Frugal In Florida

I feel like I have so many things that I want to do yet so little time to complete all of them! I’ve been in a funk for the past few weeks. The holidays always do that to me. I totally dislike Thanksgiving. Only because as a kid, that was the ONE day a year where everyone from both sides of my parent’s family got together & it was just a huge get together. Nowadays, it’s me, dh, ds, dd and a friend or two. Well, actually, it’s always our 2 friends from Colorado who make it a point to be here for Thanksgiving every year. I just get so dang homesick. Emotional. Moody. Weepy. Snappy. Crabby. Yeah, you get the picture. Then you have Christmas. Whoa. That gets real bad. Especially this year. It was very very bad. Very. Oh well. It’s mostly me, I know that. I just get depressed/homesick/crabby/emotional/moody/weepy/snappy/crabby. Well, again, you get the picture. I always always look forward to the NEW YEAR. January 1st is probably my most anticipated day (well, aside from Hallowe...

The kids & I headed over to Blockbuster on Christmas afternoon to exchange the 2 we had & get another game for them to play. I told them that for once, I was selecting the movies. I ended up getting the new Batman movie and Tropic Thunder. We watched Batman Friday night. Me, dh and ds. Dd decided that she was taking the bus downtown to meet friends at 8:30pm. Oh well. I'm having a hard time with this but will let her fly for a while to see where she lands. In the meantime, we have to keep turning the volume up & down during the movie. Real loud stuff makes the speakers rattle and make a funky sound (I'm hard of hearing and still heard this). So this morning (Sunday), dh says that we need to run to best buy. Oh yeah, I'm all excited. BUT I tell him, I've only got cash, no debit card, no american express, no best buy card. Cash, cash, cash is my new motto. Off we go. We stop in the tv room Ohhh. Ahhhh. Still out of our price range. Off we go to the ...

Good morning and Merry Christmas It’s a hazy, drizzling rainy morning here in South Florida. Breezy too. I’m sitting in the office and can look out the big bank of windows and also see the Christmas tree and smell it too. It smells so yummy. It’s about the only thing that seems Christmasy this morning. There are a few small gifts in the teens stockings. Also a 1 lb bag of cashews for dh in a gift bag. But that’s it for the gifts. I don’t think the kids are too happy about that but it is what it is. I made the dough for these last night and took it out of the fridge at 7 to warm up before rolling out and baking. I hope it makes a lot so I can send some over to my neighbor. DH goes to the airport to pick up a friend at 2pm. John has a home here & in Colorado. I believe he is bringing his 18 year old son with him too. Not quite sure where that was at the last time I spoke to him. We ordered pizza from Papa Johns. 2 large pizzas completely chowed down by 2 adults and 1 teen ...

It’s getting to be that time of year. The time of year where I look back on my finances and say, geesh, where did all the money go? I saved my receipts this year and put them into an envelope for each month. For kicks, I should go through them & just see what I’ve spent 40K on but then again, that would make me sad and depressed. We do not want a sad & depressed Jan. Trust me. I’m borderline already, no need to push me over the edge. Anyway. Last week, during some downtime at work (yeah, it’s slow), I did a little spreadsheet on Excel with my monthly expenses. I carried this around in my purse all weekend, and looked at it a few times. I’ve even made a few changes. I now have it attached to my Publix sale paper. Here’s how it reads (if I was a little more geeky like, I could post the spreadsheet RIGHT here, but I don’t know how to do that): 2009 Projection Income: $1043 x2 Income: $140.38 x 4 Bonus (average): $150 (certainly hope this improves in 2009 – the market MUST tu...

Can I feed my family of 4 on $70.00? That really does not sound hard, does it? I mean, really. It’s me, dh (a big guy), an 18 year old girl & and 16 year old boy. Oh. And a cat. An expensive, exotic cat so they say. He comes in & out all day and night long. Annoying little creature but we love him to death! So back to what I was saying. Does NOT sound difficult or even much of a challenge, really. BUT when I look back on my past totals for monthly receipts, I spend anywhere from $700 to $1500 a month at the grocery store. A few months back (probably around October), I started getting back to the coupon mode, and if it wasn’t at least $1 off then I didn’t use the coupon. BUT then I got myself in the silly mode of over buying stuff. Geesh. Can’t win for losing it seems. If it was a good deal, I just could not pass it up. So thankfully, all my really really good coupons expire on 12/31/08 so that gives me 10 or so more days to really get geared up and stock up … . So just h...

*and as a note: I do not have a single Christmas present yet! Was going to try & get away with none, but now ds is like "mom, there isn't any presents under the tree yet??!!" ... hmmm. Did he forget what I told both him & his sister on their birthdays?? Walmart Neighborhood Market (Friday night) $54.xx. Honestly, was going for a few things & to compare prices on a few things. The 18 pk of beer was $10 (geesh, thought I was going to stop buying beer??!!), got 3 lbs of ground beef for $12, and a few other stellar deals, but still spent $54.xx!! Walmart Neighborhood Market (Saturday morning) $13.xx. Went back to get more ground beef as dh reminded me that we were doing blue cheese bacon burgers & the meat I purchased last night was for tacos (Sunday dinner & freezer stash). So bought 4 1/2 more lbs there ($3 lb), onions were 10 cents a lb (??!!) ... should have bought more but I only bought a few lbs. Publix (Saturday morning) $31.xx ... now this w...

So, let’s see, where was I at on the $ for the week again? Oh yeah, $2.xx left. Thankfully I found 2 gift cards. One had $1.30 left and the other had $5.80. Stopped at Publix on way home. 2 transactions. 1st – 6 cans of Progresso soup. Used $1.10 off coupons (again) .90 cents. I swear, I’m never going to be able to get these cards to $0. Still have 40 cents left on that one. 2nd – 3 cans Progresso soup, and 4 whack a can bread sticks. Used 3 $1.10 off on soup and 4 $1.00 off on bread (these were found on the soups!). Total $3.27. Crumb. $2.53 left on the card. I should have used the larger card for the whole thing. Was trying to zero out as much as I could. Oh well. Then this morning, stopped at the Publix downtown (off 6th & Andrews) to get the 2 bags of Fresh Express salads to toss in fridge for lunches here … B1G1F and I also have Publix coupons for $1 off each … I was THINKING $1.09 total. BUT the freakin bags are now $3.79 EACH. So, $3.79 minus $2 in coupons equals $1.79....