I survived day 1 of our garage sale!

Dad and Joyce came and picked up the kids at 10:00 and that left me free to sell all of their things! Today went really well. We were able to sell quite a bit. I always have that moment of fear at the beginning of the sale where I’m sure that no one is going to show up and then a short while later, people start trickling in!  The most surprising thing to me was that I sold all of the little decorative pictures and photo frames. I thought no one would be interested. I’m about $25 away from my goal for the two-day sale. I think we can make it.

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Credit card balance= $0

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I know it’s Sunday, but since I missed getting this post in on Friday, I’ll just pretend that I’m not two days late.

I love a good deal and I’ve been working on my scrapbooks lately so good deals related to that make me very happy. Here are a few sites where you can get some great deals:
CropChocolate: This is a site that just started a week ago. I call it my very own “woot” because it works much like the woot site. They sell one item a day until it’s sold out. An item I bought the other day had free shipping. I don’t know if it’s like that with everything, but it might be. The prices are ridiculously low.
Michaels and Joanns- If you sign up for their mailing lists, you get the weekly advertisement emailed to you as well as weekly coupons. I think Joanns offers a 40% off coupon every single week. I just recently signed up for Michaels. At sign up I received a 40% off coupon and I received a 50% off coupon this week. Some of the big ticket items are excluded, but you should still be able to get some good deals. This week, Joanns is selling the Bigkick Die-cut machine for 50% off. Maybe for Mother’s Day. . . I need to think about whether I would get my money’s worth out of it. It’s very tempting. Of course, none of these things are good deals if you are buying things you don’t need or have money for anyway. Just a little disclaimer!

Now, on to Fashion. Have you been waiting with bated breath for the follow-up to last week’s post on jeans? Well, wait no longer! Here it is! Yes, the word “tertiarily” is used in that post!

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I have discovered Frugal Friday. This site dedicates Fridays to “Frugal Friday” posts and it has lots of links from it to ideas from all sorts of people with money saving ideas.

We stuck to our menu plan this week witha few exceptions- yesterday was had Subway and we had a few runs to the local store for “treats”. I’ve written down some of the things so I can get a better deal at Walmart when I add them to my grocery list. However, I’m pretty sure we still saved money. I can’t wait to see the difference after a month. I love saving money. Putting money into our savings account makes me very happy!

We did one other thing this week that is saving us money. We switched our car and homeowners insurance. We have the exact same amount of coverage, but we’ll be saving about $50/month.

And finally, our energy bills are much better this winter. Nathan and his dad did some duct work and also insulated a portion of the attic which wasn’t insulated before and it’s making a huge difference. This has been a cold winter and our bills are much less than last year.

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Clever title, huh?

Ethan, Audrey and I went to Walmart this morning. It’s about 25 minutes away, but it’s a much better value than our local grocery store. I do want to support the local businesses. I think our neighborhood’s Glenn’s Supervalu is great, but we need to be more careful about our money. I think our compromise will be that we may buy produce there. Walmart doesn’t have a great produce department. Anyway, I digress.

I want to talk about how we can save money on our groceries. I planned out our menu for the week and I just spent $91.24. That includes $10.65 for a two-week supply of diapers. We are a family of 4. Since Ethan and Audrey are little, maybe they should only count for 1/2 each. Does that amount sound reasonable? I would like to keep it between $70 and $80 a week.

If you don’t mind sharing (and you can do this anonymously in a comment), I would love to hear:
1) How much you spend a week/month (however you break it down).
2)A typical week of menus for your family.
3)The number of people that you’re feeding.
4)Money saving tips.
5)Anything else you think would be relevant!

*** Edited to Add***
We have a printout on the wall by our upstairs computer of Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps” regarding getting out of debt and saving money. If you haven’t seem it, these are the steps: 1)$1,000 in an emergency fund, 2) Pay off debt with debt snowball, 3) 3-6 months expenses in savings, 4) Invest 15% of income into Roth IRA’s and Pre-tax retirement plans, 5) College funding, 6) Pay off your home early, 7)Build wealth and give.
My renewed interest in saving money has to do with the fact that I really want us to work on step 3. Perhaps I should have mentioned that to my husband!

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