camry for example. Except that the Camry just had more legroom, but less space in the trunk. That's a bummer. The Honda Fit supposedly had tons of storage - we could definitely fit more in our Corolla. So the only thing that would work would be a small SUV like a Rav4 or CR-V, but I just couldn't bring myself to 1) up the price of the car and 2) have to get a car with low gas mileage and I'll be stuck paying a ton on gas. So we almost settled on just getting a new Corolla since it was the only car that looked like it might meet our needs.
     Then along came the Prius v - a hatchback station wagon with lots of storage but also gets great gas mileage - especially in the city where we do most of our driving. Somehow I was convinced to go along with a new car with such a hefty, by my standards, price-tag. I'm a little worried about spending so much initially because I don't know that gas savings will make up for it. According to fueleconomy.gov, annual fuel cost for a Prius v is $1,350 and $1,900 for the Corolla. So that's only $550 - so for a car that's $9,000 more expensive that would take 16 years to make it up - so basically gas doesn't make up for it. But I guess we're paying  premium for space and comfort.
     Those are just estimates though, and based on doing 45% highway driving whereas we do much less than that - and that will make a bigger difference since unlike regular gas cars, the Prius gets better mileage for city driving. I'm curious to see the difference in our monthly gas budget - we;ll gt an official answer after driving it all month in September.

Free Desitin and free pacifiers!

Babies R Us/Toys R Us has a coupon out for 5 dollars to use in their stores. Last time they had this coupon out I used it to buy some Desitin which is $5.99 so it only cost me a dollar which is a good deal. But I read the coupon and realized it does not have any restriction on combining it with other offers like a lot of the Babies R Us coupons do.

Johnson & Johnson has a $1 dollar off coupon on their website  (I just got the regular Desitin in the blue box - not sure of the price on the others). So the Desitin was $5.99, minus the $1.00 coupon, then gave them the 5 dollar BRU coupon = FREE Desitin!

Also if you go to couponnetwork.com they have a coupon for $1.00 off a pack of Avent pacifiers. These are also $5.99 at Babies R Us. So doing the same thing, you can get FREE pacifiers.

My baby is not much of a pacifier girl - it's hit or miss - most of the time she'll refuse it, but every once in a while she'll be going crazy and I'll give her a pacifier and she falls right asleep. Anyway I happen to like the Avent pacifiers. 1) Because she will actually take them. and 2) Because they come with a cover which is great, especially if I want to bring one along with me in my diaper bag - don't have to worry about it getting dirty from whatever is inside my bag!

Saving

So this is just sort of an overview of what we've done so far in attempts for saving, especially with a new addition to the family.

1) Buying things used

Especially with a lot of baby things - we have found craigslist to be great. We spent about 150 dollars and got a full wardrobe of baby girl clothes to last from birth-12 months and some pieces up to 2T. It's all in good condition - nobody would know the difference. We got our swing on craigslist, our glider, way better than paying full price. We also went to a consignment shop to buy our Ergo baby carrier. Obviously you don't want everything used, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. The Boston area has a very good craigslisting population.

2) Coupons

Initially it was my husband who wanted to start couponing and I thought he was crazy. I saw those shows on TV with people diving through dumpsters for coupons and coming out of the stores with 1000 cases of ramen and sports drinks and having it take over their whole house. Well, I've found that couponing has worked well for us even though we only do it really basically and just get one set of coupons from the Sunday paper which we get delivered to us. What's really helped is Kathy Spencer's How To Shop For Free (HTSFF) - she posts coupon match ups and alert you to good deals. But what I think is the best is there is a coupon database. So now all I need to do if I know I want to buy something is type it into the coupon database and it will tell me if there's a coupon for it and if so, where to find it. I also recommend Kathy Spencer's book - I checked it out from the library - I didn't read the whole thing but it was good to skim through for the basic information I was looking for.

3) Lifestyle changes

We already downgraded our TV package, changed insurance companies to get a better rate, and big things like that. The biggest change for us is really going to be with regard to our food budget. We are used to eating out way too much so my new goal is to eat at home more. We've really kicked the comparison shopping into high-gear - for everything, but especially groceries. My new goal I'm just starting out with is meal-planning. I want to at least have good things to eat instead of just making junk because it's fast and easy, you didn't think ahead, and now you're starving. Still a work in progress, but hopefully I will find some good recipes and can post them here.

Budgeting

Getting Started

    When setting up a budget for our family, I initially downloaded a budget template on Excel and painstakingly went through our credit card statements and checkbooks, categorized each transaction, then totalled them all up. What a pain! It took forever. Then my husband told me about mint.com.

     If you haven't yet - check out Mint. It's a great, free, site to manage your finances. If, like me, basically all of your purchases are on credit cards, it's pretty amazing. (And really purchasing everything on credit card then just paying it all off at the end of the month is the way to go since you get points, which is basically free money.) Anyway, mint.com syncs up with your online accounts for your banks and credit cards, so all of that junk I was doing in Excel? Mint does that for you automatically. Every single purchase you make on your credit card gets categorized automatically and it will total up expenses in each category. If you set a budget it will show you how much you've already spent each month in each category you set, so you have a good visual on how you're doing throughout the month. It took a little bit of tweaking to get it set the way I wanted, but once you do that it's pretty low maintenance.

How much to budget?

    To figure out how much to budget I first went through all of our set costs - the things that are the same every month: the mortgage, student loan payments, internet/tv bills, etc. Then after subtracting that amount from our monthly income that's what we had left for things that change month to month like food expenses, utilities, gas for the car, general shopping, and other miscellaneous spending. Some things I had a basic idea, like for gas - we usually fill up once a week, so I budgeted about 120 dollars a month. Some things I just took a random guess - baby supplies? 100 dollars a month - and we'll see how that turns out.

     In an attempt to be somewhat scientific I found average monthly food costs as per the USDA. For a family of 2, a moderate budget is around $600/month, "low-cost" around $480/month, and "thrifty" around $375/month. I guess we're somewhere in between. I set a budget of $250/month for groceries but also $250/month for restaurants/coffee shops etc. So $500/month for food. Though I do count non-food items in grocery like buying toothpaste or trash bags. Too hard to separate it all out.

Keeping it up

     I hope to use this blog to help keep track of my progress and document some good finds and money saving ideas. I plan to make one more post as an overview of how I'm doing up to now, then get going in real-time.

What's this all about?

     I'm a new mom with a 3-month old daughter and my current goal is to stay home to take care of her. But as lovely as that sounds, there is of course the issue of money. With only one income, money would be pretty tight. I'm hoping to eventually pick up some weekend work hours when my husband will be home to watch the baby. In the meantime, I'm trying to come up with ways to save and stay on a budget so that we won't be losing money every month if I don't work. We had a rough budget plan before, but with two incomes we never really had to worry too much. With two frugal individuals married to eachother, we always had money left to put into savings. As of now, I'd say we're losing at least a few hundred dollars each month I don't work.

    My goal for this blog? To document my money saving ideas, plans, and outcomes and see if through budgeting, couponing, and lifestyle changes I can reverse our negative cash flow and start saving!