Our Money Saving Tips

I love saving money! Last night I had my birth control prescription transferred to Kroger so I could get $25 added to my Kroger plus card! I bought 5 bags of groceries with that $25 and my only out of pocket expense was $2.72 and $10 for the prescription. We also use coupons at the grocery store. We typical have coupons for things that we use or eat frequently like, Pop Tarts, chips, toothpaste, toilet paper, and our favorite desserts! Growing up my mom was crowned "Coupon Queen" by my brother and I so needless to say, I learned the value of saving money through coupons. My dad is a big fan and advocate for only buying groceries from stores that triple your coupons and for that reason he has gotten tons of free grocery items. It has recently been on my mind lately to share everyone the way we save money because I think, I may be wrong, but I think we're 1 of very few young couples that are fanatics about saving money.

Tip #1 - Your electric bill. We always turn off lights as soon as we're done using them, even if we know we're going to return to the room in a few minutes. We have also turned our refrigerator and freezer down to the medium, recommended setting. Lots of people don't know that just by simply lowering these temperatures, you can save a few dollars a month. We only use cold water to wash clothes. The average cold water load of laundry costs 1.5 cents while the average hot water load costs 38 cents. We have two thermostats and we have them set for different temperatures. We have the upstairs set at 73 and downstairs set at 74. For most people that is too hot, but since our house has mostly hardwood floors and ceiling fans in every room, we are able to stay cool. Just by running ceiling fans, you can lower the temperature in your house by 2 degrees. We also have thermal curtains in our bedroom and dark curtains in our guest bedroom since those are the rooms that let in the most light that saves us 10% off our electric bill. We unplug appliances when we're not using them like our toaster and George Forman grill. And we never leave our computers or labtops plugged in or left on if we're not using them.

Tip #2 - Coupons! You can find coupons online, in the newspaper, and in the mail. I recently discovered that Moe's and Red Robin have an eClub that sends you a coupon for free stuff on your birthday. I know this is only 1 day out of the year, but if you like to eat out this would be a good deal for you. We typically save $10-$15 every time we go grocery shopping. Even if you have to buy a newspaper for $1 to get these coupons, it's worth it for the amount you'll save. We also look for online surveys that offer deals like, some fast food places will give you something free or $1 off for completing their online survey. For example, Chick-fila's survey gives you a free sandwich! It take 5 minutes and you save money for the next time you go there. And pay attention to radio and TV ads, sometimes advertisements will say "come get 10% off now until Saturday" and that's the only way they advertise those deals, not through coupons. And most places accepted their competitors coupons. AC Moore, Jo Ann Fabrics, and Michaels all accept each other's coupons.

Tip #3 - Buy off Craiglist! Almost everything in our house was bought off Craiglist. Here's what we bought - a matching coffee table & end table, dining room table, chairs, & matching hutch, 2 couches, an entertainment center, our bedroom set - headbaord, footboard, 2 nightstands, dresser with mirror, and armoire, 2 light fixtures, patio set with umbrella, a free standing mirror, a vanity stool, 2 matching bar stools, and 2 pieces of art. Buying all this stuff new would have cost us at least $5,000. By buying all of it off of Craiglist we would able to pay less than half of that, we saved a ton of money!

Tip #4 - Don't be afraid to negotiate. We bought our dining room rug new, but we didn't pay full price. We saw the price and we weren't willing to pay it so we asked the sales guy, "is that the best price you can give us?" and he took off about $25. The worse someone can say is no. I'm not suggesting that you go into Wal-Mart and start negotiating, but when it comes to furniture stores, auto repair shops, mattress stores, and individual sellers, always negotiate. We saved $250 off our mattress set because we negotiated. We also got a sweet deal on our monthly cable! We now pay $30 less every month, that's $360 for the year! Don't be afraid to call your cable company and ask for a better deal.

Tip #5 - Buy in bulk when items are on sale. For items that we use all the time like, toothpaste, toilet paper, paper towels, and soap, when I find it on sale, I buy more than one so I won't have to buy it as often and I can save money.

Tip #6 - Go to the grocery store less often. We buy groceries every 2 weeks. We save money on gas, time, and taxes by only going every 2 weeks. We spend about $94-$120 every grocery trip. Most people, depending on the size of their family, will spend about $100 every week. By going every 2 weeks and spending about $120, that's only $60 a week. And never go to the grocery store when you're tired or hungry! When you're tired or hungry you will buy more food and items you don't need without even realizing it!

Tip #7 - We hardly ever go out to lunch during the work week. I see lots of people going out to lunch or having their daily Starbucks and it always amazes me because I view that as a waste of money. You figure the typical lunch is $5-$7 and if you go out to lunch everyday that's $25-$35 every week. Even if you only go out 2 days a week, that's $10-$14 every week. And I'm way underestimating the costs here. By taking our lunch to work everyday, we're saving $40-$140 a month!

Tip #8 - Use cruise control, even on short trips in town. My car and Nick's truck are not the best on gas mileage, but by using cruise control even when we drive to work, I bet we are making our gas last an extra 20 miles. Nick's truck now gets 20 miles to the gallon, when it use to get 17 miles.

Tip #9 - Vacation. Before you even leave to go on vacation, decide how much you're going to spend. If you decide on $200, take $200 cash and only spend that amount. A lot of extra spending is caused convenient access & unconscious use of debit and credit cards so by deciding on an amount before you leave and only taking cash & a credit or debit card for emergencies, you will save money. And of course, shop around for best deal on hotels, rental cars, and airline flights. And find coupons in brochures for restaurants, amusement parks, and other attractions while you're there.

And lastly, I'll leave you with what I would say are obvious money saving tips -

only run the dishwasher when it's full
turn off the water when you're brushing your teeth
use the microwave instead of the stove to save energy
shop around & compare prices for big ticket items
save boxes, gift bags, and tissue paper & re-use it
go to the dollar store & stock up on cards - birthdays, get well cards, etc.
bank shop for the highest checking and saving interest rates
at a restaurant, split an entree with someone & order water
buy in season - school supplies and dorm decor are on sale so stock up on office supplies and home decor stuff while it's on sale

I hope by sharing all this with the world, at least 1 person will learn a new way to save money. Thanks for reading!

First Hosting Event at Our House

Last night we hosted our first event at our house! I hosted girls Bible study at our house. Overall I think it went well, minus hearing bats squeak in our chimney! It was kinda funny seeing their reactions when they first heard the bats and I laughed when someone said, "they're loud!" and my response was, "I told you guys they're loud, I wasn't kidding!" I really enjoyed seeing the girls make themselves comfortable in our home. Several people, at least 2 that I can remember, walked into our kitchen to throw their cups away and I immediately felt happy and thought, "I'm so glad they are making themselves at home!" You always hear people say, "oh just make yourself at home" but rarely do people do that so I thought that just by them walking over to the trash and to the sink in our kitchen that that was a good sign that our home is welcoming and comfortable. It's like you try to design and decorate your home in a way that will be warm and inviting, but you never really know if you've succeeded in doing that until you have people over and you see it for yourself. So needless to say, when everyone left our house last night I was happy that we have created a home that not only reflects our taste and preferences, but also is inviting and comfortable for our friends. I am super excited about Saturday's house warming party! We are expecting about 20-25 people to come over. I am anxious to see how our parents are going to interact with each other. I'm sure Nick's dad will get jealous and feel ignored because whenever my dad is around, Nick and him talk a lot. I'm extremely happy that my husband can be himself around my parents and not feel judged, that is not the case with his own parents. However I think sometimes his parents pick up on that and it makes them jealous. I don't blame them for being jealous, Nick is a love-able guy that's why I married him! I hope Saturday goes well, we're planning on having some background music so that no one can hear the bats and there won't be any awkward moments of silence since not everyone knows each other.

That's all for now folks! Y'all come back now, ya hear??!

Last Weekend & This Weekend

Last weekend, despite going on a shopping trip to Concord Mills and the Ikea store, we were able to get a lot done. On Sunday we purchased a rug (finally!!) for our living room. We also put drapes up in our master bedroom and in our hobby room. Nick was able to fix the light fixture in our guest bathroom. I also put some wedding pictures in frames that I bought at Ikea. It's crunch time! We really need to get our hallway painted before the housewarming party. The living room and dining room look great, they are so much brighter and airier than they did when we first moved in. We really want the hallway painted so that the transformation is complete. We are super proud of ourselves for doing all the work ourselves, except for having my parents help Nick put light fixtures and ceiling fans up.

This weekend we finished painting one side of the hallway. We are now working on getting the second side done, only 1 more coat of paint left and we're done! Then we have a small section of what's left of the hallway. In my opinion, the hallway is the biggest change to the house so far. Changing the trim work from brown to bright white made it look so much brighter. Besides painting, we have also been hanging up picture frames. I love pictures so having pictures on our walls is a must. Tonight I went to our "we don't want anything in this room" and I picked up a "Class of 2008" picture frame that my mom had bought for Nick that he didn't want. I was contemplating giving it back to my mom or possibly returning it to Kohl's to get a gift card, when I had a wave of creativity hit me. I quickly went up to our hobby room and grabbed my scrapbooking letters. I made the prettiest collage ever! I would post a picture of it now, but I want our housewarming guests to be surprised. After the party, I'll post a picture of it, along with all the before and after pictures of our house.

Nick has really been impressing me by fixing things and taking care of his "honey do" list, even though he'd rather be outside flying one of his airplanes. We will both be excited when we can enjoy our hobbies and not worry so much about doing housework. I really appreciate him for nailing up pictures, painting trim work, hanging up drapes, and all the while, still going to work and fixing dinner for us everyday. It would take forever to get everything done if I didn't have his help.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading our blog!

Broke!

Well, the time finally came. We made the first of many mortgage payments. Nothing can prepare you for having to write that check.

We finally bought our queen mattress!!! After 3 days of laying on different mattresses. Can't wait to pick it up in a couple of days and finally sleep on a bed where I'm not hanging off the side b/c Melanie's hogging the center of the bed. Yay for upcoming good night sleeps.

The other good news is that we finally got the time to remove all the blue painter's tape in the dinning room. As Melanie says "It looks so much better once the tape is off." So as I cleaned up the tape and paint from the windows, she put the fancy dishes in the hutch. I don't understand it, but for some reason this made Melanie super excited. She said "The colors in the plates completes the room."

I'm still trying to figure out the fireplace. I tugged and pulled for 30 minutes trying to get the doors open in the living room tonight. This fireplace is quickly becoming a huge puzzle that I can't solve. Being an Engineer and not being able to solve something is extra frustrating. And literally just now, my wife goes and makes me feel like an idiot by opening the fireplace doors. Apparently one handle needed to be turned to the right. So now, I have the job of cleaning out the bird's nest and figuring out the flue.

The urge to go out and fly my R/C planes continues to eat at me. But I keep telling myself the time will come when all the work on the house is done and I'll be able to go play.

Until next time,
NT

I Couldn't Survive Being Single

It's official, going grocery shopping by myself is not fun! Tonight I went to Wal-Mart for our bi-weekly grocery trip. Nick had to work late, he was asked to join a meeting from 5 until 6 earlier this week so we knew he was going to work late, but we didn't realize how badly we would need to go grocery shopping before Friday. I almost took a picture of our pantry to show people how little food we had in there. I've gone grocery shopping by myself once before today and that time wasn't that bad because we only needed a few things, today was a lot harder shopping trip.

Here's why I hate going by myself -
1. There's no one there to remind you of things you need. This leads to lots of extra walking and coming home to realize you forgot to buy something.
2. There's no one there to help you with math to determine which comparable item is cheapest, which leads to not getting the best deal.
3. I can't pick out meat by myself - it's overwhelming and I don't pay attention to what cuts of meat we eat! Thankfully Nick was able to talk me through it over the phone.
4. Apparently Nick is the one that keeps our cart organized and neat. Today my cart looked really full and I was worried about having to pile things on top of each other. People probably thought I was shopping for a four-person household.
5. There's no one there to help me load the items onto the belt at checkout. So I get tired and I feel like I have a never-ending amount of groceries in my cart!
6. I don't have Nick's help to load the bags into the cart so it ends up looking like a hot mess. I'm so glad the carton of eggs did not get smashed.
7. There's no one there to help load the groceries into the car. This is a very hard task for me. Maybe it's hard because of the 100 degree heat outside.
8. And the biggest reason I don't like going grocery shopping without Nick, it's fun when he's there because I get to beg and joke with him untill we agree that I can buy sweets that I don't need, but want.

Thankfully Nick was home when I was done shopping so I did get his help carrying the groceries inside and putting them away. I cannot organize our freezer to save my life! When we were dating I would go grocery shopping with Nick and when we would get back to his apartment, I would put everything away and not touch anything that belonged in the freezer. I still do this. All those boxes, bags of chicken, chicken nuggets, meats, ice cream, etc. how do you make it all fit into the freezer??! I can't do it!

Greatness Takes Time

Paint & organize the living room - check!
Change out the locks - check!
Find Mirror for over the fireplace - check!
Buy Queen size bedroom furniture - check!
Organize & Decorate master bathroom - check!
Change hardware & mirror in the guest bathroom - check!
Change out light fixtures in the upstairs hallway - check!
Paint & organize the dining room - almost there.

We still need to -
Paint the hallway
Paint all the doors white
Find curtains for the dining room, guest bedroom, & master bedroom
Find & buy a patio set off Craiglist
Find & buy 2 area rugs
Change the hallway bathroom's light fixture
Change out 3 ceiling fans (maybe 4)
Touch up paint in 2 bathrooms
Buy a queen size mattress set
Find & buy sheets for our bed

We have made tremendous progress on our house. We get so excited when we can cross things off from our to do list! We are extremely fortunate to have such supportive parents that have helped us over the lest 4 weeks. My parents have bought us tons of stuff we needed for our house, helped us move in our bedroom furniture, gone on shopping trips with us, helped us change out light fixtures, and given us coupons to help us save money. Nick's mom made us 2 sets of curtains, 3 pillow covers for our window seat, and she is also making our window cushion and another set of curtains for us. We feel so blessed to have friends and families that are willing and wanting to help us. We cannot wait for everyone to see what we've done with the house! There's still lots of painting & decorating that needs to happen before the 14th!

Thanks for reading!

I'm In Love With You

Getting away from blogging about the house, I'd like to write about marriage. I've been thinking quite a bit about marriage lately and for several reasons, first reason being the most obvious, because I am married. I've also been thinking about marriage because about 95% of all our friends are married. But the biggest reason I've been thinking about it is several people have asked me recently, "how's married life?" and "how do you feel about marriage?" And my answer has been, "it's easier than I thought it was going to be." I think there's several reasons why I feel that way. 1) Nick and I were best friends before we dated, we became even more best friends during the 2.5 years before we got married so there's a lot of comfort there. I know that Nick accepts me 100% for who I am and there's no doubt in my mind that he loves me. I feel completely comfortable around him and him with me. (right, babe?) Also, many people don't know this but, I knew a week into dating Nick (September 24th)that I wanted to marry him. Nick knew less than 2 weeks after I knew (October 1st), so less than a month of being together was all we needed to know that we were going to get married. With that being said, during our dating period we always thought in terms of our future. 2) When you're really comfortable with one another, enough to be yourself then you pretty much have all the possible, big arguments you're going to have before you get married and not after. I've heard of some people not discussing certain things before they get married and that was not an option for us. We told each other everything and we still do so there hasn't been any surprises. 3) I always plan for the worse case scenario, therefore I had this idea that marriage was going to be extremely difficult. While I was engaged my married friends would give me advice (without asking for it) and the advice always involved how difficult it was going to be to live with each other, not to go to bed angry, to always love each other, etc. So I just went into marriage thinking, "man this is going to be hard!" And I had a lot of "what if" questions like, what if he changes? and what if we can't make it? It's no secret that 50% of all marriages end in divorce and coming from parents that haven't always been happily married, I must admit, I had imagined marriage to be extremely difficult. So to tie everything together, married is easier than I thought it was going to be because I imagined the worst and it's easy when you love the person you're married to and can't and don't want to imagine your life without them. I hope I always feel the way I feel about Nick. He is my best friend, my confidant, my #1 fan, and my greatest love. We don't always agree and I know there will be times when we may feel like marriage is difficult, but we love each other and we know that marriage is about compromises. When we were planning our wedding and trying to pick our first dance song, we narrowed it down to several songs and I'd like to end by sharing one of those songs with you. It's not the song we ultimately picked, but the lyrics explained exactly what I believe marriage and love are really about. The lyrics are great and it's a beautiful song, it's worth listening to, if you get the chance to listen to it.

"I'm In Love With You" by Joy Williams
I've been waiting all my life for this morning
Just to wake up next to you holding me
And your head is resting gently on my shoulder
Like you're whispering to me

I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
So glad I found you
I'm in love with you

When we're leaving dreams and rolling back the covers
All at once we're getting ready for the day
It's when you look at me in the mirror while you're shaving
Before I go on my way, you say

I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
You're the one I choose
‘Cause I'm in love

Love is joy and love is pain
It's kissing in the rain
It's doing dishes when it's late
Isn't it, baby
It's the art of compromise
It's hellos and long goodbyes
It's the picture of our lives
Isn't it crazy

So I'll call you when I get to where I'm going
And I'll tell everyone we know you said hello
And without fail they'll ask me if I miss you
Of course I do, you know I do

‘Cause I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
You're the one I choose

I'm in love
I'm in love with you
I'm in love with you
I love you just the same as I did the day
I fell in love with you

Another great song that explains marriage and how I feel is "When I Say I Do" by Matthew West.