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Monday, August 30, 2010

Save Money, Save Time, Save Your Sanity

Saving money is fun, most of the time. Figuring out HOW to save the money is the not-so-fun part. When we made the decision to stop cable, I figured it out that we would be saving a little over $100 a month. So what to do with this extra cash? Well, we decided to go ahead and "invest in" the school lunch program. Wouldn't you know it, the total for 3 kiddos is a little over $100 a month! When figuring lunches INTO our monthly budget, I figured that we would actually SAVE with them eating school lunch. How? Well let me break it down for you!

We have 3 kids so I am going to do this for 1 child then multiply it by 3 at the end.

Juice/drink - Most juice comes in a 10-pack and runs about $2 a pack. 1 child would use 5 juices per week, 20 juices per month so 2 10-packs or $4 per month for 1 child. ($12 for 3)

Sandwhich - Now, depending on what you send, this can be pricey, so let's stick to good old PB&J! The average loaf of bread costs around $2 a loaf and has about 20 slices of bread. 1 child would use 2 slices per day, 10 slices per week, 40 slices a month, so about 2 loaves or $4 per month for bread for 1 child. ($12 for 3)

Peanut butter can be bought for roughly $4 a jar and that jar should last 1 child 1 month or more. With my 3, I can get away with 2 jars a month so $8 a month for PB.

Jelly. Ugh. $2 or so per container that will probably last 1 child a week, maybe 2. So say you have to buy 3 jars of jelly per month, that's $6 a month for Jelly for 1. ($18 for 3)

Fruit - Depending on what is in season, fruit can be expensive. Bananas last about a week for 5, apples last a whole lot longer and oranges, well, oranges are super exspensive here so we only get them in the summer! Let's go with apples. They come in singles, 3lb and 5lb bags. Most economical would be the 5lb bag and that will run you about $6. There are about 9-12 apples in that bag but we will go with the lower. If you have 1 child, the bag will last you 2 weeks so 2 bags, 1 month, $12. (My 3 $36 per month)

Snack - Crackers are a hit, especially goldfish, and sometimes I allow cookies. My kids are stingy, but for economical purposes, we are going to keep with 1 snack and go with the cheapest, crackers. A 10-pk of crackers runs about, as the others, $2 and will last 2 weeks for 1 child. So that means 2 10pks for 1 month equals $4 a month for 1 child. ($12 for 3)

Totals - School lunch runs $32 a month for elementary school and $35 a month for middle school. I can tell you now that it is a S-T-E-A-L! Anyway, for a family with 1 child to pack a lunch every day, the food alone would run you about $34 a month. This doesn't include lunch bags, sandwich bags, anything extra like spoons for yogurt or pudding or if you have lunch meat instead of PB&J. For 3 kiddos, and MY kiddos at that, it would run around $98 per month plus all the bags, spoons and extras.

All-in-all, it may seem like we aren't saving anything by making the kids buy lunch at school, but we really are. We are saving a TON, including my sanity. I cannot tell you how many times in the past few years I have had to run a lunch to school for it being left in the van or a sandwich was left on the counter or the kids forgot to mention we ran out of juice until 5 minutes before we had to leave for school so they had to buy milk anyway. It's easier, cheaper and saves me from worrying if my 2nd grader is going to tell his teacher he left his lunch at home when it's really in his backpack just so he could have pizza and I could owe the cafeteria $1.75 at the end of the week.

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Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Girl Who Has Everything...

I've always loved Ariel, you know, that red-headed princess from that one Disney movie? She reminds me of myself, not ONLY because she keeps a cave full of "treasures", but because she lives in the ocean, has a semi-spastic best friend who listens to everything she says and is in love with a handsome prince. (Not that my husband is a prince, but he IS handsome!) Ah, who am I kidding? Ariel and I are alike because I, too, want more!

I want a better paying job, a bigger house, no bills, a better sex life but most of all, I want my child to be okay. See, she has always been "off", ever since she was able to throw her bottle at me when she was done with it. The doctors call it "flinging". Now "flinging" is supposed to cease with most children by the age of 3 but with my daughter, well, she still flings! Unfortunately when she does, it is usually in anger and it usually means she is flinging something to break it. My child is currently being evaluated for ADHD and bipolar disorder. She has been evaluated in the past, but she was too young for a definitive diagnosis. Some problems have come to light recently so we have decided to move ahead with further testing.

The problems doctors are having with diagnosing GIRLS with ADHD is that they don't show the "H" part as outwardly as boys do. Their "H" can include such things as chewing on their hair or clothing, talking excessively or out of turn, being "too bossy" to their friends or siblings, messiness, not finishing their work, not being able to follow simple tasks without step-by-step instruction. I can tell you all, from experience, that most, if not all of the above, happens in my house DAILY and it is frustrating. There was a point in time when my daughters sudden rage, which is a symptom of the bipolar, was so bad, it threatened our marriage. She would throw herself off her bed onto the hardwood floor and "promise to break a bone so" we would go to jail. It was a nightmare to hear that come from a 4yr old!

She has been to a therapist before, been evaluated before, been on medication before and I didn't like any of it because of my strong belief that children should not be medicated. I adjusted her diet (and ours) so that we could go medication-free and it had worked for 5+ years...but it is no longer an option. Hormones will soon play a huge role in her life and will start to make ALL of our lives a living nightmare. We can already tell the diet isn't helping, the rage is back, the inattentiveness, sloppiness, bossiness...it's all quickly returning. I am a scared mom right now. I want to be the girl who has everything, you know, Ariel? But I can't when my baby is hurting so bad mentally.

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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Saving Money, Going Crazy

This weekend the hubs and I decided that we were going to go ahead and cut out some things in our lives that we don't "need". Some of these things we don't really "use" and some of these things we have exchanged for other things. We have decided to rid our lives of the awful burden of a $100+ cable bill! Go head and show me your bug eyes! Yes, $100 is the amount we shall save a month cutting out the cable. We will add Netflix for a mere $8.99 a month so we can stream movies and other things on our TV via the Wii, rent movies and watch them on our DVD player and watch our other shows and the such via Hulu and FanCast. Both offer streaming video of all your favorite TV shows, soaps, some movies, etc., and it is...now hold on to your britches, everyone...FREE!!!! WOO HOO! I love me some free! Right now our Netflix is on a free 31-day trial while we decide if it is what we want, but the hubs thinks it is a cool deal. We have watched a few movies as a couple and as a fam via the Wii and I got him all set up on Hulu today. I think once he sees that he can watch his shows whenever he wants and sees just how much moolah we are saving, he will think it is just as cool as I do...maybe.

The next thing on the list was the house phone. It costs right around $16 a month plus whatever the kids use in long distance. So, we decided to "add a line" to our cell plan. We get unlimited any cell to any cell, 1500 anytime minutes that the hubs and I never use because everyone we know uses a cell (FREE calls!!)so all the minutes would be for the kids to call their friends since our family has cell phones and that would be FREE! (There's that word again!! LOVE IT!) Anyway, to add a line, it is a straight up $19.99 a month, no extra fees and since we already had an extra phone I didn't even have to buy one. I activated some security features on the phone that it already had on it like disabling data, limiting the number of numbers they can call and locking texting so they CANNOT TEXT!!

All in all, I think that we are going to end up saving a total of $116 per month, that makes it $1,392 per year! Heck yeah! WOO HOO!! Guess I'll have to sneak it into a Christmas fund or maybe even into the Scottrade...WTC was I thinking?!?! Christmas fund it is!


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Thursday, August 12, 2010

You Say I'm A Dreamer

But I am definitely not the only one! Everyone dreams every night whether you remember them or not! I recently purchased The Dream Dictionary, which is an online dream dictionary put together by the lovely Lauri Loewenberg. I have been interpreting my own dreams with The Dream Dictionary since I purchased it (lifetime membership for a 1-time fee of just $9.95!) about a month or so ago. I guess I should say that sometimes I am astounded by my dreams and what they tell about my "inner self"! I thought telling my thoughts, opinions and rantings to my 2 best friends was enough until last night when I dreamt about bathrooms. You know what the dictionary says about bathrooms??? Here's a snippet..."Bathroom/Restroom/Washroom: Do you need to cleanse yourself of negativity or frustration or a negative behavior? If the bathroom is filthy or unusable (the ones I was trying to use were all "occupied"), then you are not properly relieving your frustrations. You probably tend to hold in your thoughts or opinions when something is bothering you rather than relieving yourself of it. This dream is showing you that your psychological plumbing is backed up because you are not properly flushing away that which bothers you. In other words: Don't hold in your "crap" or you're gonna start to stink!!" SERIOUSLY??????? Because last time I checked, I unloaded on my friends DAILY! Guess that means I need to "take a dump" more than once a day! MAN! That's a whole lot of "bathroom" time!

Next up was...the cat. This cat was a beautiful, black cat and it just kept staring at me! Anyone that knows me, knows I DESPISE cats, but this one was so beautiful! It was starting to creep me out though because everytime I came out from another set of "occupied" bathrooms, it was just sitting there, with its accusing eyes, staring. I didn't understand the dictionaries interpretation so I asked Lauri, on Facebook, what it meant and she said "Look at your intimate life first. Cats in a woman's dream often refer to her sexuality, sometimes even her reproductive self. It is looking at you because it represents something in your life that needs attention. Is there anything you need to become independent from?" Obviously I need to fix my female parts but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out anything I need to become independent from! Anyone have a clue? Food maybe? I sure am dependent upon food!!!

Anyway, another big part of my dream was the big picture window. Can ya guess what a window means in a dream? It's your perception of things and your ability to see through barriers. I can totally see through barriers! Especially those of my friends...you know, the friends from my last post that are going through tough times? Divorce is a pretty big barrier in SOOOO many ways. The final part of my dream with a meaning was the mansion but, just because I can, I'm going to leave it to you all to find out the meaning of the mansion!

So, next time you wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare or have that sexy dream about Justin Bieber (BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), head on over to The Dream Zone and say hello to Lauri!

Happy Dreaming!

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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I Pretty Much Suck

It has been another 6 months since my last awful post about being fat. Still fat, went on vacay fat and, I think, I will always carry this extra 20lbs no matter what I do. I just love to eat. Dieting isn't my "style". Anyway, I was thinking (I do that only while in the shower) that Facebook and Myspace just aren't the places to post the things I want to say about my friends, family, enemies...and that I really need to start updating this thing to keep peeps in the loop about MY life, my friends' lives and start posting funny stuff here and stupid stuff on Facebook! HA! Plus, last night when I was waiting for the children's camp to post an update on my heathens' kiddos' first day at camp, I ran across my good friend's blog and was flabbergasted to see she is getting a divorce and I HAD NO CLUE!!! I mean, we ARE friends...at least I thought so. (insert sad crying face here) Anyway, since I am never I here, I didn't know so I decided I need to be on here more! Plus I like to write smartallic things and what a better place than blogger?!

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