Back to Reality

 It's a new year and as I promised I'm more determined than ever to get my budget under control. We are attending Financial Peace University once a week for 13 weeks. We started this last Wednesday. We were just getting started and the power went out! LOL So we went around the room and told who we were, why we were there and what he hoped to learn from this. It was a good time with good people. I'm looking forward to next week. We are assigned homework each week to do during the week. It consists of some reading and this week we had to put down on paper a mini budget. This made me sick and I've been thinking maybe I should get a job at night so that I can be home when my children are, do homework and prepare them a healthy dinner meal. The husband hates this idea so we shall see how this month goes. 

 I ordered our AFM's boxes this month and a fruit and veggie box. I get a recipe menu from menus4moms. For a very small fee they give you two weeks of dinner menus that use your AFM box and a few extra recipes as well. A regular main box is $30 and the fruit and veggie box is $21. You cannot purchase all of that food in the grocery store for the cost that AFM charges. Their website says you can feed a family of four for a week/box. I've had better luck and been able to feed my family almost all month on two main boxes and a fruit and veggie box. Now I do have to buy a few extras for the dinner meals and stuff for the children's lunch everyday. I'll have a better idea of my grocery budget after this month. 

 Our first major step for this month (after writing out a budget) is to save $1,000 for a rainy day and put it in a savings account. We are working on that now. Our goal is to be close to credit card debt free by December 2009.  That will take a lot of frugal living to make it happen. Maybe it's unrealistic and it may change as we get further along through this course. It's a goal and that's a step in the right direction. 

 We are also trying to bundle up our t.v. internet and directv. We want to go with Verizon since FIOS is now available here but I want to keep our directv since we have dvr's with them. I may end up giving it up if the deal isn't worth it. Anyone else doing a bundle with Verizon? This is just one of the ways we are looking into to save a little extra cash each month. 

 Friday I had my second spinal injection. I spent most of the weekend on bedrest and am feeling much better today. I really hope to get quite a bit of relief now that both sides have had the injection. I see my spine specialist on the 30th of this month to re-evaluate. I plan to be riding my bike with the kids by midweek and trying out my Jillian Michaels Wii Fit game by the end of the week. I hope everyone has a great week!