I had my ultrasound the Friday before Christmas! The babe is perfectly healthy! Hooray! That is all I wanted to hear!
This very active baby did the most kicking it had ever done previously the night before the ultrasound. I knew this was not a good sign - it would tire it’s self out and be completely asleep during the ultrasound. Sure enough, it was, no movement that morning. I drank a bunch of juice, still nothing. Got in the ultrasound room and wouldn’t you know - the little stubborn person was sleeping with it’s hands over it’s face and it’s legs crossed! The doctor kept going back and forth, and we got it to move a teeny bit and he said that he would assume it is a GIRL, however he wasn’t going to guarantee it. Told me to come back next time and he’d tell me for sure. (Next time happens to be Jan. 18th). All of my friends told me this is super common with girls, that it’s a lot harder to tell unless you get a direct shot. So I guess I’m assuming girl. At first I was really thrown through a loop - I was totally expecting boy. But now that I’ve had some time to digest it, I’m really starting to get increasingly used to the idea and am starting to get super excited. This babe had better not even grow a wee-wee! LOL
So wow, three days of this already. I have a feeling that it is going to get harder each day. It was really easy the first day.
I had an empty composition book and decided to journal my experience. I wanted to at the very least keep track of the things that were the biggest accomplishments; what I spent each day, what I spent it on, where I went (because we all know where we go has a lot to do with how much we spend), and what I made for dinner (since dinner is the easiest meal to spend the most money on, especially if you are feeling lazy and do take-out or worse yet, go out).
Day 1 -
Bought: Nothing
Outings: None
Dinner: Chicken and Dumplings in the crock-pot (I was so proud of myself - I have been craving chicken and dumplings so bad but had not the slightest idea how to make them. Found a dumpling recipe on the back of Bisquick and threw together my own chicken mixture.
Extra Frugality Accomplishments: In my dinner recipe I used carrots that I normally would have thrown out because they were dried out, but in my chicken broth they tasted perfect. Also used a sort of spongy potato that I also would have chucked, but also worked great.
Grand Total Spent - $0
Day 2 -
Bought: Grocery Store, $7.68: 1 lb. baby carrots (on sale) .99, 2 lbs. bananas (reduced price because they were ripe) .31, 8 lb. bag seedless navel oranges $4.99, bread (the cheapo brand, not what I usually get) $1.39. Movie Rental Store, $1.05: late fee Produce Market, $2.15 - 2.5 lbs. Empire Apples
Outings: Family Christmas Party
Dinner: At the Christmas Party we had a big mid-afternoon lunch so we didn’t feel hungry for dinner. The littlest guy didn’t eat much there so he had cereal and milk for dinner.
Extra Frugality Accomplishments: I needed to make a side dish to pass, and I was tempted to make this amazing chocolate/cream cheese cake I had, but the ingredients would have cost over $5, so instead I made devilled eggs with eggs that I already that someone actually gave me for free, and used up the rest of my Miracle Whip that would have been outdated here in a few days. Went to a different store to get the apples since the grocery store just had those jumbo sized deluxe apples and they are so expensive. The boys will actually eat an entire small apple and not waste the rest, plus they are almost a dollar cheaper per pound. Also, had a free movie rental coupon I used to rent the boys one movie.
Grand Total Spent - $10.88
Day 3 -
Bought: Nothing (Although I do admit that I cheated a bit. The boys both needed new black dress shoes for a wedding they will be in and I found an amazing shoe sale at Darling Shoes where they had them on sale for TWO DOLLARS per pair. I have ordered them from this company in the past and I love their shoes because they have wide width that is perfect for Forest who’s feet are rather square. He complains constantly about normal width shoes.) Anyway, the boys had had Christmas money that Lord knows they did not need to use on MORE toys, so I used $5 of each of their money to buy them the shoes. I’ll put the rest in their savings accounts. So I did spend $10, but didn’t count it since it wasn’t from my money. That’s not cheating, right?!?)
Outings: Church, Husband’s Grandmothers for lunch
Dinner: Since we had a great big lunch at hubby’s Grandma’s we had a simple dinner of breakfast for dinner - hot cereal, toast, and juice
Extra Frugality Accomplishments: Do you know just how hard it is to resist shoes at $1-2 a pop?! Especially the adorable girl ones?!?! I did it though!
I’ve never made it a secret that we have credit card debt. Waaaay too much. If I can find anything that we did wrong in being very young as newly weds, it is our financial decisions. In those first 2 or 3 years we screwed ourselves over so badly. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about.
For the last several years it seems like we are treading water. We aren’t really making a dent in the debt, however we aren’t adding to it. The past 6 months we have really started to attack it. I have always been very frugal and if I were to tell you how little we are living on after we pay our debt, you might have a heart attack right here and now. Please do not think for a minute I am asking for sympathy, I think I have a great life, and besides, we did this to ourselves, so we should pay for it! Why I am telling you how tight we are, is when you are living like that, it is really hard to find any extra money to put towards debt. Let alone for things like gifts, vacations, etc. Anyway, I started living even more frugally in the past 6 months and for once we were starting to see a difference. It wasn’t huge, and it was sad seeing how little it was compared to what we are paying (blast those stupid interest rates that are high way robbery), but we were going towards the positive, rather than the negative. It was a beautiful thing. I thought I was pretty set for Christmas, but by the end when it was all said and done we had $500 worth of new purchases placed upon our credit card. This might not sound like a lot to you, however when you are living paycheck to paycheck you can’t just come up with this money in your bank account.
I belong to a group of people that are always looking for ways to become more frugal and one of them spoke about a spending freeze, very similar to what Melissa did several months ago (Hope you don’t think I’m just trying to copy you, my friend.) Basically you do not buy anything at all that you don’t need. You shop out of your pantry, freezer, and fridge until you can’t anymore. You question all of your spending, including your gas to get places that you don’t really need to go. You don’t partake of good deals, even if you’ll need the product later. Of course this couldn’t be a long term thing, at least for most peope, because it’s not feasible. However, we have taxes due in April (gotta love self-employment!), a new baby coming, a new vehicle purchase looming in the future, as well as this credit card debt we lug along with us, so my husband and I have decided in the next 30 days that we will halt all extra purchases (someone hold me back on the billet grilles, lol), even ones that we normally can justify in our minds (groceries we don’t need, simply because it’s food, and after all, one needs food, right? and etc.). In the mean time we are going to try to re-coup all of the money to pay off what balance we put on our credit cards over the holidays. ) If we can do this, it will be HUGE! It is over $100 extra a week that we have to somehowhack out of our spending, since right now we have nothing extra to play with.
I told you all of this, because I will be sharing with you my journey. When I’ve resisted an especially tempting temptation, when I’ve given in, what I’ve spent weekly, etc. I hope that this will be the kick in the seat of our pants to show us that we can live on MUCH less than we thought. Kind of like what the Atkins diet does for dieters, or something. Not good long term, but can give you that boost you need….
Today starts our 30 days! Are you with me? I’ll need your cheer, I know!
Have you ever heard of Car Angel Ministries? It is a non-profit organization that uses money they gather from people who donate cars to them for great purposes. Such as, making anti-drug movies for teenagers, literacy literature to better people’s lives who are in prison, and religious DVD’s for children that teach great values. To date they have given away over 2.4 million of these videos that are geared towards pre-schoolers and early grade school children! (They have adorable characters and great animation if I do say so myself!) Here is a UTube video that will give you a little taste of their show:
