So my kids are sick. The first got a fever on Easter night and it lasted 2 days, and she still has a cough. My son got a fever 2 days later, and seems to be getting over it now, though he still has a cough. Depending on how he does today, a trip to the doctor may be in order.

It's been a pretty good week so far spending-wise. Other than lunch at work on Wednesday and Tylenol for the kids yesterday, I didn't have a lot of out-of-pocket. This weekend will be different, though. Tomorrow we have tickets to a concert. I'm hoping to have dinner home beforehand, but hubby may want to go out. (Free babysitting thanks to my sister). Then on Saturday, hubby wants to go to the Auto Show in NY. We've gone before and it's really neat to see all the concept cars. It helps more that we're not in the market for a new car, because then we can just look without being tempted. Finally on Sunday, we have a 3yo birthday party to go to. (I'm getting the $20 present from the Discovery Store using the gift card I got on Ebay for $13.58. Yea!)

Regarding my budget, the next two line items are water and internet. Can't think of much to do for these. Water costs about $25/month. I can definitely cut back on the amount of laundry and dishes I do. I'll have to be creative about other ways. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to go up more than a couple of dollars in the summer, when we water the lawn. As for internet, I still use dial-up (stop laughing!). I get AOL for $17.95/month. I know that DSL/Cable would be a heck of a lot faster, but it's a lot more expensive, and this seems fine to me. I guess you don't miss what you never had!

Have a super day!

It's an all-time record for me to have 3 no-spend days in a row - the holiday and bad weather sure helped. I'm heading down to Dad's today to take him to the accountant and do his grocery shopping for him, so other than the gas (120 miles round trip) I'm set.

Followup to my life insurance quest: I went to Lowermybills.com and checked out the rates on plans comparable to what I have now. Assuming I still get the super-preferred rate (who knows?) there is one rate that would be less than $2/month cheaper. I'm going to put this on hold until June, when I go to my doctor for my annual checkup. If it seems like everything is in order (cholesterol, weight, etc.), I'll switch plans. Not only will it save me $480 over the 20-year term, I'm already 3 years into my term, so I'll be picking up an extra three years, which won't be bad...

Today's line item is my electric bill. I'm also on budget billing here, and I pay $168/month. It's only supposed to be about $133, but for some reason I went way over last year, so I need to make up the extra over the first 6 months of this year. In June it should go back to $133, but I want to conserve enough so that at the end of this cycle, it gets reduced to $120 for next cycle. The biggest challenge for us is having hubby and the kids turn off the lights. It seems like the place is lit up like Christmas all the time! Between that and more judicious use of the dryer and dishwasher, we should be able to cut enough. Fortunately, I'm not a big Air Conditioning person (though hubby is) so that should only run in the evenings when he's home.

Have a great day!

What disgusting weather we have...the forecast is rain, rain, rain all day with possible flooding. I hate days like this! Good news is that I won't be going out anywhere, which means no spending (yay). Easter was fun. As expected, we have enough food leftover to get us through most of the week. I may need to go out later in the week for milk, but that's about it.

Next item on the budget is our home heating bill, and it's a toughy. We're on budget billing and pay a whopping $236/month (+$9 for a service contract). I have programmable thermostats, keep it to 63 degrees during the day when we're not here, and try to keep it to 67 when we are here. (Usually we end up increasing it to 69 degrees because we're always cold!!!)

What we could do: I need to get better about turning down the thermostat when we're going to be out unexpectedly. For example, normally on Saturdays, we're home and it's at 67. But if we go out for the day, I don't always remember to turn them down to 63. I've heard about using a blanket on the hot water heater, and of course weather-proofing my (pretty old) house. To be honest I'm not really motivated about any of these ideas. Maybe I'll knock out some of my other saving ideas and come back to these when I'm desperate...

I'm off to church in a few minutes, but of course had to start my day on this website! It's unbelievable how I've come to rely on this site - I'm logged on at least 2-3 times each day. Anyway, today will definitely be a no-spend day, except for the church envelope which is budgeted.

The next line item on my budget is my mortgage. We have a $240k mortgage at 4 5/8 fixed, that will be paid off in 12.5 years. We already add an extra $100 toward principle each month. Thanks to the great advice at this site, I've convinced hubby that we should pay the property tax and insurance directly, as the mortgage company takes more than $50/month extra for "escrow". Plus, we have our house insurance and car insurance from two different companies, and never bothered to combine them because the house insurance was always paid through my mortgage and I thought it would be too big a deal. I'm going to call on Monday to get a quote from our auto insurance co. The other good news is that our mortgage company doesn't charge us a fee for paying directly. Yay. I'm going to take care of all of this next week and hopefully start seeing the benefit of this in a month or two.

Today was a bad money day. We needed to get Easter flowers for hubby's mom, and two aunts (and me from the kids ) to the tune of about $50! I've been married for 10 years, and we've been doing the same thing for 10 years, yet it never ceases to amaze me how much we spend on these holidays (Easter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, etc.). We also picked up about 6 pounds of ground lamb at the store, because it's not usually available, and hubby wanted steak tonight (cha-ching). Not expecting this big bill at all...

Luckily I'm getting off pretty easily for Easter. MIL is bringing a lot of the food, and we got a Butterball turkey breast on sale at the grocery store for $1/pound. Great deal on sweet potatoes, and a few other veggies and I'm set.

Back to my line item budget...the next set of items is insurance.

What we already do: We get our medical through hubby's work (really good plan, and our piece comes out pre-tax). We both have life insurance and accident/disability insurance.

What we need to do: I'm 3 years in to a 20-year term with John Hancock. Although I think it's a pretty good rate, I need to shop around. Although I'm a few years older, it's a pretty competitive industry, so maybe the rates have dropped. Second, Hubby gets his through work, and his hesitant to change. I need to shop around for his too, to see if there's a big enough difference to make it worth discussing. Finally, I need to check into LongTerm Care insurance. I'm 34 and hubby's 37. Not sure if it makes sense to get it yet, or wait a few years, because I think the industry (and the plans) are still evolving. Any thoughts?

Happy Easter!!!

Anytime I feel like I'm not making a lot of financial progress, I try to get re-energized by looking at each line of my budget and coming up with some new way to cut it down. So each day I'm going to look at a new category and see what I can do. (Any help would be appreciated!)

The first line on the budget is Taxes. We pay Federal, State, and FICA/OASD.

What I'm already doing: Hubby and I contribute to our 401(k)s, we use Flexible Spending Accounts for our Health and Dependent care costs, and we save for our kids' college through NY's 529, where we can deduct up to $10k/year from our NY state taxes.

What I can still do (and when): 1) Increase hubby's contribution to his 401(k) in May. His raise is effective in April, so we're going to take 1/2 of it and put it toward this. 2) Increase contributions to kids' 529s in June '06. We're nowhere near the $10k/year that we can deduct, but my little guy has one more year of (really expensive) preschool. As soon as he's done that I can use that money. Any other suggestions?