Frugal Friday

It's a new year and a new slate as far as finances go so I thought it would be good to start this first Friday in January with a Frugal Friday post. 

Each year I make up a spread sheet on Excel for both our personal finances and my business finances. It makes it so much easier to figure out where our spending is happening when I have it categorized. It also makes it easier for our taxes. Of course, I usually get busy with "life", forget to enter information in, and then have to spend a ton of time going back through the checkbook and entering in a few months at a time. My plan this year is to do it at the end of each month.

Dan and I want to try and do a better job of patching up the holes in our "ship." Because things are tight we do need to work on watching every nickel and dime. We are finding a lot of money gets frittered away in our trips to pick up Emily, stopping at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and little things like that. I think one of the ways I can control some of that is by packing some snacks or a lunch when we are off on a trip. This way we aren't tempted to stop to eat out. 

Another thing that happens is if we run out of milk or something and Dan decides to stop at the store and pick it up. Inevitably, he'll pick up 5-10 other things he thinks we need. And sometimes I'm the one doing it too. The problem with that is that it adds up and I can usually get it cheaper elsewhere because I'm up on prices. So we've talked about only sticking to getting what the stop was for, and curtailing some of that type of spending. 

As I looked at our grocery bill for the month, I think we would be better off shopping once a week and spending a bit more on that end which may help some of the other things I mentioned above. Even though it costs more at the time, I've been trying to buy the bigger family pack items of things such as toilet paper, tissues, and other items because it's cheaper by the unit price. 

I like the new year because it's a time to sit and look back over our finances for the year, and then look forward to see how we can tweak things. I actually am making enough with my sewing business that I can take the burden of one or two of the bills off of Dan which will help. 

I'm looking forward to not just a frugal year, but also a fruitful one!