There’s a cost to being poor in this country. For those of us who are solidly middle class, who have the cash or even the credit to buy quality goods, its often not something we even think about. If my options are to buy something for $10 that will last one year, or buy something for $15 that will last 2 years, obviously its less expensive to by the $15 version. Paying more now saves usread more…

When it comes to sales, you aren’t saving money unless it was something you already intended to buy. If you weren’t going to buy it before, you did not save 25% of the price, you spent 75% of it. I know this. This is how my thinking worked even before I started paying attention to sales and coupons, etc. And yet, sometimes things still get me. I have signed up for Groupon, Living Social, Amazon dailyread more…

Every week for the last 6.5 years, money has “magically” appeared in our checking account every Friday (give or take a day). When my husband was working, we were both paid every other week, but on opposite weeks. While he was getting unemployment, a check came every week. I LOVE budgeting with a weekly income. I love it. I find it to be the easiest budgeting I’ve ever done. But now we’re in a transition phase.read more…

The best advice I can give about credit cards is not to carry a balance – pay it off every month, and then you never pay interest. But I know for some people, that’s not an option, at least for now. They’re already overloaded with credit card debt, and they’re just trying to find a way out of the mess. Credit card companies know this, too, and they are more than happy to prey on yourread more…

Once you get in to the habit of saving money, spending can be hard, especially spending large sums of money, even if you’re spending it on exactly what it was saved for. Am I making sense? We paid for the hubby’s summer school courses this last week- on the bank card. It was almost as much as a mortgage payment, and we’ll be spending even more in September. It kind of freaks me out, even thoughread more…

I forgot to post last night as I was too busy playing Rock Band and watching old television shows via Netflix with my family.Its the best type of quality time: in the comfort of home, home made dinner (arroz con pollo), the ability to pause, puppies curled up in your lap, and FREE.

Does a broken mail box count as an emergency? I mean, not being able to get my mail seems like a pretty big deal to me. This last week has been filled with little things, and the reason we have not just an emergency fund, but a small amount of savings set aside for the little things that come up. First, the Xbox 360 broke. It is $20 less to repair than to buy a “new”read more…

Eating out is often one of the biggest budget killers, one of the places we spend our money without even thinking about it. If you’ve been tracking your spending, add up how much you’ve spent to eat out in the last month. Our budget is $150/month, though we grossly went over that in May (for various budgeted reasons).We used to spend $400/month on eating out, though, so our normal $150 a month was a pretty majorread more…

I had a plan for spending in May. I thought I had accounted for all the extra stuff we were doing this month, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it.I don’t actually think we’re going over budget anywhere, but I like having days where I don’t spend any money. I try to get 12 or more of those a month (3 days a week). But this month, it feels like I am spending money every day.Evenread more…