A new post.

So, I haven't updated my blog in quite some time.  I am blessed with a beautiful daughter that was born in February of this year so she is just over 7 months old.

Here is what I have discovered so far on the cost of having a child.

- Use cloth.  It virtually eliminates the ongoing expense of diapers and wipes.  Though there is a large initial upfront cost we used some of the money we got as gifts to lessen that cost.

-Shop consignment stores.  Name brand stuff at cheap prices.

-Don't buy too many clothes.  I have fallen for this one.  When you go to the store have in mind what you want and buy that.  Try not to get tricked by the other cute things.

-We got toys given to us as baby gifts and from people who's kids had outgrown them/had too many.  Really they don't need THAT many toys.

So far she has been fairly cheap, however, "they" tell me that this cost will go up slowly but surely.

Cleaning My Oven

So, this will be a bit of a different post than what I normally write.

I have been thinking recently about cleaning my oven with vinegar and baking soda which I have seen on several sites online.  When I thought about the cost of an oven cleaner, even a "green oven cleaner" I thought it couldn't do any harm to test out the vinegar and baking soda option.  Here is a before photo of my oven.  It is sprinkled with vinegar and baking soda in this photo.

 

And here is an after shot of my oven which as you can see is clean.  At least, clean enough for me.

So, how did I do it.

1. I put some plain white vinegar from my pantry in a spray bottle and sprayed the whole oven with it.
2. Then I took my box of baking soda sprinkled the whole oven with it.
3. I waited about half an hour.
4. I took my metal scrubbie to the oven and with a little bit of elbow grease ended up with the above.

If you choose to do this method to clean your oven, here are my tips.

• I took the oven door off after I had cleaned it to make cleaning the inside of the oven easy.  Your oven door should come off with a simple lift.
• Make sure that you get a good reaction out of the vinegar and baking soda before you wait the 30 minutes or so.  To me, this is key.  I did not do this and had to re-vinegar and baking soda parts of the oven.
• When you spray the vinegar you may end up breathing some of it in like I did.  Remember it is just vinegar.  However, you can use the old tissue over the mouth and nose method if breathing the vinegar bothers you.
• Also, the first time you turn your oven on you may get a slight smell from the cleaning like I did.  However, I reminded myself that it was just vinegar and baking soda.  I didn't use any nasty chemicals.

So, hopefully, now you will have a clean oven, even at nine months pregnant like I am.

Budget Categories

So, last time I promised a post on my budget categories.  Here they are with explanations if necessary.

Tithe (or Charitable Donations)
Mortgage (or Rent)
Power
Heat
Grocery
Telephone
House Maintenance
Car Maintenance (anything except gas)
Large Bills (Property Taxes, Vehicle Insurance, Professional Dues, etc.)  (This is actually a different savings account in my bank account so the money I put in there every month goes on this line.)
Car Gas
Truck Gas
Clothing
Restaurants and Entertainment
Pets
Christmas/Birthdays (This is gifts!)
Vacation/Unexpected Bills (This account operates similar to large bills.  I have also written a post about this account.)
Husband Spending (This category and the next are for lunches out on our own or fun stuff we buy for ourselves.)
Wife Spending
Husband Work (My husband goes away for work and gets reimbursed for meals at a set rate, so I track it to make sure that he is spending less than he gets like he thinks.)
RRSP (Monthly Contribution)
Misc (Everything that doesn't fit somewhere else and bank fees)
Pharmacy (Could be considered health care - eye glasses, prescriptions, etc.)
Kid

You can make up your own categories as applicable but those are mine.  The important thing is to be consistent about what you put in each category as some can overlap.  For ex, if I don't want to cook one night and we buy a frozen pizza from the corner store, then I consider that Restaurants and Entertainment but it could be considered groceries which is where I put that same pizza if I buy it during regular grocery shopping.  So, you just have to decide in your own mind where certain spending goes and be consistent about it.

New Year, New Goals

Happy New Year!  

So, obviously it's the start of a new year which means the start of a new budgeting year.  So, if you tracked your spending last year, now is the time to look at some yearly comparisons. (It doesn't matter if you didn't track your spending the whole year, just use what you have.).  

Some simple comparisons that I did are that I added up the actual spending in each category and the budget in each category.  Then I subtracted the two to find out how I did on a large basis at estimating my monthly spending in each category.  Next, I divided my actual spending by the number of months I tracked my spending (in my case 8).  This gives me a monthly spending total in each category.   These are then used to make the new budget, with revisions if there was unusual spending.  For example, we had cable for 6 months in 2011 but we cancelled it so I would take that out of my monthly budget for 2012.

BUT, before you make up your budget for 2012 the most important thing to do is sit down with your family (if you have one) and come up with what you want to do this year with your money (a yearly goals type thing).  For example, do you have debt you want to pay off, do you want to make a major purchase like a house or car, do you want to go on a holiday, how much do you want to spend on birthdays, how much do you want to spend on 2012 Christmas, etc.  You see there is no reason to make a budget to just track spending.  That is a whole lot of work for nothing.  If you make a budget to reach your monetary goals that otherwise seemed out of reach without going into debt, that is a whole different story.

Then write your budget and stick to it and see your goals, hopefully, come to pass.

Next time I'll write about some of the categories I have in my budget, if you are starting a new budget.

Laundry Detergent

So, I recently read in a Consumer Reports magazine that basically the powder detergent was just as good as liquid detergent. 

Recently I ran out of my liquid detergent (which I switched to a few years ago due to white detergent spots) and since the liquid was more expensive per load, I decided to give the powdered detergent a try again.  Well, it's been going well.  I think so far I have had one load with white detergent spots and I've probably done between 5-10 loads of laundry with it.

Pregnancy Spending to Date

So, I'm pretty sure that you all know that I am pregnant.  I have just over two months to go.  So, I thought I'd go through my budget book and add up all the spending so far on the kid for you.

The first thing we bought was for $3 at a garage sale for a nursing pillow.
$1 at a garage sale for a front baby carrier
$20 for a crib from friends that came with the mattress, some blankets, and a girly bedding set we aren't going to use
$274.38 for a jogging stroller/infant car seat combo and $136 for a starter set of 6 cloth diapers, a cloth diaper bag, and a girly outfit that we received a cheque from my husbands parents for.
$7.08 for nail clippers and disposable nursing pads
$13.48 for a pair of neutral cords and 3 boys tops from a consignment store.
$75 for prenatal classes

As gifts from my husbands parents we have also received some towels, blankets, bibs, etc. and my husbands change table and dresser from when he was a kid.

As gifts from my parents we have/will recieve the bedding set, rocker, baby bath tub, various clothes, play pen, etc.

On holidays this year for fun we purchased a towel and a nursery calendar.

So, that is most of our nursery items...  I feel like we most of the items we need but that we have spent very little on them.

Truck Insurance

In a prior post I wrote about how we were thinking of cancelling the insurance on our truck for the winter.  Well, we did it last week.   We got all our firewood in and no Christmas tree yet but we got about half the money back on the insurance so I'm sure we can figure out how to get a Christmas tree home some other way.  In addition to the insurance savings, I do not have to budget for about a tank of gas a month on the truck.

If we absolutely do need to use the truck, we will put temporary insurance on it but that should not cost the amount that we got back in insurance.