Spring is in the air and my planting is finished. What, you say? No, not my garden, but my new @ccountLink orchard. Previously, my bill paying was spread out like an apple orchard: many apple trees, but only one apple on each tree. Harvesting meant finding the right tree at the ripe time, and that took a detailed map of the orchard just to do that much. I had the system down, but no one else could follow it. And the apples were beginning to fall and rot without me. Such waste! Now, all my apples are on one tree and picking is so much easier. A few shrubs are thrown in as well for accounts that charge extra fees when not on auto-draft. That’s alright. I may even have to add a perennial for those yearly charges that crop up at the first of the year.

One perennial I just dug out and discarded was the newspaper, which had become a driveway ornament to recycle bin filler! Jerome is so proud of me and happy to be done with that chore! Yes, I know the coupons and circulars are in that paper, but right now, it was a good decision. We’ve shopped ALDI again and are taste-testing the chips. I’m considering the cost of Costco, as well. Huge stores full of impulse buys are dangerous!
The icing on the cake is that I have my menus planned for this week, with no additional purchases needed. Let’s all use up what we have stored away and clear out the freezer and pantries. It’s Spring Cleaning time!

My goal for this coming week is to call all the utilities and investigate our increases. The Johnson County Wastewater bill was more than $100 higher than last year. They estimate the cost over the previous winter’s months, and Nov 2008 we bought a puppy. Extra doggy laundry caused my bill to go up. I’ll pay bi-monthly to budget this amount.

Many accomplishments were made this week. I met with our coach Rachelle and loaded more bills into the @ccountLink online banking tool at CommunityAmerica. Previously, all our bills were paid on the individual websites of the vendors. Logging onto each one to pay bills was wearing us down. While this current method is easier, it is still change. And change takes time.

We opened our CACU Visa card and transferred a balance from another card at a higher rate, saving us 5% APR. I opened a DISCOVER More card featuring 0% for a year and transferred the balance from a Bank of America Visa. Good riddance! Now maybe they’ll stop calling me with more offers. The CALLER BLOCK feature on my phone is so handy!

Natalie is preparing for the ACT test in April, and that costs money. Nick has joined Scouts. Georgiana is also in Scouts and likes to go to the roller rink on Tiny Tot Wednesdays. Some expenses are a necessity.

Rachelle assures me we can pay off our credit cards this year, but it will require a hard look at our spending. My dad always said when considering a purchase to “put it on the shelf for two weeks” to avoid regrettable impulse spending. Thanks Daddy!

After looking at our first budget worksheet for January, we can see where the money is leaking out. There were some hefty expenditures for eating out, including restaurants, school, and work lunches. So, the area we are working on now is money we spend on lunches.

Making lunches from groceries turns out to be about one-third the cost of lunches anywhere else. We have been moderately successful in the first week of trying this. With a little planning before shopping and a few coupons to take with us, we are trying to make this better. But honestly, I can tell this is going to be a habit-forming exercise. We are simply in the habit of spontaneous grocery shopping, emergency grocery shopping, and frantic grocery shopping! So, it’s really a matter of creating some new habits.

I have also been studying the budget worksheet. Rachelle, our coach, provided us with this summary of January’s expenses based on our collected receipts and bank statements. It’s an Excel spreadsheet with each one of our receipts plotted against main categories of spending. This tool is going to let me see just where the money is going. That’s a big change from vague ideas and lucky guesses, which can be off by hundreds of dollars.

Again, we are learning new habits. And new habits are going to take time.

Jerome Deister

For me, doing things the hard way, or waiting until the situation becomes dire, has a higher sense of accomplishment, however skewed that may be. Waiting until the dust is there before dusting, waiting until no more food containers are in the cupboard before cleaning out the refrigerator, waiting until I can't sleep before balancing the checkbook and then doing it with a pint of Haagen-Das! I know I am not alone in this. Am I able to make this change in myself? With my spontaneity, probably not completely. But with some help and advice I can take some steps in a better, easier direction.

Likewise, paying bills has been like a juggling act. Keeping them all in the air, paying them one at a time. Dropping one and working harder to keep the rest in motion while stooping to pick up the pieces. Paying bills through CACU online is going to be so easy to follow, for both of us!

This week’s mission is to look for ways to cut costs in order to accomplish $50 in savings this month.
Attack: Grocery shopping.
Plan: Plan a menu; shop only those items on the menu.
Outcome: next week, we’ll see how I did.

Candy Deister