Budget Check In

All right sooo… you know how I had that budget page back in January.  It was really great right? I thought it was.  I haven’t stuck to filing it out on a monthly basis, but I’ve stayed pretty close to it. For the most part. Life likes to through curve balls, every once in a while. 

As far as the money envelopes, I need to find a better system. I like having the money with me, but then that makes me worry about my purse and keeping track of the change is always a fun adventure. Also, I try to keep track of the spending, but then I just have a bunch of receipts, and for some reason, they irritate me.

But, I have done a lot of tracking my spending on my online spending tracker. It has categories for everything and a pie chart that shows how much money I’m spending on different things. That makes it pretty easy for me. I either need a longer wallet or smaller envelopes. I have an idea to make my own, but that requires effort and time and pretty paper. All of which are beyond me at the present moment.

I can say that I have started throwing any extra money either into my cash savings spot or into my savings account. Also, the pie chart and the categorizing has helped me reign in my unnecessary spending—to a degree. 

(We won’t talk about the 30$ I dropped on books. In my defense that was extra money.)

So, this is a yes and no sort of response. Yes, I have controlled my spending. No, I haven’t stuck to it the way I had hoped.

I’m debating going back to the cash envelopes. I mean, I take out the cash immediately for my large cost things, like rent, Israel, and the car, but my petty cash not so much. I may do a DIY next month on how to make your own envelopes and go back to it then. I know I’ve got some major changes coming up soon.

DIY Starbucks Gingerbread Latte

So to continue the strike against Starbucks, I found a recipe from Big Man's World and adapted it, because his was vegan. I'm not a vegan. 
So you can be like Grav3yardgirl and buy two bottles of ginger bread syrup, or you can follow the below recipe and be completely DIY. 

2 cups of milk 2 cups of coffee 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ginger 4 tablespoons of sugar 

Add two cups of milk to a pot. 

Then add two cups of coffee.  I started out with one but the coffee flavor wasn't strong enough for me so I added a second one. That's actually the great thing about making your own. You can customize it how ever you like it. 

You mix all that together and bring it to a boil. 

Rather than giving you five different shots of me adding the same amount of stuff, I just mixed it all together. You add it to the boiling mixture and stir some more. 

Finally add sugar. Again, I had to adapt the recipe. It originally called for Stevia or some other substitute, but yeah. I can't stand the taste. I might as well have sugar. So I added four tablespoons, since sugar isn't as sweet as sweeteners. 

You mix that together and once your done you can serve yourself.This makes two servings for large mugs, and two and quarter for smaller mugs. 

Enjoy!

DIY Iced Macchiato

Again with Starbucks. I mean honestly, a venti drink costs roughly $5.00, and who has money to spend on that?  Yeah sure I've got it budgeted, but I want to save my coffee budget. For what? I don't know. When I go hog wild and buy the entire Ulta store. lol. Anyway, here's a picture of what you'll need. 

Vanilla Syrup, which you can actually make yourself. 

Milk

Coffee or expresso

Ice

Put the vanilla Syrup in first. You should put enough in to cover the bottom. If you put a lot in, it's super sweet and just doesn't taste good. 

Add the milk. I put in less than half the glass because I want more coffee less milk. Here's a note, about the milk. I personally like 2 % milk, but it really isn't thick enough for the coffee to really sit on top of. It will, but not the same as regular vitamin d Milk. 

It really doesn't matter because it's all going to get mixed anyway. 

Now you add the ice. 

Then pour the coffee in slowly. If you dump it in, the coffee will go directly in the milk and you'll miss that whole slow mixing. 

Now, take that coffee budget!

Stay tuned, I think I'm doing the Chai Latte this Saturday. 

5 Money Saving Tips At Home

So in favor of money month, I decided that you may already have a tight budget and saving money is super difficult. There are a few things you can do to lower your actual bills. 

 When you're not using unplug them from the wall entirely. Even when you turn things off, you still use a lot of power, which is sometimes called phantom energy. The only way to actually save money is to unplug it. I personally unplug my microwave, coffee pot, and entertainment center when I'm not using it.

 If you keep your thermostat at a set temperature it won't have to work as hard to either heat or cool the house. Also, another tip is kind of roll with the season. Keep it cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. I know it sounds a little uncomfortable, but we have a two bedroom apartment and we keep our electric, which includes our heat bill at roughly $50.00.

Now I don't always like to air dry my clothes, but I always dry my shirts and delicate clothes. It saves the clothes and on the electric bill. I'm not saying don't dry any of your clothes, but smaller loads means you can combine and run fewer loads. 

Not eating out is good in more than one way. You save money and you can lose weight. But going a step further can save you even more money. So assume you buy one tv dinner a night at 1.50 a piece, not only will you be consuming a lot of wax, you will only make a dinner for a single night for $10.50 a week. but that's only one meal for one person. For a little more you buy chicken and rice, make multiple meals for multiple people. 

Don't throw away the toothpaste tube until you're sure the last squeeze is out. You can actually purchase things that will help you along. Same goes for shampoo and conditioner. If you get the dollar tree empty carry on bottles and cut open the shampoo and conditioner, you'd be surprised how much more you have in there.  Also, reuse things. For example, I bought a bunch of shirts from Forever 21, and they shrank nearly right away. Well rather than waste the money and throw them out, I use them for towels. They're gentler on your face and hair than most towels are anyway.  Also, all the newspaper style adds you get in the mail, you can keep some and use them to wipe up spills rather than paper towels.