A few hours to go!

Only 2.5 hours until the challenge starts! I am so nervous! What if I can't control my spending? What if I blow my budget? What if I am a complete failure at this?

I guess we won't know how I do until I start, right? I am ready... at least as ready as I can be.

1 week to go!

I am starting to get nervous about this endeavor. With just over a week to go, I still have not made final decisions on many aspects of this budget and spending habits. I still have tasks to get done to set myself up for success.

Here is where we stand so far as completed:

• budget finalized
• paid off all bills except 1 - completing this week
• purchased items for my "super saver binder"
• cleaned off the office desk
  
• canceled satellite TV service for end of billing cycle
• purchased Internet ready blu-ray disc player
• signed up for a free trial of Netflix

Here is what I still need to get done:

• set up filing system for ALL of my receipts
• set up tracking system in Excel to ensure I am following my budget
• set up "super saver binder"
• find my debit card and redo the PIN so I can use it
• cancel home phone service
• set up weekly/monthly meal planner
• reorganize my wallet/purse for optimal saving/spending habits
• make a final decision on how I will use my credit cards - this means researching the new terms and conditions regarding non use fees

Tonight I intend on knocking at least a few of these items off of my to-do list. I will try to post my budget on Friday!

The Budget

Who knew it was so hard to make a realistic, workable budget? I thought I could just sit down and do the math, but boy was I wrong. We discovered that it appears that we have not been equally dividing the bills (as far as I can tell). Doing the math, it looks like I can save around $8,000 if I stick to the budget. I had to cut out the TV provider, which allows me to also get rid of our house phone! We only had the house phone because it was required from the satellite TV provider. This is going to save right around $1000 a year!

We are going to keep every receipt to make sure we are spending money on what we need to and that we are dividing the expenses equally. Once we get the budget finalized I will post it so you can see what we are dealing with!

Just over a week to go until I need to get down to the nitty gritty!

Getting serious and getting to work

After work tomorrow I am sitting down to do the most difficult thing. I am going to make a budget. I have never actually sat down and tried to calculate an honest budget. This means I am going to have to actually see where all of my money goes and find ways to cut back.

I am a bit nervous though. What if I do the math and I can't accomplish this $10,000 in savings on my current income?

I guess tomorrow we will find out if this whole thing is going to be doable!

Another $10k?

I talked with my boyfriend some more today and he is interested in saving a hunk of money this year too. There is so much to do with this money that we will be saving that I have begun to make a mental list.

• repair the leaky foundation
  
• replace windows
• redo the ceilings upstairs
• replace flooring
• add a 1/2 bath downstairs
• redo/expand the deck
• replace the front stairway
• new furniture downstairs

Those are not in priority order except for maybe the first one.

I found myself looking at the circulars for the local grocery stores. The great thing about living where I do is that there are currently 3 grocery stores with in a half mile of each other just a few minutes down the street! Today I opted for Hannaford's because they had frozen veggies $.20 less than everyone else's advertised low price!

Tonight and tomorrow I will be starting to get organized. I am thinking about making a binder for this whole project. I can keep track of everything: shopping lists, coupons, loyalty cards, circulars... the whole nine yards!

Hmmm, no reaction.

When I got home from work late last night I decided to tell my boyfriend about my crazy idea to save $10,000 in 365 days. The reaction? Not much, which is kind of disappointing. It was pretty much an "ok". With some more questioning he said it was "a good idea".

I mentioned the preparing food schedule that I wanted to try and that didn't get much of a good reaction either. Why do I think this is going to be more of a challenge than it should be? We have an hour car ride today, each way, so I will try again.

Huge expense based on laziness

We eat out a lot. For one of us it is at least 2 meals a day - breakfast and lunch. Is Dunkin Donuts a publicly traded company? Perhaps I should get some stock in that company - we spend enough money there to own our own franchise. It is also not very weight loss friendly to eat out that much. So I figure if we do our shopping on Sundays we can make a meal plan for the week and maybe even get a head start on some cooking for the week.

Sounds easy, right? Not exactly. See, I recently gave up animal products. Meat, eggs, dairy, fish... if it comes from an animal I am going to do my best to avoid eating it. My boyfriend, on the other hand, is not exactly veggie friendly. He is very particular on what he eats and doesn't eat as far as the "main dish". He is great at trying new flavors and dishes, but they require meat. This translates into shopping for two different eating habits, a squabble during the planning, or one of us eating cereal 24/7.

The great thing about not eating meat is not only the health benefits and environmental impact, but the cost benefits. A bag of dry beans costs far less than a steak and you can get many servings out of just one bag. Plus if they are dry in a bag you don't have all that waste of a can and the chemical additives of BPA in the can.

Yes, chicken can be cheap and if you buy on sale and freeze you can really do some savings. In fact I have lots of chicken and fish in the freezer that we have to use still.

Since I have about 18 days to go until I really am starting this challenge I will take a look at prices at the grocery store and research the price differences in the stores in my area for my normal grocery list pick-ups and figure out the difference in some of these dishes.

Stay tuned to see what I find. I won't really have time to do some more shopping research until Monday- so I will post after that.

Am I crazy?

I want to save $10,000 in 365 days. I have things I want to do with the money, but first I must save it. Perhaps I am being over ambitious. Ten thousand dollars saved in a bank account is quite the under taking.

$10,000 / 365 days = $27.40 per day

That is $191.78 per week.

$833.33 per month.

How on earth am I going to do this? Here are some ideas that I have. Of course even if I don't make my goal of $10k, these ideas are going to help me save a chunk of change no matter what.

Priority #1: Credit Card use. I am a bit torn on this one. I am a big user of my Discover card. I don't use cash. Well, I rarely use cash. My Discover card has no annual fee - as of right now - and I get a minimum of 1% back on purchases. On some purchases I get 5% back. So, in the end it saves me a bit of money. The only problem is I tend to spend on stuff I don't NEED because I can - I have credit. There have been a few months when I have not been able to pay off my entire bill by the due date, which wipes out my 1-5% savings that I have accumulated by using the card in the first place.

So, what do I do? Do I continue to use my Discover card and just closely monitor my use, pay off each purchase as I make them (gotta love online bill pay), just use it for those 5% purchases? Do I not use it at all and just use my debit card?

Priority #2: Automatic savings plans. I have an online bank account with ING Direct. I like this type of account because it is out of sight. If I want to take money out of the account I must plan ahead because it takes about 3 business days to transfer the money into my regular bank account. I already do an auto deduct, but it is only a few hundred dollars a month. That money already goes towards paying my property taxes.

Revision to $10,000 in 365: I need to save $14,000 so that I can take out $4000 for property taxes.

Reality check: I probably can't save that much money in a year. $10,000 is a stretch but $14,000 is just crazy. That is 1/3 of my salary! But, just think of what our grandparents did. They had way more kids than families have today, on much smaller salaries and they still managed to save money for retirement and pay off their houses...

My goal is to start on April 1, 2010 and to go to March 31, 2011. Until then, I will continue to research and figure out how exactly I am going to pull this off.