Mizlizzy01's $20 Challenge

I can only be on here for a minute, but I thought I'd tell you all that my first yard sale ever was a huge success. We made $600!!!!

A lot of the money that was made as from the sale of some tools and stuff of my husbands that are kind of high ticket items, but anyway...$600!

All of that is going into our vacation fund. We are going to Florida in 3 weeks so we needed more $$ to afford the trip. Yay!!!

Ok! Since I have started the $20 challenge (Apr 25 2006), I have been cutting down my pop to one a day and one sweet snack a day. Which if you know me this is dramatic because I am a sweets fan! But anyhow right before I started this challenge, I weighed in at the doctor at 189 lbs. I weighed myself here at home yesterday and the scale says I weigh 180, but my scale is old and I need to weigh myself on a more reliable scale. HOWEVER, this scale always seems to say I weigh MORE than I actually do. SO, with that in mind, I think I might have lost around 10 lbs. just from cutting down. And some days, I have allowed myself to have 2 pops, but not every day.

Anyway, how exciting if that is the case.

Along with my savings challenge here, I have also come up with a health plan I'm sticking to, where I get points for all the healthy things I do for myself each day. One of the problems I have is allowing myself to put myself higher on the totem pole and do the things for my health and well-being that I know I should. So I have been giving myself points for each thing I do every day, i.e., every day I drink 8 glasses of water, I get X amount of points, every day I exercise, I get X amount, every day I wear moisturizer, etc. Then every week I tally up the points and according to how many points I get, I win a reward. Plus, I tally up the points for the whole month and there are other, better rewards each month, and then a 6 month total and a year total. I also wrote down my weight goal, which is to lose 1-2 lbs a week for the next 12 weeks and if I get to 165 I get something for that too. If I can keep this up, I might actually have hit upon something that will work for me!

Thank you so much everybody for your ideas and just being here to inspire me.

MizLizzy

Ok, today is the first day of my 3rd week of the $20 Challenge. This is what I have to report.

1. I am noticing that I REALLY, REALLY have to control impulse buys. This week I was horrified how I just switch to autopilot when I am out, and buy stuff without thinking about it. Examples:

* Took my daughter and her best friend shopping for bathing suits on Thursday (we were going to a friends' house on Friday who has a hot tub and both girls have grown out of their bathing suits and needed something they wouldn't be hanging out of around all the teen boys that are there). The friend bought $25 and my plan was to go to Wally World to get them something cheap and sufficient for our needs. However, I noticed I had a $10 off a $25 purchase coupon for Fashion Bug, which expired that day so I thought, maybe I can find them something there and use the coupon and maybe save both of them some $$. We went there, and all the bathing suits were TOO SKIMPY and TOO EXPENSIVE besides. So I decided to check the clearance/sales racks to get $25 of products so I could use the coupon and only spend $15. I found 3 really cute tops for myself at $3.95, $3.95 and $6.95 respectively. I found 2 T-Shirts for $8 each I was going to get for the girls, which took me up above the $25 limit (so I thought). I went to the cash register, and lo and behold the T-Shirts were not included in the coupon (the T's had a special tag on them called "Priced Just Right" and those Priced Just Right things weren't included on the coupon). I didn't have the heart to not get them for the girls after I told them they could get them, so in order to use the coupon I needed to find more things to bring up to the $25. I bought a pair of earrings for $8, and although it wasn't up to $25 she still let me use the coupon. My total expenditure at Fashion Bug ended up being $31.31 AFTER the coupon, instead of $15 like I had intentioned.

THEN I STILL had to go shopping for the bathing suits!

My total expenditure for the bathing suit at Wally World was $25.19. I was planning on spending a bit less than that, but I ended up having to buy separates because my daughter is tiny on the bottom and big on the top. I had to buy her a size 3/5 bottom and a 7/9 top. Her best friend has the opposite problem, she had a 7/9 top and a 11/13 bottom. They had to have matching bathing suits. I admit, they were REALLY cute, and although my intention was that these suits were just "junky" suits and not the actual suit I was going to get for our trip to the beach, they ended up being so cute that they are the final bathing suit for both I think. So ultimately I think I actually saved money there by not buying my daughter 2 bathing suits for the summer.

Although I love the shirts I bought myself and the earrings, I'm still bummed about the Fashion Bug incident. I should have just put everything back and left or told the girls sorry about the t-shirts.

* Another example of my spending without thinking - I am involved in a book group at my favorite bookstore. I LOVE THIS BOOKSTORE! However, every time I go in there I find so many things I want, and I end up buying more than I should. I have gone to this awesome book group two Saturdays in a row, and each time I spent $50-60 on books (totally unrelated to the book group and not part of the book group). Next weekend my goal is not to buy any new books. I finished most of the books I bought already, I wonder if they would take them back for their resale section and give me a store credit. Hm...

On the bright side, here are my weekly savings:

Rewards for Sticking to
my health plan: $11.00
Unexpected funds: dividend check - $2.99
Rounding up in my checkbook - $16.99
Coupons/Discounts: Kroger - $6.46
Fashion Bug - $10.00

Total weekly Savings: $47.44
New savings balance: $100.65

To close, I have made a new rule for myself. I only am keeping $20 in my wallet, along with ONE check for emergencies. I am leaving home my debit card (my only card) and my checkbook whenever I go out now. My husband usually takes my car to fuel up for me when I need it, so I don't have to keep my card with me normally.

We'll see if that helps me with the overspending thing. If I have to, I might have to even not have the emergency check. I am really open to any suggestions you all have on this.

Sorry so long winded!

MizLizzy

I am going to get on here later and list the amounts I've managed to save the last couple of days, but right now I just wanted to share a great stroke of luck that my hubby and I have just had.

We have been talking for a while about borrowing our friend's power washer to wash the outside of our house. We could not afford to buy one of our own--and the frequency of use wouldn't really justify it. My husband works for the phone company and today, he found a really nice power washer a guy was throwing out. He had left the water in it and didn't drain it all winter so the pump needs rebuilt. My hubby asked him if he meant to throw it out and the guy said yes, so my hubby took it. All we need is about $25 in parts and now we have a practically brand new power washer worth about $400. It is gas powered, and that means the water pressure will be twice that of the one we borrow from our friend which is an electric one.

Long story short, it is really good when you can learn to fix things on your own. My hubby's tinkering skills have really helped us save money. We have a 30-something inch television in our living room, which has its own built in entertainment center and surround sound speakers, and we got that for free. It just needed a $100 repair to work. My hubby had it repaired at a shop, he knew what was wrong with it, but didn't want to delve into internal TV repair. This goes to show that oftentimes, it still is more cost effective to fix something you already have or got for cheaper, than buy the equivalent brand new.

Another story about my husband's industriousness -- We used to have a boat. We got it for free too. It just needed about $200 of work to get it running again. It wasn't the most beautiful thing in the world, but it would go pretty fast and we could go tubing and skiing behind it. We had a blast in that thing. One year, we needed some money quickly, so we sold it for, if I remember correctly, $600 or $700. Now, this was 3 years after we got it and we used the heck out of it between that time.

Here's another one -- We sold our older car, and we decided to use the money to buy some jetskis we found for sale. The price we paid for both the jetskis, their tow trailer, and all the life vests and equipment, was the price that just one of these particular jetskis normally goes for, without a trailer or any extras! Normally we wouldn't make a purchase as large as that, but we live on a lake and we love to spend time out there. It was a wise purchase because we have used them every summer, every chance we get. It is something the whole family loves to do.

My hubby keeps his eyes open for a really good deals, and doesn't mind doing a little bit of work (or garbage picking) to get a good piece of equipment up and running. It is also funny how people will throw away something that only needs a few dollars of repairs on it and is otherwise in excellent shape.

I just wanted to share with you how excited and proud I am that I have a partner who is as dedicated to saving money as I am. Yay!

Again, taking some household repair classes or mechanic, electronic, computer or appliance repair classes can really help you in the long run!

MizLizzy

Hi there, I haven't been on here for a couple of days, but have spent some time today reading other peoples' blogs and getting some GREAT ideas.

One thing I liked was ImaSaver's idea of putting $1 into savings when she met fitness goals she set for herself. Also every day that she doesn't go anywhere (drive) she puts $1 into savings. I think I could do that too.

In my previous entry I said I was going to cut down and eventually eliminate pop from my diet. I am also going to try to eliminate junky snack foods (i.e., Ho Ho's, my downfall). So what I am doing, is I usually shop every 2 weeks for groceries. I am only going to buy myself ONE kind of treat for the whole 2 weeks. For instance, a box of Ho Hos has 12 ho's in it. I am only going to get one per day. A 12-pack of Dr. Pepper, of course, has 12 doctors in it. So I only get one a day, and my hubby is going to keep them locked in his garage and only give me one a day. This is really great because we will spend less on snacks, and I will learn to cut it out of my diet. And considering the health issues I am having, this will help me immensely. Once I run out of snacks, I have to wait until the next grocery store trip to get anything else. But I will continue to get one thing and it has to last the whole 2 weeks between shopping trips.

What threatens to screw me up is my baking. I have a cake I was planning on baking, and we usually make cookies a lot. But what I am going to do is only one baked good per week (this is more for my diet than for the budget). And if I have a piece of cake on a particular day, then no Ho Hos. Same with cookies. Only 2 cookies and no Ho-Hos that day. You must all think I'm a goofball to have to tell myself these things.

* Ok, every payday is when I go shopping. If I can make it through a pay period and every single day of the period I stuck with it and didn't break the rule, I will put $5 in the savings.

Once I work out my exercise/fitness routine, I will put $ into savings when I meet my day's goals for that.

I am still working on my total plan. I'm still really excited to do this. I haven't told my hubby or anybody! If I find ways to include him on it, I will tell him. But the idea of coming up with extra money for vacations, birthdays, etc., will thrill him to no end. We are both already frugal in most of our lives. We just need to stop eating out as much as we do, and cut down on expensive junk food and impulse buys.


Since I started the other day, these are the things I have done to save:

Kroger Plus grocery savings - $24.22
Regular manufacturers coupon savings - $2.85
Keep the change checkbook roundup $ - $5.04

Previous balance: 21.10
Added Savings: 32.11
New Total: 53.21

Yay!

Well, here I am, I am excited about doing this $20 Challenge experiment. We are dead broke right now and living from paycheck to paycheck. As a new stay-at-home mom, learning to adjust from 2 incomes to one, I am having a hard time finding money to save for our vacation, or to pay off debts. But as many of you can attest, a little bit here and a little bit there can add up to alot. So I am going to start saving.

These are the things I'm going to do:

* I am going to transfer $20 into our savings account (which is close to 0 right now).

* Every time I buy something using my debit card or check, I am going to round up the amounts, and the change will go into the savings account.

* Each paycheck I have a specific amount budgeted for utilities. If the bill comes in and is less than the budgeted amount, I will transfer the difference into savings.

* Some things I'm going to do to save money are:

- Hang clothes outside to dry during the warmer months, and maybe inside during the colder months instead of using the dryer so much.

- Cook more meals, and eat out a LOT less than we're doing. That is one of our biggest financial drains.

- Cut down on soda right now, and eventually, stop drinking pop entirely. I spend a lot on pop.

- Continue my good habits of shopping for clothes only on clearance or at consignment or thrift stores.

- Spend more quality time with my family, and less expensive entertainments. More fires in the firepit in the backyard, more grilling out instead of pizza, more board game nights instead of renting movies or going out shopping.

- Use crockpot more often.

- Once a month cooking, and then freezing, to make it more convenient on those nights I don't feel like cooking, which is a lot of the time. Not my favorite thing. Love to eat, hate to cook.

- Have a yard sale and sell a lot of our clutter. Get rid of all the clothes we no longer wear, all the knick knacks that I really am not attached to, and my tons of books, glassware, etc. I will also try to sell some things on E-Bay.

- Continue to promote my business, and take all profits to put in savings.

- My goal is to see how much I can save between now and June 15 when we leave for vacation.

- My goal after that is to save money up to $500 increments and pay off debts with it.

- My goal after debts are paid off is to divide my savings between an emergency fund, a vacation fund, a Christmas/Birthday fund, the kids' college accounts, and retirement fund.

Just writing this out is so exciting! I am glad to be a part of this really neat challenge.

MizLizzy