Today's Savings

My first saving of the day was the gas I saved when my BF and I walked to the 2-Mile Fun Run/Walk we participated in today. It's only a short distance, but it's still a few cents in gas, not to mention the stress it saved me in having to find a parking spot.

This afternoon, we went to Dillons to get some lunch. They have a big salad bar that we've been wanting to try and I figured today would be a good day. While there, we picked up some good deals. My faves?

A box of Special K Blueberry cereal for 1.99 with coupon (normally about $4.00, on sale for 2.99, used a coupon for $1.00 off)
Two boxes of Kelloggs Fiber Plus Bars for 1.39 each (normally $3.09, on sale for 2.39, used a coupon for each box for 75 cents off, and then the Dillon's system multiplied it to take off an additional 25 cents).
Half gallon of one percent milk on Manager's special for $1.19 with a week left before the expiration date (we'll finish it by then).
Fuze drinks (part of their 10 for $10 sale, and since I'm trying to cut back on soda, I got five of them to take to work with me this week).

It's a good thing we saved where we did because our salads ended up costing ALOT. Jon's was over $10 (4.99 per lb...he was hungry). I got a regular salad and a fruit salad which weren't that high. They both cost about $7.50 together. Mine could be made for alot cheaper I think, but I can justify Jon's since he piled his with all sorts of things that would have cost more to buy individually. But I'm cool with it...it's a nice treat for us having finished our walk this morning.

To Netflix or Not to Netflix?

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine sent me a free month of Netflix. Not being one to turn anything down for free, I took it. The BF and I had talked about getting Netflix as we're both avid movie and television series lovers. I'd subscribed to Netflix before and always had a good experience with it.

To take advantage of the free month, he signed up rather than me re-opening my account. True to the promo, we got our month free before they started doing their automatic withdrawal. We did discuss it however to make sure it fit into our budget and if it was even worth it. On the three movies at a time unlimited plan, the cost is 16.99 per month (18.23 after taxes here in good ole KS).

If a movie rental is an average of $2.00 per movie (which is somewhere between the cost of an old release and a new release depending on which store you go to), we figured we'd only need to rent 10 movies a month to make it worth it. In a regular four week month, this is a cycle of DVDs per week (get three, watch them, return them). Already we've made it worth it for us, as some weeks we've gotten six DVDs because of the way the weeks and the shipping dates fall.

Not only are we saving money on rentals, we're saving money on the gas that it would take to get to the video store to rent and then take back . We're also saving on any late charges we might incur (something that I was always bad about). And watching movies keeps us home and out of spending trouble.

Though it doesn't work on our system at the moment, Netflix also offers a "Watch Now" option in which you can watch movies directly on your computer along with the ones you get in the mail. If you're a major movie buff, you can probably lower the cost per movie to $1.00 each. Or even $.50.

There's also Blockbuster Total Access which works much the same way but offers in-store rentals as well.

Movie lovers, I highly recommend one of these but only if you can fit it in your budget and only if you know you're going to get your money's worth out of it. If all you're going to watch is three movies per month...go ahead and go to the video store.

Stimulus Check

I got my stimulus check this past week. While I was originally given the $600 as promised (it seems that some people were shorted) my check came up about $130 short of the mark.

After doing some searching and calling the IRS hotline, I found out that contrary to some of the things I'd been told, the amount that I owed for taxes was in fact taken out of the stimulus check.

While it was kind of a bummer not to have the whole amount, it's also a really good thing on my part. I had signed up for an extension to make my payment and now I don't have to worry about it. Since I won't have anymore accrued interest, I'm saving some money in the long run (not to mention the mess I would have been in if I'd forgotten about it altogether).

As far as taxes go, I'm paid up for this year but due to some problems I had filing this past April, I will have to invest in an accountant for the next year to help with state and fed taxes. I'm okay with this, or at least I am now. I'm confident that both me and the BF (who also had some issues) will get them all worked out in the spring. Just a note on a littel faux pas I made. Having been told that I could take up to 2 dependents as a single person to give myself a little extra money out of every paycheck, I had went that route this past year.

While this may work for some people, and some might even need it, I won't be doing this again. Had I been a little bit better with my money in the first place, I doubt if I would have even missed the little bit extra that taking 0 dependents would have cost me. I would have had a refund and I would not have been so stressed out at tax time.

This round, I made sure that I'm claiming zero dependents. While past tax mistakes may actually eat up any big refund I would get in 2009, at least I'll be working towards the top of my hole, not digging myself further.

So what am I doing with my check? Over half of it went into savings, the rest into checking to help pay bills and give me a little "free" money to have fun with. However, the amount in savings will also be going to my trip to Michigan in a couple of months...a great investment for me and my personal situation.

Savings

I officially have $25.00 of touchable money in my savings. This is big for me. The challenge is going to be not to touch it.

It's always been a challenge for me to keep a savings account, but after going through such a rough time with money recently, I'm ready to commit to one. With a dual income, $25.00 a week is feasible. Like most things though, I'm having to make putting money away a challenge and a game.

In this case, my plan is to play the carry over game. Come next payday (for either myself or the BF), half of whatever is left from the previous week gets put into savings, the rest stays to pile on top the new incoming money. This may not be feasible every week, especially when there's major bills to pay. But my hope is that by doing it this way, we'll stay motivated not to spend a whole lot of money, a tendency that we've kept at bay for awhile now but which I know I can easily fall back into.

If anyone has any tips on savings, I'd love to hear them. I'm willing to try anything at this point.

Online Pre-Browsing

I really hate buying something at one store only to find later that I could have gotten it cheaper at another one. I'm currently in the process of coming up with a database that will tell me the different prices of different things at different places. Unfortunately, it's a work in progress as I'm not about to go through three different stores and take notes on every price. Since we're just in the early phases of cooking, we don't even know what our staples are going to be.

I found out today that one of the local grocery stores has a site that shows their weekly ad prices. After working in retail for many years, the general rule seems to be that big grocery chains generally have higher prices than say WalMart or Aldi. But they also tend to have the best sales. Checking sales online before going shopping can save gas money and a small piece of mind.

In this case, I made a list of all the sale items that would work with this coming week's menu and their sale prices next to them. I'll take this list when I go to one of the other stores and will be able to compare sale prices with regular prices. Granted, this doesn't work on regularly priced items, but it's one step to take to make sure you're getting the lowest possible price on groceries.