Office Declutter: Before and Better

To see today's post go to: http://shoeaholicnomore.com

New posts will all be added at the new site location. Thank you for your continued support along my journey to becoming debt free!

Todays Post: City Code Violation?!

To see today's post go to: http://shoeaholicnomore.com

New posts will all be added at the new site location. Thank you for your continued support along my journey to becoming debt free!

Budget Check 5/16/2014

ATTENTION: This is the last post that will appear at this site. I have switch my blog to a self-hosted site and it can now be found here. Please follow me over to my new location!

Wow! We are already halfway through May and that means that 2014 is nearly half over. Yikes! I feel like I haven't made any progress yet... Here is this week's budget check:

Category	May (w/leftovers)	Spent	Remaining
Charity	$15.00	$15.00	-
EF	$20.00	$20.00+	-
Mortgage	$852.28	$852.28	-
House Repairs	$81.77	-	$81.77
City Bill	$110.00	-	$110.00
Gas	$51.12	$51.12	-
Cable	$94.49	$16.61	$77.88
Internet	$51.87	$51.87	-
Phone	$102.20	$102.12	$0.08
Food	$110.00	$49.82	$60.18
Car Fuel	$75.00	$50.00	$25.00
Car Repairs	$60.00	$45.00	$15.00
Car Insurance	$93.44	$93.44	-
Clothes and Hair	$45.67	$32.83	$12.84
Pets	$42.41	$41.00	$1.41
Household	$25.00	$9.53	$15.47
Personal	$20.00	$6.00	$14.00
Crossfit	$80.00	$80.00	-
Cleaning	$108.00	$36.00	$72.00
Debt	$596.91	$478.84	$118.07
TOTAL	$2,635.16	$2,021.46	$613.70

I spent almost $40 of my $110 for groceries this month in the first week, but the next weekend, I spent only about $10 for milk and fruit, so I should be back on track for the month. Plus, the $40 that first weekend helped me get stocked up on a few things, like meat and pantry essentials that I should be good on for a while now.

I don't think there are any surprises in my budget check this week. Let me know if you have any questions.

Also, be sure to check out my new guest post at The Frugal Farmer!

Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com

Thing Thursday 5/15/2014

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T SEE MY ANNOUNCEMENT YESTERDAY: I am working on migrating my blog to a self-hosted site, but for now new posts will still show here. Thanks for your patience as  I work through this process myself. I am doing it myself so I don't have to pay someone else to do it for me :) But if you want to help with me design for FREE or super cheap I'd love you forever, I know practically nothing about designing a site...

It's Thing Thursday, the day of the week where I post about one of the things I've purged and why.

 

This week's thing is a teal blouse from one of my favorite stores. The clothes from this store usually fit me perfectly and are work-appropriate, which is a plus :) But this shirt was NOT flattering when I put it on. I kept thinking when I lost a little weight it would fit better. Well, I've lost some weight and it still looks horrible, so I'm getting rid of it. Enough said, this is gone!

Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com!

Just a Quick Note: Blog Migration

I am working on migrating my blog from this .blogspot site to a self-hosted domain. For now, new posts will still be located here.

I'm not sure if there will be downtime or how long this process will last. Thank you for your patience at this time!

No Showers, But Frugal Flowers

Where I live we've been in a drought pretty much constantly for the past two or three years, which is really hard our my community as it is ag-based. But these facts didn't stop me from planting some flowers.

 I planted these like a week and half ago or so (don't judge, I kept forgetting to take pictures!) and don't worry readers, I didn't have to pay for these flowers out of pocket, making them a very frugal "purchase".



For Administrative Professional's Day (aka Secretary Day) my office gave me a gift certificate to a local greenhouse where I got all of these pretty flowers. Imagine my surprise when I got to the checkout counter and I was under my certificate by $1.75 and they gave me cash back!
 

Now that's what I'm talking about :)

Did you plant any flowers or a garden this year?

Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com!

I've Been Living in the 1800s

Ok everybody, I have a confession to make: I've been living in the 1800s. Alright, maybe it's not quite that bad. But I've been being pretty dumb about something and today I'm going to tell you ALL about it. :)

As you can see on my side bars, I have a ton of different creditors and every month they all send me a bill in the mail. I also get bills from my internet provider, cell phone, home mortgage and two utility bills. That's all I can think of right now but I'm sure there's the additional odd bill or two coming at different times throughout the year too.

Without the odd bill here and there, I usually receive about 13 paper bills in the mail every month. (I don't get paper bills on my student loan, the loan to my parents, or paper bank statements.) That's a lot of clutter coming into my home every month!

Call me old-fashioned but I LIKE getting paper bills each month so I can look over them for each of my accounts. I'm not planning to sign up for e-statements on any of my accounts right now, but I am going to change how I pay my bills.

Here's where it gets worse: I still write out a physical check for each of my bills every month (except my mortgage, which I pay online) and mail them in an envelope with a stamp a few days before they are due.

This is a bad habit for a few reasons. One reason in particular is that I use at least 12 stamps every month to pay bills. This adds up to $5.88 in stamps every month! This doesn't include the cost of buying checks.

The sad part is that I have online accounts set up for the majority of my credit card accounts, I just kept paying them with a physical check by mail each month. This is something I am hoping to change. I am going to try and pay them via their online accounts from now on. This doesn't make a huge money savings, but $5.88 each month out of the $15-20 I budget for household "supplies" does make a difference. Plus I messed up this month and mailed one super early, resulting in a cash-flow issue, too many of these and you could find yourself in over-draft. YIKES!

Geez la-wheeze, I don't know what took me so long to make this change.

What method do you use to pay your monthly bills?

Note: Have you seen Catherine's post about Building Endurance over at Plunged in Debt? It is a great one!

Another Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com!

I "Need" a New Car

Wow! It has been a whirlwind of problems with my car lately. In case you missed here is a recap:

Prior to starting my journey to becoming debt-free in January, I almost never had to spend money on fixing/repairing my car or even really maintaining it. Sure, I put gas in regularly and I changed the oil and rotated the tires as needed, but other than that, I never had to put much time or money into my car. Then, mid-January, I had to put in a new battery after my car wouldn't start.

About a month ago, I thought long and hard about trading my car for a newer SUV/crossover type vehicle (a Chevy Traverse was one I was considering). But, I didn't feel comfortable adding a car payment to my budget right now, plus if I'm being honest, I didn't want to have to tell my readers that I went out and bought a newer car just a couple months after vowing to get out of debt.

After shopping around all weekend, I decided that while I'd still LOVE to have a newer and a bit bigger vehicle, I wouldn't be trading my car in after all.

BAM! The next week I found out that my car will need new tires soon and a piece to my turn signal switch (inside the steering wheel) broke. I decided to put off getting anything fixed or replaced, until a week or later when the turn signal failed to turn on at all. So, I sucked it up and shelled out about $90 to get this fixed.

3 days after I got my car back from the shop, a piece that holds my window in place breaks and won't hold my window up anymore. Now I'm faced with a decision, spend another $250 to fix it or tape my window in place.

I decided to tape the window up for now since it's not one that I roll down on a regular basis. I also didn't want to spend the $250 on that unnecessary repair and turn around to find out that my tires need replaced ASAP. Plus, my tags and taxes are yet to paid in 2014.

Now that you're all up to speed, you need to know that I'm still thinking about trading my car in for a newer model after these repairs are finished.

The main reason is that I'd like to a vehicle new enough that it won't need major repairs during the duration of my journey to becoming debt-free, especially because as a single female there aren't a lot of things I can fix myself. My knowledge of cars is low and I'd hate to be travelling a longer distance by myself when something goes wrong.

Ideally, I'd like to complete this trade this fall or early 2015. I know I won't be out of debt yet at this point, but my budget will be a lot more lenient at that point, having paid off at least 3 more debts. It will set me back in my journey and I know that. Because of the set-back if/when I decide to trade I want to be absolutely sure I'm making the right decision and getting a vehicle that I will be happy with for a long, long time.

If I'm being totally honest, part of me still wants to get a new-to-me car because lots of people around me have been getting new vehicles lately and I'm starting to feel left behind. In particular, my biggest Joneses bought a new-to-them car about a year ago and I'd like to have one comparable to theirs. I know this isn't a good reason to get a newer vehicle and I know it should be about me, my goals and my budget ONLY for this decision, but it is hard to ignore external influences from my decision making process.

The one good thing is that I won't be making an impulse decision. I've wanted a newer car for a while now and I've looked 2 or 3 different times already without "pulling the trigger". I just want to make sure that when I decide to trade I get what I want so I don't have to trade again for a number of years.

What do you think? Are of these valid reasons to consider trading my car in?

Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com!

Budget Check 5/9/2014

Holy smokes! How is it May 9th already? Where is this year going?! Here is my budget for May so far:

Category	May (w/leftovers)	Spent	Remaining
Charity	$15.00	$15.00	-
EF	$20.00	$20.00+	-
Mortgage	$852.28	$852.28	-
House Repairs	$81.77	-	$81.77
City Bill	$110.00	-	$110.00
Gas	$51.12	$51.12	-
Cable	$94.49	$16.61	$77.88
Internet	$51.87	$51.87	-
Phone	$102.20	$102.12	$0.08
Food	$110.00	$39.65	$70.35
Car Fuel	$75.00	$25.00	$50.00
Car Repairs	$60.00	$45.00	$15.00
Car Insurance	$93.44	-	$93.44
Clothes and Hair	$45.67	-	$45.67
Pets	$42.41	$9.71	$32.70
Household	$25.00	$9.53	$15.47
Personal	$20.00	$6.00	$14.00
Crossfit	$80.00	$80.00	-
Cleaning	$108.00	$36.00	$72.00
Debt	$596.91	$428.84	$168.07
TOTAL	$2,635.16	$1,788.73	$846.43

I already spent almost $40 of my $110 for groceries this month... Yikes! I did stock up on some things I was running low on though and shouldn't have to do that for a while now, hopefully this will help me stay on track for food spending the rest of the month.

You'll also see that I spent $45 of the $60 in the car repair fund, I put this toward the car repair I discussed on Monday. The $15 is being kept in cash for the next repair (trust me there will be more I already know I need new tires and my window is currently taped in place).

Other than that, I don't think there are any surprises in my budget so far this month. Give a shout out below if you have any questions.

Have you seen my guest post at A Disease Called Debt today?

Note: If you are interested in guest-posting at Shoeaholicnomore, email me at shoeaholicnomore[at]gmail[dot]com!