CVS Savings

I'm not sure how I ran across this, but this is a site that explains a method to shop for free at CVS, Walgreens, etc. It's kind of confusing at first, but I think I understand it. Basically there are certain products you can buy that will pay you back a certain amount of in-store credit. Sometimes that credit is enough to match the amount you spent. So while you still spent money out of pocket, if you were to do it again, instead of using your money you could use your store credit. Then you could get some stuff that you need and use the money you had budgeted for that stuff for other stuff. Man, that's really confusing, but I think it might actually work. We may try it sometime soon since there is a CVS like right next to our house. JM

Car Problems

We got our car back from the shop tonight. Total bill was $916.84. Yeah, you read that right. So much stinking money. But at least now I have a shiny new distributor, cap, rotor, spark plug wires, and spark plugs. I can't wait to show them off. The cool thing about it was that I was able to write a check using money from our emergency fund, and we didn't have to go into debt at all over this. JM

Decisions

My wife, Eryn, is probably going to start watching two kids 3 days a week (we'll know for sure tomorrow night). This is in addition to the little girl she will be watching 5 days a week. We talked about it before she accepted the offer to watch the two kids because that meant that she would have to haul around 5 kids if she wanted to go anywhere. Our vehicle will only haul 3 kids.

So there is the problem. The solution? Well, she would be making a lot of money. More than enough to offset the cost of a minivan. So I started researching how much it would be for us to get one. I want to pick up a silver 2004 Honda Odyssey with under 60,000 miles and I want to pay under $19,000 for it.

I guess we'll know soon enough whether or not we need to get the van. But buying it used and asking for at least a 3-month commitment from the kids parents means that we could ditch the car if things didn't work out, and we probably wouldn't be out any serious money.

JM

House Hunting

We're planning on moving either in Spring or Summer of 2008. While that's over a year away, my wife and I love to look at houses, so today for our date day, which culminated with seeing High School Musical at the Fox (more on that later), we went out and looked at new homes. We saw some that we definitely loved.
Now I love to save money and live comfortably, but the one area where I am extremely tempted to overspend is on our house. We had been looking and loved a house that started at $260,000 (or $60,000 more than we should spend). We were talking over dessert about what it would take for us to get it and my wife said that she wouldn't want to have to worry about making the house payment.
It's awesome when she says stuff like that. I would want to move in, eat rice, and have no furniture. We would have an amazing house, but we would have to set the heater on 60 degrees. So we decided to go back to our original plan and try to get a more reasonable house that we can actually afford. I love my wife. JM

Battle

I love budgeting. Like I get way into it. I'm setting up my personal budget for 2007. I think I got it so it will work. It's like a game trying to get it so it will balance. Once I get my monthly budget to balance, then I go through and do my spending plans for each paycheck. That's fun, too. Trying to see when to pay the bills. Mostly, I just love having a plan. It makes life so much easier. JM