Saving Money Online - My Favorite Stomping Grounds

What do you do on the Internet?
I'm not one to play computer games although I do get my fix of pogo.com and NetWinner every once and awhile. What I really do online lately is hunt for new ways to save money and research things.

I've come across a few GREAT blogs lately that I have been traveling to daily. It's amazing these places exist and I wish they were around in the early 90's and I may be sitting in a different situation right now.

Money Saving Mom
The first of my latest fascination is Money Saving Mom. Have you ever said, "I wish I could find deals like that?" This blog is a detailed how to in finding those great deals and the grocery and drug stores! I hit up Walgreens using posted sales/coupons/rebate scenarios and walked out owing little (and getting money back in rebates!) I'm pretty good at finding deals, but having someone wrap them up in a pretty little package is SWEET!

More Than Enough
In the same fashion as Money Saving Mom, the next on the list is: More Than Enough . Again, the nice package with a pretty bow can help you find those money saving scenarios at Target, Walgreens, CVS and other stores. Also gives you tips on finding those great coupons that other savers are finding. Did you know you can call a company and ASK for coupons?

Hot Coupon World
This one isn't a blog, but a website. A lot of hard work goes into this message board as posties post about weekly sales and coupon scenarios, plus has an extensive coupon database. I joined Hot Coupon World a while ago, but didn't get into it until recently. I go there multiple times a week now.

I admit, I do spend a lot of time on the internet - but a lot of it is beneficial time spent.
(yup, I'm going to keep telling myself that)

Lessons learned the hard way

If you've been reading my blog you will know that I started my "Total Money Makeover" in July. It's not that I was ignorant regarding personal finance prior to July, but I sure wasn't fully educated either.

My maternal grandmother, God rest her soul, was the most frugal person I ever knew. She was brilliant - and knew exactly the money game and how it played. I'd make fun of some of her shopping habits - most of which I now do myself. Unfortunately gram died while I was early in my high school career so I was in my arrogant, rebellious teen angst years and didn't really pay attentions to the lessons taught. Hind sight..... Gram was WEIRD! Now I'm wanting to be just as WEIRD as she!

Okay... here's a few of the lessons I have learned.

1. No matter how you phrase it - you can not pay off credit cards when you are still using them.

2. Surfing a balance from one card to another is NOT the same thing as making a payment.

3. Rewards Points on credit card purchases gives you an excuse to over use your credit card. You may have the intentions of paying it off -- but you can wind up with more in interest charges than you do in cashed out rewards points.

4. (and also my favorite saying) "____% off of too much is STILL too much!"

5. Even if it's a great deal ... if it's going to sit in a closet, drawer, in the basement, or otherwise unused ... it wasn't money well spent.

6. Go to the grocery store with a list, your coupons, a plan and an envelope of CASH! No credit cards...no debit cards!

7. Quit listening to how your friends handle their finances - because your friends are just as clueless as you are (or lucky as the case would be... WERE)

8. Don't EVER watch QVC or the Home Shopping Club or any late night infomercials if you want to save money!

9. When your insurance agent tries to scare you into UNIVERSAL LIFE insurance - run the other way. I can't tell you how close I was to buying into this myth.

10. Budget everything. This is major for me. I have always budgeting my monthly bills. Have great credit and haven't been late on a payment. Kudos, pat me on the back...... but not so fast because the rest of life was charged on a credit card. And if that doesn't sound bad enough, refer back to #1.

11. Use cash. Even when you've thrown all your credit card in a drawer, an ice block or have cut them up into millions of pieces - you haven't really changed the habit if you are still using your debit card. I never believed it until I started using cash. Spending cash hurts. You really start thinking... " Do I really NEED that?" That's when you know you have become weird.

12. Quit being lazy. What do you mean I have to cook? I worked all day! It's so much easier to stop at Mickey D's on the way home than cook. The fact that I work in a restaurant doesn't help much either. We have saved so much money, by having a weekly game plan and not hitting the sit down restaurants all the time. You have cookbooks - you have ingredients - COOK!

13. Read! Teach yourself something! Although I was pleased to know that some of what Dave Ramsey was talking about in Total Money Makeover and Financial Peace Revisited was things I already knew or did - I learned so much more than I could have hoped for. It's been forever since I read a book.

14. Admit there's a problem. Denial is what got me through the 90's. As long as the payments are being made - what's the problem? The problem is, I'm almost 40 and I'm broke. End of story!

15. Watch your statements, store receipts, or anything that goes through a computer. I scan for errors all the time. I make calls to customer service and I get things fixed. All those little errors add up to BIG $$. If you don't care about your $$ who does?

I'm sure there's more.

What are some of your Lessons learned the hard way?
Add your comments here.

I guess I needed a new budget line - aka Poor Chelsie Part 2

With a 20 year old cat, a 19 year old cat and a 10 year old cat -- I should have already started a sinking fund for vet bills.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda....
My 20 year old cat went to vet yesterday:
$108.00
She had a white film going across a good portion of her eye. I assumed she went blind in that eye, but the fact that it was weeping was bothering me so we took her in. Well they did a few tests including a glucoma puff/pressure test and what should be around 15 and danger level being 27 --- her bad eye was at 69-75 which caused her lens to "blow out" and move foward (that's the film we are seeing) and her other eye is at 36-37. Tried to do a blood pressure test on her, but the machine wasn't registering. We COULD remove the bad eye, however if the good eye is already this bad...the same thing could happen to it also. That's what the vet said. He gave me a prescription for glucoma eye drops:
90.00
that I have put in her eyes twice a day to bring down the pressure counts so that she can be comfortable in the bad eye and hopefully reverse the glucoma in the good eye. We go back again at the end of the week. Now giving the blind eye a drop is easy...drip...it's in. However, try wrangling a cat who sees something SO close to their eye. There is a delay before the drip...and she has it timed to wait to freak right before the drop comes out! Smart cat!

Needless to say, we had to jack funds from the medical sinking funds envelope (and hope nobody needs to go to the doctor until Feb 1st), the remaining from our blow money, and some extra cash that I was supposed to deposit into the bank -- I'll rearrange next month's budget.

I have to prepare myself for the inevitable -- and although our plans for remains isn't frugal and doesn't fit into the Dave Ramsey plan we have, we will be cremating her and keeping her ashes (as we will all of our cats)I'm not sure you'd call this Murphy knocking or God calling for her. Either way, the family is devistated.

Damages ...

We've done good actually paying off debts. Problem is I transfered debts from one card to another it was like a merry-go-round from hell. Looking at some of the following balances, I'm sure SOME of it was in the midst of rotation and I didn't actually OWE this much at once. The merry go round was a quick moving thing.

** Now remember - these numbers from 1/06 - 1/07 are a little sketchy. **

January 2006
Chase - 4100.00
Chase - 5000.00
MBNA -8400.00
AMEX - 12,269.00
Citibank - 890.00
Elantra - 9423.00
Citibank - 14,576.00
HELOC - 21,000.00

January 2007
Chase - 0.00 (transfered to new Chase card)
Chase - 1832.00
Chase - 9,900.00
MBNA- 0.00
AMEX - 0.00 (valiant effort remaining transfered to HELOC)
Citibank- 5,920 (the card we USED to be transfered in part to BofA)
Elantra - 6,885
Bank of America - 17,575.00 (tranfered $ plus a bit of stupid tax)
Citibank - 12,160.00
HELOC 30,000.00 (+/-)
Discover - 1031.00 (oh GREAT! Another new card!)

Introduce Dave Ramsey into our home July 2007
The Plan Begins.
The Budget is in Place.
The Envelope System Works.
Gazelle Intensity Starts.

Here's where we CURRENTLY stand:
October 2007
Chase - 0
Chase - 0
Chase - 8085.00
MBNA - 0
AMEX - 0
Citibank - 1730.00
Elantra - 3200.00
Bank of America - 16,311.00
Citibank - 10,492.00
HELOC - 30,000.00 (+/-)
Discover - 0