Updates from the Frugal Workshop

This is a photo my daughter took on her Spring Break. They had just gotten off the ship in Nassau. Her grandmother took her on a Carnival cruise to the Bahamas as an early graduation present. 

My Spring Break was a little disappointing because I came down with a stomach virus, which lasted about five days, which explains my absence from my blog. 

Anyway, my daughter got her drivers license this week and we have been car shopping everyday after school. She finally settled on this one:

It is a Ford Fiesta that gets 40 miles to the gallon, which will help a great deal as she starts college this fall. I'm very happy to report that we were able to pay cash in full for the car, so she will have no car payments.


Yesterday we spent the day decluttering around the house and took off a carload of garbage to the dump and donated items to our local charity shop. Afterwards we cleaned the house, including laundry, and getting ready for the work/school week. Other than that we spent the whole day at home, which felt great after car shopping all week. 

One thing I noticed when car shopping was the fact that many cars had almost 100,000 miles on them, which to me was a sure sign of the economic times. People are holding onto their cars much longer than they used to hold onto them. I know I held onto my last car for 15 years and it had over 200,000 miles on it when I replaced it with a newer one for work. I still have the old car, which I use to haul off garbage. 

This week I will be adding another car to my auto insurance policy or getting a policy for my daughter all her own. I will do a price comparison in the office to see which one will save us the most money. I've already seen an increase in price of $200 when I added her last week after she received her driver's license. Any advice from those who have been through this already will be very welcome. 

Thank you for reading,


Belinda ~ Living within my means in Southern Tennessee ~
Earn with Swagbucks

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff

(Image Credit)

My daughter has a birthday next month, so I've been tossing a few ideas around in my head on how to celebrate with her. For a variety of reasons, one of her favorite things to do is to spend the night in a hotel.  

One of the reasons she likes to do that is because they offer Free Unlimited Internet, which is something we don't have at home. Because we live in a rural area, we do not have an ISP that offers unlimited internet, so we only have one choice and that is using a data package from Verizon. We pay $80 per month for 10 gigabytes of data, and have to be very careful to not go over the 10 gigabytes or it is another $10 for every 1 extra gigabyte. As a result, we do not go on websites that offer any streaming videos, or You Tube or Pinterest as pictures will use a lot of gigabytes too. So, when we go to a hotel and have free, unlimited Internet then that is a real treat. It is one of my daughter's favorite things to do because she loves to watch You Tube videos and download current TV shows like Glee from I-tunes. 

Another reason she likes to stay in a hotel is Restaurants that Deliver.  Again, because we live in a rural area, we do not have any restaurants that deliver to our door, so when we are somewhere that offers this service, we consider it a real luxury. She also likes hotels that offer a Free Complimentary Breakfast simply because she likes having so many choices available to her. She also enjoys the Cable TV, which is available at hotels. And finally, she likes to be able to swim in the hotel Swimming Pool.  

From the time that my daughter entered Kindergarten the school system here has had a Fall Break and it has always fallen on her birthday, and this year is no exception. How neat is it to get three days off from school for your birthday? Think I could convince her that is her birthday present this hear? LOL, I didn't think so either. :)  

Having said all of that, this year I've decided that I am going to let her spend the night at a hotel for her birthday. As with other things in our lives, I am going to do this on a budget. So we are going to be Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. 

How am I going to approach this on a limited budget? Well, I've been doing some research on local hotels online and have found that with a coupon, I can book one night for around $46 plus tax. And, Pizza Hut has a special right now where they will deliver a pizza with any toppings for only $10 (plus $2.50 delivery charge, tax and gratuity, so slightly less than $20). Breakfast the following morning will be free. So for around $75 we can spend the night in a hotel and enjoy swimming, free Internet, movies, and pizza. Now that sounds like a lot of fun to me because I like all of those things too, and I know this is something that she will love to do for her birthday. 

So, how do I budget in the fun stuff? I've checked my calendar twice now and figured out that I have four paychecks between now and her birthday. My plan is to skim off $20.00 from each check (which should be easily done now that I am back to work) and save them towards her birthday celebration. We did not take a vacation this past summer, which is unusual for us as we normally go to Illinois every summer. So, I think this will make a nice treat for both of us. A mini vacation for her birthday is also a mini vacation for me.

We will both have a great time and I can relax knowing that I planned ahead and saved up for this celebration and didn't put it on a credit card to have to worry about paying later.

How do you Budget in the Fun Stuff in your life?

Belinda

© Belinda Richardson and Frugal Workshop, 2012.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”