I can’t remember the last time I posted, it has been super busy. I have been working and going to school and taking care of my family.  WOW, I need a vacation.  LOL!!  In my free time I do look online for places in Arizona, I am trying to get everything in order.  Even though I would like to buy a home, I have been looking for homes for rent by owner.

Really I am open to anything.  Whatever will work out best for our financial situation at the time.

Tony took the day off because we had to go to court.  Some stupid financial situation.  Our court time was at 1pm, we didn’t get out until 3pm.  The court hearing was to just see if we agreed to the amount we were  being “sued” for.  If were denied the claim then a trial date would be set.  We would have to provide or explain why we don’t think that we owe the amount we  do.  Then we would go to trial, we would say our side, the plantiff’s attorney would say their side and then the judge would rule.  We are totally hoping that this ends on a happy note.  Tony was a ball of nerves today and  I can only imagine how our next court appearance will be.  I just want it to be over.

A few weeks ago I had posted about how cool I thought the Amazon.com subscribe and save was but now I think it sucks!  I subscribed to liquid laundry detergent, coffee, and packing tape.  I thought it was awesome, the prices were really great.  I mean the coffee alone was $14 something for four canisters of coffee.  That would last us a month and each canister was only about $3.50 which is substantially less than in the store.  I didn’t save a ton on the fabric softener and tape but the convenience of having it delivered every month seemed worth it.

All is well, first delivery and payment went through great.  Then the second month was about to be billed and shipped and I noticed the prices  were not the same.  The tape was the same and the fabric softener was different by about twenty cents but the coffee was about $10 for the whole month.  Now the average canister would have been about the same as in the store so the convenience still may have been worth it but after I talked to a c/s rep at Amazon I decided I just can’t continue the subscribe and save.  The rep said that the subscribe and save does not guarantee or set the price, it only has the convenience of shipping  monthly on a certain date.  She said the prices will fluctuate with the individual stores prices.  So basically the price could go  up as high as it wants and I won’t get any warning and just be billed for whatever.  I don’t like that idea at all.  I thought every single month I would be billed that same amount and shipped the product.  No such luck!!

I was not happy because the products I was trying to have on subscription and mailed monthly were the items I buy at Walmart.  It seems whenever I go to Walmart for those products I come home with more stuff than I wanted or needed.  I was trying to eliminate the Walmart trip.  Might save me some money.  So even though the coffee and all the other products I had billed were less or equal to the price in the store and I would save on gas driving to the store, it was just the whole idea that they could bill me whatever without telling me first that turned me off to the whole idea.

So now I will need to figure out a way to go to Walmart once a month, buy just what is needed and that’s it.  Once a month trip to Walmart might eliminate the unnecessary shopping and spending.  Let’s cross our fingers it works.  LOL!!

I mentioned in an earlier post (well maybe a week or so ago) that we ran in to some financial issues and we will need a little extra money next month.  It might end up setting us back a little bit and I don’t want that to happen.  Tony and I are pretty determined to move next summer.  Well because of this financial inconvenience I decided maybe I needed to work a part time job somewhere.  I applied at the local animal shelter.  Actually a couple weeks ago I applied for an office assistant job which I unfortunately did not get and now they have a sign for P/T work for a kennel attendant.  I am assuming to walk the dogs, clean the cages and play with the animals.  I can certainly do that.  I clean poop all day long.  LOL!  Between my kids, my dog, and my cat I am fully qualified.  LOL!  Well if that doesn’t pan out I also applied at the college under the work-study program.  I was told the testing center needed someone.  I haven’t heard back yet but the lady I spoke to the other day say the work-study people go on vacation until the 24th of June, so hopefully (crossed fingers) I hear back then.  I could really use some extra income.

I will probably dedicate all the money I make to get the financial issue paid off.  I won’t worry about having any money taken out for insurance or any savings plans.  Not that I think I will qualify, P/T workers might not be offered those.  I also will not worry about needing any term life insurance quotes.   I think Tony may have some sort of coverage with his work.  I know for certain he has a 401k but I am not sure what other benefits come with being a full time managerial employee.  I am not really worried about that though because he won’t be working there much longer.  Well when I say that I mean sometime next summer.  When I finish in the summer we will be moving across the country.  YAY US!!!  LOL!!!

Our auto insurance is up in the next 2 months and I am not sure if I should look for cheaper insurance.  Our insurance company has been really good to us, no problems, our monthly payments are deducted every month so we have no payment issues.

May I could just get some car insurance rates to see if I could find anything else.  We are really trying to save money to buy a house and I am willing to cut costs wherever I can.  I am not sure we would ever need top of the line insurance.  I guess we will just look in to it and see. 

So the other day was college day at Costco, students of Lord Fairfax Community College could go to Costco and get a discount and coupons.  Well not knowing what types of benefits those would be I hauled the 3 kids down there to check it out.

So a normal membership is $50 which isn’t bad, we knew we would save that shopping there so it was all good.  But if we bought that membership, we would get a $10 gift card to their store.  Anywhere we can save is good.  So we decided to go with it.

Now the customer service rep that was helping me tried to sell us the VIP Executive Membership (I think that was what it was called).  Now I think it is an amazing benefit but I just don’t think, at lease this first year, we will spend an abundance of money there.  Basically the membership costs $100 and you can earn 2% back on all purchases except gas and cigarettes.  So we would need to spend between $200-$300 a month.  Not to difficult with a family of 6 but we realized that we also discount shop at Martin’s (our local grocery store), Walmart and Aldi.  Oh also as a student we would have gotten a $20 gift card instead of $10.  Well we decided to just get the regular membership and pay $50.

Speaking of Martin’s they rock too.  When you use your reward card or I think they call it the “bonus card” you can earn gas points.  For every 100 points you can save $0.10 on gas.  Now with gas as expensive as it is, that is superb.  I think when we went on vacation to Illinois (we drove)we filled up on our way out of town and because of all the points, we only paid like $0.80 a gallon.  Yeah that’s right, $0.80, crazy huh?

So overall I am hoping this will help us out.  Maybe in a year or two when we make a little more and our kids start eating more we will shop at Costco more often but for now every penny counts.  :-)

Money is never something I want to stress about but some months I do.  Some months are more difficult than others.  I really wish I could win the lotto and take all my worries away.

I LOVE staying home with my kids I wouldn’t change that for the world but sometimes I wish I could find some local jobs that I could do and make it worth going to work a couple days a week.  I just think with Tony working full time, both of us in school full time and trying to spend as much time with the kids and each other as possible, doesn’t seem to leave much time for anything else.  Just a little extra money a month would be so helpful!  My craft venture is taking off a bit slower than I wanted but it is moving in the right direction.  Maybe a few more months and I might actually be able to make money selling the craft supplies.

I guess until any great changes like that can be made I will just have to be patient and do what I can every month.