Shampoo Challenge

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Last December, I found a great deal on Hip2Save on how to get Herbal Essence Gift Packages for free (yeah for rebate $) and ended up buying several. Mr. M and I used them until June of this year and decided to challenge ourselves to see if we could go rest of the year without spending any money on shampoo.

So far, as Charlie Sheen would say, we’re winning. Since we had a small container of little hotel bottles and a few great coupons for free products, we’ve made it all the way to the middle of October. With two and half months left, we still plan to see if we can do this all the way until the end of December.

This may seem silly to you but it has helped us (ahem..me) reduce our shampoo usage and I feel like we’re helping our debt snowball by coming with creative ways to save money.

How are you being creative in saving your money?

Your Liberty

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When you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.

-Benjamin Franklin

Goals

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This week I received my goals for 2011 at work…in October. My boss joked during our meeting that she was sure that I would have time to finish them by the end of the year. The joke will be on them in a few short weeks when I give my notice.

Really – who gives yearly goals to their team with only three months LEFT in the year?!?

Cold Cuts

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I will forever associate cold cut sandwiches with infertility.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I was attending an infertility seminar to see what options we had at our nearby clinic and to get the $250 gift certificate. A dinner of cold cut sandwiches were provided by the pharmaceutical reps of the expensive fertility drugs which I found ironic – provided an infertile a meal that a woman who is pregnant can’t enjoy.


The doctor was very informative and told everyone the cost of the different options at the clinic: IUI - $400 to $800, IVF - $12,000…and so on. I sat there (by myself mind you since Mr. M had to work) surrounded by a packed room of couples with the same issue as me but felt very much alone.

Later in the evening, when I was retelling my experience to Mr. M about the session we somehow got on the car conversation. He wasn’t thrilled at my suggestion to not use Bank of Mom as we saw that the used car that he would like is in the $20K range ($20 K!?!? Can you hear my hand hitting my forehead on this one?)

Normally we’re on the same page with money until this hiccup. It wasn’t until that I pointed out that his “new” car could be the money that we need for treatments until he finally got off the car kick. Thank you to Out of My Window for pointing out the increased insurance costs. I'll have to used that if the conversation comes up again.

New car?




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This morning I had the inspiration to actually get out my warm bed and go for a run before work. Mr. M decided to join me and we talked about the subject of a new used

car for him. Goldie, as we affectionately refer to his 2004 ride is showing some major signs of wear. The coolant light never turns off; one of the doors is missing a handle among other things. My MIL has offered us a loan from the “bank of Mom” as she put it to get a new car and we need to decide by December 1st. Thus began a very interesting conversation on getting a "new" car for Mr. M. Can I be honest here? I don’t want to borrow any money from my In-Laws. They’re great people and raised a great son but I’m not a fan of owing anyone in the family money. We still owe them money on the house since they helped Mr. M with the down payment and I want to be done with owing anyone anything. I feel guilty saying this since a new car would mean than my husband would be safer driving to and from work. Does guilt outweigh pride?

Snowflake!

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I admit it – I’m a huge Dave Fan and typically repeat everything he says on his weekly show to my husband at night. The topic that has been a hot button for us in the last few weeks is our mortgage. I want to refinance it and Mr. M did not since we didn’t have the $400 to pay the appraisal fees. Finally, his boss (who Mr. M thinks very highly of) mentioned that he refinanced his mortgage and everyone at work should do the same. After a quick conversation, Mr. M discovered that we could roll the appraisal fees into our total mortgage amount and reduce our payment by $184 per month. Attacking that debt snowball one snowflake at a time!

Feels like Fall

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It’s finally feeling like fall with the crisp cool weather in the morning, the beautiful blue skies and gorgeous colors of the leaves. October is truly one of my favorite months as the weather is always close to perfect.

I am also excited about this month as we will have some changes going on in the M household. The first is our roof which should go on this weekend. We’ve saved at least 50% last month for the payment and will only need to tap into our emergency fund for the other half if the money is due this week. If we’re sent a bill, then we’ll save more from this coming paycheck and less of our emergency fund. Bottom line- the less of the emergency fund we use, the less we have to save up before attacking our Debt Snowball.

On the family front, Mr. M will have another test done to determine what our next steps will be this month. Tomorrow, I’m attending a financial session for the local infertility clinic here and was told by a friend that I should receive a $250 treatment voucher for giving them an hour of my time. $250 is still $250 which can help chip away what could be a $40K medical bill.