What's Been Going On...

I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog lately - there has been a lot going on at our house! Those of you who know me personally already know this story...

The past few months have been a lot of craziness with my son in daycare.  My son B is 4, going to be 5 this summer, and he has been at the same daycare center for years, since he was a baby. Since he moved up to the Pre-K class he is clashing with another child in the class.  Instead of watching closely to see what was going on between the two kids, the school is claiming he has behavior problems. This resulted in countless complaints from the school, calls to me, tears from my son, etc. It has been a rough road.

Through the suggestion of the school and a friend, we contacted early intervention to do an evaluation for him.  I figured if he truly was having behavior problems like the school was claiming, he would get help, and if not, then we would know for sure. After two evaluations, and a few months of waiting, he has an IEP for behavior and emotional delays.  However, the therapist told us that she did not see anything during either evaluation - that everything that they based it on was the written evaluation from the teacher. It is frustrating because I don't see the same behavior problems, and certainly not a lack of emotions and compassion like the school is claiming.

The school did not seem willing to work with us and they seemed to be losing their patience with B. He started crying every morning, and going so far as to make himself so sick that he couldn't go to school. Every day I would wait for the awful reports from the teacher and feel incredibly guilty that I had to leave him with someone that clearly did not like him or want to help.

Last Friday, B cried all morning that he did not want to go to school.  I told him to hang in there and go for one more week and then he will be able to start his new school. He started yelling at me that he wanted to go for "no more days!" I made a decision to switch him to a new center, and called last Friday to set the date for him to start this coming Monday. Less than an hour after calling the new center, his old school called and said that he was out of control, hitting kids and teachers. I made the decision then that I was going to pull him out of the school.

I went to pick him up that day and was disappointed that we were not able to leave on our own terms. He wanted me to leave notes for his friends with his phone number so they would come over and play, and I wanted him to say goodbye. Instead, it ended much more messy... although I talked to the director and found out that he can still do his pre-k graduation with his friends, which is the main reason we held out to begin with.

He started at his new center this Monday and he is doing great! He is already making friends, and both teachers that he has during the day say that he is wonderful. He has yet to start his services with early intervention, so hopefully once they come we will find that he is alright.

Long story short, I have not been able to focus on this blog or my personal goal of paying off any of our bills or saving. I am the type of person that needs to focus on one problem or issue at a time, and this one with B's school really threw me. It consumed all of my thoughts, effort and emotions.  Each night I was coming home from work and collapsing once B went to bed because I was so emotionally drained.

Hopefully now that this school situation is resolved I can have a new beginning and start working toward my goals!

Progress... and my favorite blogs!

Hello everyone!  I apologize for not posting much in the past month.  We have had a lot going on here!

Financially we are not getting that far ahead yet.  In January my husband was driving down to South Carolina with my brother-in-law to pick up my niece and they had an accident due to the weather.  So, there was an expense we did not plan for.  Then, we needed new tires for that truck and also transmission work.  But, the good news is this month we paid it off, and actually now have the title in our hands.  That is a first for our family, ever since we had newer vehicles we have never paid one off. I guess our lesson learned is to keep money in our emergency fund!

This month was busy for our family because my niece just came for a visit last week.  We had my husband's firefighter installation dinner - he is captain with the volunteer fire department so that is a big deal for us.  My work has become pretty demanding in the last few weeks, and starting next week I have two people from Europe coming for a three-week visit where I have to prepare training.  Whew! So... I probably will not be posting many deals for the next few weeks.

The good news is that I have been sticking to my allowance and I have been able to save some money! In addition to that we have reduced our monthly spending so I have more to apply to our credit cards.  We are looking into refinancing our credit card bills with my work's credit union which I think will save us some money in the long run.

In that case - I thought I would post some of my favorite blogs that I use to find deals!

Coupon Teacher - This site is one of my favorites! She seems very realistic in her posts, and I know she works as a teacher, so for me, as a working mom, it's easy to follow her blog posts! She usually has the deals for the national stores such as Rite Aid, CVS, etc, but she is not local to me so some of her posts don't apply for me.  Please check her site out!

Cherry Picker - My favorite thing about Cherry Picker is that she is a Giant Eagle shopper! I think she is from Ohio so sometimes her local coupons are different from ours but each week she has a great Giant Eagle post! I'll try to link to it weekly when I am reading it to pass it on to all of you! In addition to the Giant Eagle posts she has some great deals!

Couponing to Disney - I love this site because it has so many fun offers.  Kristin, who runs the site, loves Disney and her goal on her savings is to save for Disney. I like her thought that you can use couponing and savings to reach your goal, whether it is a trip to Disney, like hers, or getting out of debt, like mine.

Saving Toward a Better Life - This is one of the newer blogs I started following.  I really like this one because she offers a wide variety of savings, freebies, etc.  She has a feature on her site called "Contact Us" where she picks a company to contact on their website, and usually with feedback a company will send you coupons! This is a great way to get hard to find coupons (like Jif) or coupons for things you buy all the time.  She has a young son so she has a lot of deals that would interest parents.

Hope you enjoy these sites as much as I do! I will post more later!

My first day of not spending

So, today marks the start of our strict "No Spend Year".   So far, day 1 has gone well! I don't plan on leaving the house today, so that should make not spending pretty easy.  I just have to resist the online deals, which I am passing along today but hopefully not partaking in!

I started the day by weeding through my coupon stash.  I'll be doing a post soon about where I get coupons, how I organize them, etc, later this week.  I would say about 1/3 of my coupons got pitched (well, recycled) because they expired on 12/31.  So I weeded through the coupons, and filed the ones to be filed.  Now I am going through all of the online deals and my e-mail, printing/sharing coupons, and going through my mail basket / inbox processing the paperwork and looking for coupons.

Today will be easy because I just bought a bit of food at the store yesterday and made a bunch of food for our New Year's party.  We'll have plenty to eat today and tomorrow, so the temptation to order food out will be gone.   I'm anxious to see how my first day back to work will be!

And while I was typing this post... my N key fell off of my laptop!  I wonder how to put it back on...

Week 1 - Lost my allowance

Last week my husband and I were talking about how much "allowance" we would get each week - to get lunch out, to spend on whatever, to save for a larger purchase, etc.  We decided to take an amount of money out to see how it went, since we will be doing the plan starting the first of the year.

I took my allowance out on Monday.  I thought I was doing pretty well because on Thursday I still had a considerable amount of money left. I decided that since I had a handful of good coupons for the mall, I would go and spend a little money.

First purchase was at Sears, I had a $10 off $20 coupon and I have had my eye on a new wallet for some time. Since I will start carrying cash, I needed a wallet that had room for that.  I also got some slipper socks to complete a Christmas gift (not in the allowance money) so I spent $11, part from the allowance.

Next stop was Hallmark, where I had a $5 off of a $5 purchase. Their wrapping paper was 4.99 and the second roll was .99 so I got two rolls of wrapping paper for around 1.30.  So this will help me wrap my gifts!

I had a $10 Build a Bear voucher, so I decided to go and buy the little "motorcycle" jacket that Braden had been eyeing up last time we were there.... which only was $2.50 with the voucher... somewhere around $3.

After that was to go and spend my $10 Victoria's Secret "birthday" coupon.  I chose my favorite perfume/body spray from there in a trial size....  so there was the $10.

I ended the night by using a Free Annie's pretzel coupon that was on the front of my Scholastic Parent & Child magazine.

After the mall, I visited Walgreen's to use my Jingle Cash and Register Rewards ($19!)

So ... when I got home I was so proud of the purchases that I made,.spending basically under $10 of my own money for all of those things.  Then I realized that I only had $3 left, where I should have had at least $17-20 left.   I felt so irresponsible... carrying money around is such a difference if you're used to the debit card way of things.

I showed my husband all of my purchases, and I was proud of myself for not spending much and coming back with so much.  Then I explained to him that I lost the rest of my allowance, and the next day I would have to pack lunch instead of going out for the treat on Friday like my work group always does.  He said to me, "Go anyway! Enjoy yourself!"  Well, my #1 rule for the "allowance" was ... no excuses!  If you run out of money, no excuses!  So I included myself in that rule when I lost the money.

Fortunately at work on Friday I didn't miss not going to lunch because I had a work "crisis" and had to work through lunch anyway, and I stayed at my one office, where none of my work friends were working that day anyway. We had a food day the day before so I even got to eat free food that day!

So my lessons from week 1 learned:
1.  Be careful with cash!  Watch what you are doing at the checkout to make sure that you have everything in your hand before you step away.
2.  Stick to the plan!  Paying down our debt will only come as a result of one thing - sacrifice.  If we keep buying whatever we want all the time, or "treating ourselves", or being weak, we will never get out of this situation.