Everything is cheaper here

I know I keep saying this, but everything really is SO MUCH cheaper here.  It never ceases to amaze me that the regular price of a can of refried beans is under a dollar.  If we can't stick to our budget in the state of Washington, then it simply can't be done. 

This weekend we attended an event which seems to prove this point better than anything.  We get the local paper, The Columbian, which turns out to be an EXCELLENT newspaper.  It's not as big as the Mercury News (in San Jose), so I feel like I can read at least some of it every day.  Anyway, I came across this great feature where they list their picks for the week's activities.  Otherwise, we'd basically be driving around looking at real estate and have no clue where to go or what to do with the kids besides take them to the park.

So the city of La Center had a little festival called "Our Days" (follow this link if you want to see the best paint map ever drawn for a parade) and the newspaper listed that they would be offering Monster Truck rides from 3-6PM.  For free.  So of course, given the current household demographic, this was a MUST SEE event.  We headed out a little after noon and first hit the festival itself which consisted of a bunch of local booths (artisan, Realtors, beer and hot dogs, etc), a bunch of bitchin' hot rods and a bunch of giant bounce houses for the kids.  For free.  Also free?  Pony rides. 

(Did I mention they were FREE!?) (FREE!)

After spending all of a single dollar on a cold bottle of water, we headed over to the Monster Truck rides.  It took us a while to figure out where to go because it was basically held in a field in the middle of town.  The whole day was so laid back and casual that there were no signs pointing where anything was; we just randomly asked other parents and eventually found stuff.  The people here are so nice,

So we get to the monster truck and we start looking for the sign up table.   Because OBVIOUSLY we're going to have to sign some kind of triplicate release form.  I mean, if my kids can't jump at Pump it Up without my signing their lives away then there's no way in hell they're going to let us ride a 20-year-old rust machine without some kind of liability protection.

But no.  We just got in line and that was it.

I found the ride terrifying, to put it mildly.  I thought for sure the damn thing was going to roll over and we'd all be crushed.  Alex just thought it was great fun.

The strange thing is that a day like this in California easily would've set us back $75.  They would've charged $5 for each bounce house admission, $10 for a pony ride and $25 a piece for a ride on the monster truck.  But La Center doesn't play that way.  They are down with the family values and we loved the entire day.

Washington is awesome.

Problems!

So I've been trying to update the budget and get a total for the month of July, but I haven't been able to for two reasons:

1) FRIGGING MEDICAL BILLS.  I've spent literally every free second I've had today (and many seconds that weren't free and involved my attempting to use big words and sound like a grown up with a screaming baby on my hip) trying to finish up the last of our medical bills from our crappy old insurance.  Number of times this has made me CRY today? TWO.

2) Over a month ago, I FINALLY went out and bought Quicken with the hope it would help me reconcile the budget.  It seemed to work GREAT for the first two weeks and I loved it and it was the MIRACLE CURE.  Then it suddenly stopped downloading my discretionary checking account transactions.  I've had a live chat with tech support and have even tried downloading it directly from the bank, but it's still a no go.  The time I spent trying to fix the stupid program would've been MORE than adequate to reconcile the damn budget by hand.  Hind sight = 20/20.

Needless to say: we went over budget in July by about $300.  In a big picture sense, that isn't much if you include the fact that we had company for ten of those days and also took a weekend trip back to California.  I'd be willing to bet that most of the overage was from dining out.  We'll see as soon as I can figure out how to get Quicken to work.  (I think I need to call the bank tech support line next.)

Wedding gifts

It's been a LOOONG time since we got married, almost ten years, but I can still remember how exciting it was to register for all those pretty shiny presents.  We had a fairly large wedding, so I ended up getting most of our china and crystal and I'm looking forward to finally having a home with enough room that I can display it and even maybe actually USE it.  I'm pretty sure at least some of it is still in its packaging.

I know not everyone agrees, but I absolutely ADORE gift registries.  If I'm going to spend money on those I love, I always prefer to give something I know they want.  If someone HAS a gift registry, I ALWAYS use it.  If there isn't a registry, I give cash or a gift card or, as a last resort, a gift with a receipt attached to it so they can exchange it for something that matches their taste.  Cash might not be the classiest gift, but I know it's always welcome and that's what we gave John and Lynne.

When my brother had a baby, I wasn't sure what to get, especially because they live in China and I couldn't exactly buy them a stroller.  They also didn't have a registry, so I ended up giving them a high-end thermometer.  I know!  It seems like such a lame gift, but it was one of those things that we didn't splurge on ourselves and wished we had.  [It's not something you anticipate as a new parent, but when you're up with a fevering child in the middle of the night and you you're on your third $20 thermometer and it's giving you three vastly different temperature readings over the span of one minute and you send your husband out to the 24 hour Walgreen's down the street to buy the GOOD one, you learn your lesson about when to spend and when to splurge.]

What do you think?  Are gift registries tacky or awesome?  How do you chose gifts for big events?

My best advice for traveling with two small children: DON'T

We're back from our trip and needless to say, I had a hard time sticking to the budget.  Two things make it hard to budget while traveling:

1) Being away from home with two children.
and
2) See number one.

By the time we got through security at both legs of our trip, it was time for a well-deserved cocktail.  We definitely spent some extra airport brewery bucks over the weekend and I don't regret them one bit.  Traveling is just unbelievably difficult.  You would think it would be the schlepping of everything that did me in, but it was really just not having a real home base where it can be just me and my family.  I love Dave's mom to death, but her condo is small and I have to be on extra high alert to make sure the kids don't destroy it.  We'd probably be better off staying at a hotel, but that would just add even more expense to an already expensive weekend.  I don't see us visiting as often as I'd previously imagined.

Soon I'll post the actual spending recap and hopefully a month-to-date of our various categories.  We aren't doing well, per se, but we still have a few hundred left of our discretionary budget and I'm still hopeful I'll be able to stretch it for the rest of the month.

Travel Costs

Dave's brother is (finally) getting married this weekend.  I keep joking that after over five years of living together, they had to wait until we moved out of California to finally tie the knot!  For Lynne's sake, we should've moved YEARS ago.

Anyway, for such a simple trip, literally a weekend away staying with family, it seems to really be adding up.  [And for the record, I'm posting just for the sake of the blog, not to complain.  I'm really excited about the wedding and I can't think of a better reason to be spending some of our travel budget!]

Plane tickets for three (Genoa still qualifies as a lap child) - $675
Car rental (sadly, none of the cars we could potentially borrow from family have LATCH and I'm just not comfortable with the old seat belt tricks) - $278
Harry kennel fees - $105
Harry vet appointment - $46 (the kennel won't take him without proof of recent vaccinations)
TOTAL TRAVEL: $1,104

Of course we'll have to eat out more while we're there and I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting, but DAMN, that's a lot for FOUR days.  Normally, I would ask my cousin or my aunt to watch the dog for us, but he's still on Separation Anxiety HIGH ALERT Mode since we moved and there's no way they're prepared to deal with that.  Harry can dig his way out of just about any back yard and he's been known to claw his way out of the tiniest crack of an open window.  Maybe by Christmas he'll be calm enough to stay with family instead of needing to be incarcerated.  We'll see.

Again, I reiterate, this is going to be fun and I'm looking forward to it.  This is what having a savings account is all about!

Grocery Update

Saturday night we hit Trader Joe's for snacks for the kids.  I SERIOUSLY stocked up so we won't have to go back there again for a couple weeks.  We spent $68 between wine, milk and snacks and everything we bought was on the LIST.

Sunday we went to WinCo for the week's shopping and spent $141.  I know that sounds like a lot, but it was actually GREAT and we stuck exclusively to our list.  The breakdown was:

Kids (diapers) - $16.22
Household (tupperware) - $3.13
Booze (Wine and wine coolers) - $10.99 (I've decided to start separating this out, just out of curiosity)
Groceries - $110.88 ($30 of which went to buying enough Splenda and pure Maple syrup to last us a couple of months)

I considered this to be a triumph.  Our meals are all planned out and I have no reason to go to the store again any time soon.   So far, I feel like I'm already doing a much better job of budgeting than I have in MONTHS.

New grocery shopping rules

Dave and I decided that we're finally going to lay down some grocery shopping ground rules.  Basically, we're going to start going to WinCo ONE TIME ONLY per week, probably on Sundays when we can tag team the kids.  We're also going to shop EXCLUSIVELY from a list.  If it's not on the list before we leave the house, it does not get purchased until it gets put on next week's list.

I have a feeling this is going to save us a bunch of money.  I really do.  The fewer times we enter the store, the less opportunity we have to waste money.

This strategy should also help force me to continue planning our meals in advance, which is the one thing I've noticed really DOES pay off when it comes to our budget.  I've barely managed to scrape together dinners this week because it's been too hot to cook anything in the oven, but Dave's had some type of lean protein every night, so he can't complain.  The kids have been eating frozen Trader Joe's stuff and/or eggs for dinner. 

How often do you shop?  Do you go alone, bring the kids and/or the husband?  Does it save you any money?

No more Fred Meyer

This week I decided I'm totally done shopping at Fred Meyer - deliciously luring hour of child-free shopping be damned.  I'll be gracing the aisles of WinCo instead.  In all my years of complaining about the cost of food, I've never seen better prices.  This week I think I got all our groceries for about $75.  Of course, there's plenty of leftover meat in the freezer that I didn't cook last week, but still.  That's as cheap as it'll ever get for us.

Some other recent expenses include gas for $56.  Dave took his secretary out for a nice lunch to get to know her better for $44.  We also stocked up on kid snacks and wine at Trader Joe's for $63 and bought coffee and paper goods at Target for $75.  Amazingly, there is still over $200 left of our original $900 and I'm confident I'll be able to make it last until the 15th.

In other news, I'm back to preschool shopping again.  This time, however, I'm finding a lot more school for the money.  Alex's old school (which was fun, but left a lot to be desired in the academic department) was $285 per month for two half days per week.  For that same money here in Washington, I'm easily finding three days a week at a far better school.  One of the schools I visited even had web cam access for that price!

Meal planning update

Sunday we ate the salmon and Monday I made the spaghetti and meatballs, which, if I do say so myself, were totally OFF THE HOOK.  That Giada knows her business.  I also made a TON of it, so we ended up eating leftovers on Tuesday instead of making anything new. 

Wednesday was the 4th and I didn't feel much like cooking so we ran out to Fred Meyer and bought some hot dogs.  Oddly, we ended up spending $62 there buying things we apparently NEEDED to make hot dogs (I need to come up with some method of staying out of both the organics aisle and the CHIPS department).  Thursday I made the Marlboro Man's Second Favorite Sandwich without the buns and with a side of salad for the grown-ups and a side of pasta Alfredo for the kids.  It was another meal that was OFF of something (the hook?  the chain?  bus route #60?).  It was good.  That Ree is a damn fine cook.

Tonight we're going out to dinner because Carol wanted to take us someplace nice while she's here, which is awfully nice of her.  The good news is that I still have a flank steak marinating in the freezer and two pork tenderloins to use for making the parm-crusted chops, so next week's grocery budget won't be that bad.  I'll post next week's menu on Sunday.

This week at Fred Meyer - $266.39

I can't believe how easy it is to spend money at Fred Meyer.  We seem to keep remembering a bunch of stuff we NEED.  We've been there four times this week and obviously, therein lies the problem.  I need to limit my shopping trips.  (I sense a general "no shit, Sherlock!" and a sigh coming from your direction and I completely agree).

The important thing is that I KNOW we've overspent this week and I'm absolutely going to stick to the overall budget of $900 through the 15th of July.  If that means we eat beans and rice for the next week, so be it.  I want to see our money going to the savings account and not being eaten away (literally) in too many trips to the grocery store.

We have a little over $500 left and I'm determined to make it last.