quick and easy ideas for desserts

I'm attending a potluck tomorrow and have posted some ideas on quick  and cheap desserts on my other blog ohsweetserenity.

How I try to live frugally

I am pretty frugal for the most part. I hate to buy things without a coupon. If I don't have a coupon, it better be on sale. When it's on sale, I like to stock up, and if I have a coupon for it, it's even better.

Clothing
The best time I like to shop for clothing is right now. A few days before Thanksgiving and the weeks leading to new years. I know buying things second hand will save you even more. But, it's something I'm not ready to try yet. So, I'll buy clothing, shoes and bags online when it's on super sale and with free shipping.
I got this Tory Burch bag for $266 after tax, originally $435 from Bloomingdales.

It was on sale and on top of that they were having 20% off  on selected items. I used my Discover card and got back $24.5, this offsets the tax of $23.14. When you go through Discover's link to shop at Bloomingdales, you get 10% back. It's up from the usual 5% because of the holidays.


Housing 
I'm fortunate that my parents have as big enough house for all my siblings and our spouses to live in.  This allows us to save money to eventually buy our own home. The few hundred dollars that we paid in rent to my parents would have just gotten us a room if we rent else where. We get a master bed room with the bathroom and a walk-in closet, our own little kitchen and a room for storage. It's good enough for us.  With our income, we can go out and get our "own little place." But, the amount we have to pay in rent is going to cost about $1200-$1400. No thanks!

Eating out 
You can have a nice meal with coupons. My favorite chain restaurant, Elephant Bar, has coupons. I love Souplantation, they also have coupons. Black Angus has a really nice coupon for a full meal for $40. It has one appetizer, 2 entree and a dessert. The appetizer includes their sampler, it's huge. We often go with my brother and his girlfriend and we just share that deal. It's $40 for 4 people, not bad right?
Who says you have to eat a meal when you go out? Go have a coffee or just desserts. In Southern California, there are so many boba places. You can get a drink with a basket of sweet potatoes fries for about $8.  We get our cravings satisfied and we didn't break bank. To save even more, go to discount gift card sites to buy gift cards for your favorite restaurant. Most restaurant gift cards are at least 10% off. My favorite site to search for gift cards is giftcardgranny.com. Don't forget, there is always happy hours!

The sampler from Black Angus. 

Cleaning
My husband uses a re-washable mop to clean our bedroom floor, it's hard wood. I use Swifter Sweeper to clean the kitchen tiles. I know he's the more environmental one here. But the Swifter Sweeper is so convenient. I, of course, will only buy the refills when it's on sale or with a coupon.
When it comes to washing dishes, I like to put the dirty dishes in one side of the sink and move it to another as I scrub them. Then, I rinse with the water running over the scrubs dishes so I would use less water

That's all for now.... let me know how you save or try to live frugally.

Couponing at Target

I had a good shopping trip at Target. Since the holidays are coming, many food items are going on sale.
Today I picked up some stables. All these items in the picture came to a total of $45 but I only paid $26.
This a mixture of combing sales with a coupon, manufacturer's coupons with the store coupons and BOGO coupons. The only thing I didn't have a coupon for was the toothpaste, but that was on sale for $2.50. I downloaded the Cartwheel app and that saved me a little bit of money too.

Crisco-$3 got $1 off target coupon- I don't see it on their website anymore.
Beneful dog snacks- BOGO coupon 11/17 Smartsource, if you don't subscribe to a sunday paper then just go to Coupons.com, although they don't have a BOGO offer, but there are other coupons which can still save you some money .
Market Pantry pasta- On sale for $1/each, had Target coupon for $1 off of three pastas.
Ragu pasta sauce- Regular price for $1.67 but the 11/17 Smartsouce had coupon for buy two get one cheese sauce free.
Gevalia coffee- I love their coffee,  on clearance for $6.48 had printable for $1.50/1.
Market Pantry cheese- on sale for $2/each. target coupon for $1.25/3. We eat a lot of cheese.
Market Pantry pasta sauce- on sale for $1/each. I had a Target coupon for $1/2.
Coffee-mate liquid creamers-found a great coupon idea here. Basically, I used a Target coupon for $1/3 and 3 $1 off manufacturer's coupon.

How much grocery $14.50 buys

So I live in Southern California. We don't get our coupons doubled and sometimes, I don't think we get any decent coupons.  So extreme couponing will not happen here. I guess that's what we have to trade off for the abundance of sunny days.
I frequent Fresh and Easy for my groceries. I love the store, but they don't accept manufacturer's coupons. Once in a while, they'll give me these "made for me coupons" for things I buy the most. Yes, I know, they keep a data on me. And weekly,, they'll have store coupons for $5/25 or $10/50, which helps if I match it up with the store sales.
Here is what I got with $14.50 yesterday. Got two bags of squash for 62 cents each because it reached the sell by date. The quality is still good.

I have store coupons for the butter-60 cents/one and peppers- 30 cents/one
The tomatoes, peppers and onions are part of their 98cent everyday deals.
 The 18 count large eggs were 2/$5, Ralph's has it for $3.19 on the 18 counts. So, I think i'm getting a pretty good deal.
Overall, this is a pretty good deal for me.

How I budget

The only way you can save money is to live below your means. If you find yourself coming out short every month then you really need to write everything down and evaluate where you can cut back.

I'm still working on my budget, but I have most of everything down.
I start with my income, this is money that comes in. I have a house that I'm renting out, so I make a little bit of money from it.

Income

Work

Rental

Then I make a list of the fix expenses. IRA is in the because it automatically takes the money from my bank account and to me anything that leaves my checking counts as a expense, but that's just me.

Fixed

Rent

IRA

Phone Bill

Life Insurance

Fix-Variable. These are the areas that I need to spend money on every month, but the amount varies a bit month to month. Phone bill appears here too because I have the T-mobile $30/month unlimited internet and text with 100 minute plan. This is for those times when I go over those 100 mins.

Fix-Variable

Gas

food

Phone bill

dog

household

Variable- this is the area where you can absolutely cut off if you need to save money. If you have money left over after paying your bills and making allocations to your savings, have a little budget for fun. 

Variable

entertainment

Clothes

eating out

Annual expenses- Don't forget about this, I list my annual expenses and divided into 12, then save that amount into an account every month under Misc expenses. 

Annual expense

car Insurance

Car registration

AAA

Savings- If you don't have 6-8 months of living expenses then you need to cut off some expenses to save as quickly as possible for emergences. You see the account for Aunt? I took a personal loan from my aunt when I bought the house. I'm planning to save up and pay her back annually with a chunk of money

Mandatory saving

Emergency

vacation

misc

aunt

Gifts

House and Baby

I believe debt is a burden. I don't like to owe money (mortgage doesn't count).  I carried a balance with Discover Card(best credit card ever) for the past 5 years. But, do as I say, not as I do. The only reason I can afford to carry a balance was because I keep asking for 0% interest on my balance.  I don't ever recommend carrying a balance. 

This is the budget that works for me. I hope this gives you an idea how to set it up. 

Last night's dinner

We've been eating a lot of pasta. What can I say, it's really yummy. But to make up for the guilt I have for eating so much carbs, I eat a lot of veggies with it. 

Pasta Sauce: 

1 cup of beef, half of an onion ( thinly sliced) and about 1 cup of sliced mushrooms. Brown the meat with garlic then add the onions and mushrooms. Once cooked, add a can of cream of mushroom and one jar of your favorite Alfredo sauce. Let it simmer for a few mins, stir occasionally. 

Veggies: Pea sprouts, husband loves it. Asparagus, it was only sale, 2/$4 and I had a coupon for 50 cents off of one. 

Reasons why I'm keeping my old car

My parents were so generous as to give me a new car for my 21st birthday. It was just a normal Camry sedan. They were happy to be able to give me such a grand gift, and I was grateful. After the wedding, I felt like I needed a fresh start with a new car. My husband is obsess with Subarus and got me to want one. He sold his 2011Honda Civic and got a 2009 Subaru Outback and he couldn't be happier. However, after doing our budget and finding out how much we needed to save for our goals, it was just not possible.

 My Camry is hitting 100k miles soon. What a milestone! I had a few things changed, timing belts, water pump, axle, etc. I still need to work on the steering column, but it'll drive well for another few months. There is no reason for me get a new car, except for wanting to keep up with the Joneses. Yes, I admit, that's not being frugal. 

Camrys are known for their reliability and longevity. It's driving very well. I save a lot of money, too. My registration is coming due and it's only $112. My comprehensive insurance is the cheapest that I can get (yup, I shopped around). I don't need premium gas. 

 So I've decided to keep this car looking at new as possible, and will drive it for a few more years... who knows maybe even hit another 100k on it. 

P.S. it feels so good to not have a monthly car payment. 

$25 a week grocery challenge

When I first started my doing my research on how frugal people live, I noticed there is a common theme. They all started by shaving off their grocery bill. Last week, I suggested to my husband that we should try to keep our grocery budget under $25 a week. He  readily agreed. Of course this challenge is for food that we're going to eat for that week, it doesn't include spices or oil that we need to cook with. With just $25, it limits the food we can buy, so junk food is the first to go. It was pretty easy for us the first week, because we had food in the freezer and our pantry. It's a great way to get rid of the foods you've been stocking up because you're not buying much new foods. When my freezer begins to empty, I found a few bags of ground beef in sandwich size zip lock bags ( I totally forgot I even had them).
A lot of creativity is required when you're saving money. One of them is on how to stretch one food. For example, I bought a two pound package of beef, that goes to make dumplings (chop and dice vegetables and mix it with your meat), tacos (use black bean and you'll use less meat) and spaghetti sauce. Meat is often more expensive than vegetables, so use them sparingly. My spaghetti sauce is pretty healthy. I use vegetables to fill up the thin jar of Ragu, Prego or what store brand sauce I happen to have.
A few of these items always ends up in my sauce: mushrooms, celery, pepper, onions, diced squash, zucchini, and even spinach and black beans.  My trick to a good sauce is to add a bit of sugar (about 1/2 tablespoons) to off set the tartness of the sauce.

The pepper, onion and mushrooms and cheese that go in to your spaghetti can go into the quesadilla for your next meal. 

Husband said it was really good. 

Budgeting is not hard, all it takes is some planning and you'll be on your way to saving. 

Anyways, we both feels so much healthier because we cut off junk food. We're feeling great knowing we're saving money and not wasting food. The best part of this is that we're doing this as a team. Isn't that what marriage is all about?

Budgeting

Budgeting is no fun. It means you have to watch out for  your spending and making sure you don't go over.  Start slow, I find that when I do an extreme budget I get depressed for going over my limit and deprived because I couldn't do or buy what I want to. How I make it fun is to make it a challenge. For example, challenge your self to see how fast you can save an emergency fund of $5000. When you want to achieve a goal as fast as you can, you'll find creative ways to get there. A challenge makes things exciting.
The husband and I just started a $25 a week grocery challenge.  Basically, we can only spend $25 on grocery a week. This way, we use up all the foods I've stocked up ( from couponing days)  and also find creative ways to make different meals out of one food. I bought a 2 LB package of ground beef (on sale for $5); I can use it for my dumpling, spaghetti sauce and tacos ( which I'll have tonight). By not spending the usual $50 a week on grocery, the left over $25 can go into our emergency fund. If we keep it up for 1 month, we'll have $100 extra.

Just opened a Roth IRA

I was looking at my stock portfolio (doesn't that make me sound rich? It really isn't much, a laughable amount) and is not happy. I was zealous about investing in penny stocks  a few months ago but did not do my research and now everything is in the red ( except for two long term stocks). I have a few hundred dollars in cash, I was contemplating what to do with it. Putting them in an Roth IRA was considered, however, I was still looking for the next hot stock to invest. Months has passed and knowing myself, I'm just too lazy to do my research for new stocks, so I'm putting them into the  Roth IRA account that I opened with the same brokerage.

I encourage young 20 somethings to start thinking about their retirement. Most of them don't know that they have the gift of time on their hands. Time is money!Most of them choose to wait and that really bugs me.
I choose Roth because I already have a 401K and a traditional IRA. Both of these accounts help me with taxes since I don't have any children.
The Roth IRA is for tax free income in the future. I believe that putting this money away for retirement is the wisest choice, because some professionals said that one's retirement account should be the same as their annual salary at age 35. I did the math and I would be no where close to the number in 6 years( unless I get some super awesome returns). But, I'm trying.

Helpful Link for ROTH IRA
For any one who is unfamiliar, confused, or scared about retirement plans and investing, talk to a professional.

saving money on manicures

I  LOVE gel manicures, they lasts forever and considering the chores that I have to do, normal manicures chip after the first day. But, gel manicures comes with a price. At my new favorite place, it was $18 for single color and if you want to add another color, it's $3 extra. That's $21, plus another $4 tip to make it a nice $25. My gel manicures usually lasts me 3 weeks.  For a year's worth of manicures, that's about $433. Wow, numbers do at up. I actually don't enjoy spending at least an hour at the salon, having nicely manicured hands is what I'm addicted to. I find it soothing to have my cuticles and the dry skin around my nails clipped off. For some reason, it makes my fingers feel lighter.

I'm know a lot of ways to be frugal, most of the times, I just lack the discipline. I've been spending a lot of money on new clothes. I don't feel so bad because I do shop on the clearance tab (online, I hate brick and mortar shopping) with additional discounts off and free shipping of course. So, for the price of one shirt, I get 3. But, that's still money out of my wallet and my over all saving abilities.

So, to make up for spending money on new clothes. I decided to do my own nails and save $25 this time. It's just regular nail polish, so I probably have to redo it more often. It won't cost me any money, just time. Well, that's not all true. I picked up a bottle of Essie a few weeks ago at TJ Maxx on sale for $4.99. It's not a deep discount. There are many nail supplier stores that sell to the public and one that I used to go to sells it for $3.75. Another way to save money without coupons.

The colors: Essie-Tour de France.
SallyGirl Brand- gold flakes

This trend is pretty popular, I love it.

I got this gel manicure, lasted a little over 2 weeks. 

over baked

Just when I thought we can finally settle down and save money now that the wedding is over, boy, was I wrong.We were so excited now that we have  no more wedding stuff to pay for, and we are start anew with no credit card debts ( I've been carrying a balance for 4 years, well get into that on a later date). We bought a bed from Ikea for a little under $500, it has four drawers for storage, so we thought it was worth the money. It felt sturdy so we expect it to last. The next thing to buy is a mattress to go with it. However, were going sleep on old mattress a little long, because this happened.

Yup!  The oven is broken. It's a free standing range; I can still use the stove top. 

If you're wondering, yes, it's covered with foil. It's a little hack, if you will. I'm just too lazy to clean it everyday. This way, I can skip the cleaning to every week or two. I had the control panel covered, too. But, when I turn the oven on, it gets too hot and it burns off the clear cover (Saran wrap), that's why it has stains. A bit embarrassing to show. 

I actually have another blog for my baking and cooking, I guess that'll go on hold.
I've never really shopped for an oven before. So, I'm not sure what to look for.  I'm going with my guts and users review and is thinking about this Whirlpool 30 in. Freestanding Gas Range w/ AccuBake® Management System - Metallic. It's on sale at Sears for $630 and the review are great.

It's also black so the stains won't be that apparent, not that I'm going to let it stain. This is going to be the second major purchase we bought together. The first was the bed. Living in my parents house, I never had ot paid for anything like this. Even the T.V. in our room was a gift from my dad. I guess this is the responsibility comes with being a grown up.

Money buster, but totally worth it

I know when you plan to save money you should cut out the unnecessary things like eating out, don't buy things you don't need. But this weekend, we got something that I wasn't planning on getting until my future kids are toddlers. When my husband mentioned that he missed having a dog,  I couldn't stop looking for it and guess what? this weekend we bring home this little buster.

I found him on Craigslist, the owner gave him to us for $20 bucks. He's already 3 months old, and has not visit the vet. Therefore, no shots and is not neutered. He's going to cost us $350 just for the shots and neutering. His ongoing cost is going to lower our saving abilities, but we love him already, so it's worth it. 

He's adorable. He's still trying to get use to his new surroundings and family members. 

On another note. I've moved some money around, my current balance on my emergency account is $1100. :) 

let's begin

I've been married for a little over a month now, and my husband and I have been together for about 9 years. We're 28 and 29. He'll be 30 this month. Although, we've dated for a long time, we never really set our finances together. We opened a joined account with his credit union but found it to be very inconvenient, as credit unions are very much restricted with ATM access and I don't want to carry another bank card in my wallet. I initially thought their interest rates on savings would be higher, but it's no better than a regular bank.

The reason I want to start a blog is to document the progress of the goals we have for ourselves. I've try various ways to save money, extreme couponing, strict budgeting, and even growing a home garden to offset food costs.

Coupons are great, but it must be used with caution. Every rookie gets carried away in the beginning and  ends up with boxes and boxes of pastas and enough shampoo to last 5 years. My brother has this saying "going broke trying to save money."

I tried limiting my spending by putting a dollar limit to everything like, groceries, eating out and clothing. I sometimes feel deprived when I see that I've already used up our eating out budget at the beginning of the month. I do realize I'm very blessed. I have a stable job, a place to live with cheap rent (living at home, thanks Mom and Dad).

I try to live a healthy lifestyle.  But fresh fruits and vegetable is very expensive. An 8oz of cherry tomatoes for my bruschetta is $2.  So what do I do? I watch videos posted by people who grow their own vegetables to save money. I never thought I'd be one to garden, I can't stand dirt and seeing an earth worm will send me running.  I start small and grew a container garden instead, no worms! I had so much tomatoes. I didn't have to buy it from the stores for 2 months during the summer :)

Here are some of our major financial goals, all of which we're starting from $0:

Emergency fund:$10k, that's $5k each
house down payment in the next 3-5 years:  $60k
baby:$10k savings before having a baby.
personal loan: $26,500 from when I purchase a home this year