Black Friday

Well, I kept our family tradition and went shopping on Black Friday with two of my sisters. Yes, we are crazy. We left the house at 4:45am! We stood in long lines. It was pouring rain. But somehow, we find this fun. I guess because we do it together.

Anyway, we did get some good deals. I got a really good laptop computer for my daughters (to share) for $299, a printer/copier/scanner for $25, an ipod nano for $120, and lots more. I'm basically done my shopping now.

I had budgeted $1,400 for Christmas gifts. When we left in the morning I brought almost $1,000. (I was afraid to bring more after my "lost $1,000 cash incident" in Florida), and we had to stop back at the house because I ran out of money!

What does everyone usually spend on gifts? I budgeted $200 each for each of my 3 daughters, $30 each for my parents, sisters, and in laws, and $15 each for my nieces and nephews. My husband and I have opted not to exchange this year.

Anyway, we shopped from 5am to 5pm - and I am just about finished. And it does feel good knowing that I shopped with CASH!

Update

I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. Things have been crazy busy around here.

Last week I came down with the Swine Flu followed by a secondary infection of pneumonia. Not fun! I spent a whole week sick and quarantined in my bedroom so that no one else in my family would catch it. Luckily no one else did, at least not yet.

Unfortunately I missed 2 craft shows because of this illness. This is such a bummer because I am now averaging almost $1,000 per craft show.

I was able to do a 2 day show this past weekend, Fri night and then Saturday, and I made almost $1,600. Yippee!

Unfortunately, all this extra money that I have been earning from my pendants has not been "surplus". It has basically just replaced the commissions that my husband hasn't received in months. An average commission check used to be around $4,000. Now, nothing. Things are really bad at his work and he is miserable. I hope things turn around soon or his job could be in jeopardy.

Anyway, for now things continue pretty normally for us with my extra earnings replacing his commissions. We aren't getting ahead but we aren't falling behind either.

The emergency fund sits at $20,500 - so quite a long way to go still to reach our goal of $30,000, but we'll get there.

I WAS ALMOST NORMAL . . .

My it has been busy around here!

I have been super busy with a Craft Show every weekend, and it is only getting busier in the weeks to come when I often have more than 1 show a week - yikes! The shows have been going terrific and I am now averaging over $1,000 per show - yippee!

Unfortunately, we have not seen a great impact with all this extra cash. This is definitely in part because the busier I have been, the less I have paid attention to our money, and unmanaged money has a way of disappearing . . . The other reason is my husband's job. Times are tough there and he hasn't seen a commission in months. So, this extra money in a way has just replaced the commissions we are used to my husband receiving.

We even had to dip into our Emergency Fund this month because my husband mistakenly paid our mortgage payment (online) to our old mortgage company, instead of the new company that we refinanced with. This was a huge hassle and I'm hoping won't affect our credit negatively given that our new mortgage company didn't receive the payment on time. So, in the meantime I took $2,500 from our EF to pay the mortgage while we waited to get the money back from the other company. The check finally came, so I'm hoping to take a look at our budget for November and then transfer the $2,500 back to the EF. Ugh!

Anyway, the reason that "I was almost normal" has to do with my oldest daughter's 13th birthday. She has been wanting a new cell phone and I started to think "well, it is a milestone birthday" and "she does study hard and get straight A's" and "all her friends have fancy cell phones", etc. I actually went as far as making the purchase of the phone with a 2 year contract to the tune of $70 a month!!! and as I was driving home I realized how crazy I was being. (Luckily I had checked and made sure that I had 30 days to return the phone with no charges or penalties.) So, I returned the phone without ever telling my daughter about it. And we ended up getting her plane tickets to fly to Florida to visit her grandparents over winter vacation. She was thrilled and we paid cash up front and won't be adding $70 a month to our bills for the next 10 plus years!

It really is hard to NOT do what everyone else is doing! Score 1 for Financial Peace! :)

Best Craft Show Yet

Had my best craft show yet this past weekend. I made $1,700!!! Whoo-hooo!!! I love Scrabble Pendants!

It was in my home town and I expect I'll even get some more orders in the coming weeks through my website. I couldn't be happier!

Kill Something And Drag It Home!

Had another great craft show selling my pendants this past Saturday. I made $920! I'm so happy!
And I have another big show coming up this weekend. So, I'm feeling really good.

I got a call this morning from a woman in Florida that ordered a pendant and loved it and she wanted to rush order a bunch more. It felt great! It occurred to me this morning how much I really enjoy running this business.

I quit my job in 1996 when my first daughter was born so I could be a stay at home Mom. I love being a Mom and never had a desire to go back to work. I've never felt guilty about not earning an income. I know I've done a lot to contribute to the well being of my family. So, I am a little surprised by how great I feel about bringing home some extra cash.

It really does feel good to "kill something and drag it home" (as Dave Ramsey says)! :)

Emergency Funds Are Boring

I think that's the bottom line with our current financial situation.

I enjoyed the post 11 Ways To Spice Up Your Emergency Fund over at Get Rich Slowly, but mostly I was just happy to see someone point out what I've been feeling for the past several month - building an emergency fund just isn't exciting.

Although Baby Step 2 was a long journey to pay off all our debts, it came with a tremendous sense of accomplishment each month. It was like Debt was the enemy and I was pumped up to fight fight fight until I won.

The fire seems to have fizzled considerably.

In one way this is surprising to me because I am a worrier. And in these bad economic times, I would think I would feel more pressure to build that emergency fund up and up and up, but progress seems slow. My husbands company isn't doing well right now and his comissions have all but dried up. This leaves very little "extra" money in the budget to put towards the emergency fund.

Now, I have been doing really well selling my pendants at local craft shows. Last weekend I made $550, the weekend before I made $220, and the weekend before I made $1,050 (my highest so far!) - so, you would think that our emergency fund would be growing, but - not so much.

I haven't been great at tracking all the reasons it hasn't, but the few that come to mind are 1.) had to repair car for $250, 2.) husband went on a weekend trip for $400, 3.) I bought new stuff for our bathrooms for $600 (yikes!), 4.) I spent too much on back to school clothes for the kids, and probably lots more that I can't think of right now.

I hate to say it, but I think I have to spend a little time thinking about the reality that we could actually NEED our emergency fund in the not too distant future. I might need a little reality check and a little FEAR to make me behave with money right now. And the reality is that sales are waaaay down at my husband's company. Last quarter (Q1) was the worst ever. This quarter (Q2) isn't looking any better. Q2 ends in November and some of the people who work under my husband will probably be let go at that time. At the end of Q3 (February), if things don't get better, teams will probably be merged and my husband's position could be in jeopardy. He has already updated his resume . . .

Given that I am a worrier with a very big security gland - I need to realize how important our emergency fund is and get it pumped up fast!

We currently have $20,000 saved (not $22,000 as I previously posted as some funds didn't ever actually make it in there), and we need to work fast to get it up to $30,000 (or more).

Wish me luck!

On The Rise

Earning and spending that is. Both on the rise.

That's not good.

Why is it that the more I earn, the more I spend? Obviously I want earning to go up and spending to go down. But how to get there . . .

And more importantly, I need to get some FOCUS. I need to focus on our finances again.

I have so enjoyed running my pendant business. It has been a lot of fun and I have been earning a lot of money. Both great things. But our emergency fund has not been going up the way it should be. We have been doing some small renovations around the house, ordering take out more and more - things that shouldn't be happening until the emergency fund is complete.

I had a feeling that it might be harder to stay motivated in Baby Step 3 than Baby Step 2 - but this is ridiculous.

I'm actually thinking about taking the Financial Peace University class again just to get my focus back.

Difficult Questions

I had a great craft show this past weekend. It was supposed to be both Saturday and Sunday, but Saturday was canceled because of the rain, so it was just on Sunday. And I managed to make $1,064 in sales! Yeay! I'm psyched about that.

I'm not so psyched about how much I spent on back to school clothes for the kids. I waited until the last minute and felt stressed - and just took them out and bought them what they wanted. I don't know the grand total, but it was definitely more than the $600 I budgeted.

Things have been very busy around here. I felt pressure getting ready for the craft show weekend, and the kids going back to school this week, and my parents are visiting from Florida and have been staying with me. My house is a mess - and things just basically feel out of control.

I REALLY need to de-clutter my house - especially the basement and the kid's clothes (that don't fit them anymore). I'm am struggling with the decision of whether to just give everything away or to save the stuff to try to sell it. My financial side obviously wants to sell the stuff. But I'm wondering if I will really get around to it. I basically have a craft show every Saturday between now and Christmas. I enjoy doing this and have made some good money at it - but I don't know if I'll have the time to do this and organize and sell all our junk.

The other decision I am struggling with is the kid's activities. My husband really wants all 3 of our kids to take piano lessons (and for our youngest to also take voice lessons). My middle daughter has an interest in theatre (she's been in several plays) and could possibly benefit from some voice lessons too.

My oldest enjoys playing piano and will happily take the lessons.
My middle daughter does not want piano or voice lessons at all.
My youngest daughter would like voice lessons, but not piano.

Piano lessons in my area are $23 for a half hour lesson.
A combo piano/voice lesson is $30 for a half hour lesson.

So, for 2 combo lessons and 1 piano lesson each week would be $83, or over $300 a month!

If I use the same teacher, I could possibly book a full hour and have each of the girls take 20 minutes of the lesson (not sure if this is possible, but it might be). This would cost me between $53 and $60 a week, or $240+ a month.

But I'm not even sure that $240 a month really fits into our budget. We still don't have our fully funded emergency fund (and it looks like it will take us almost to the end of 2010 to get it alll the way up to $30,000, at least on paper). And we haven't even begun saving for college - and my oldest is only 6 years away from starting college!

I dread discussing this with my husband. He is having a really bad time at work right now. Sales are down because of the economy - and pressure is high. I don't think he can really handle a realistic look at our finances right now. Even though I think we have been doing really well, he tends to look at the negatives - like how we will both need new cars soon, etc.

Yet I know he feels strongly about the girls having piano lessons.

I guess they don't have to start right at the beginning of September. I can wait a little till things settle down at his work - and then discuss it with him.

I hate to think that we can't afford this for our kids - but I bet Suze Orman would say "denied" if I called in to her "Can I Afford It" segment.

Oh - it's hard to know what to do.