Now is the time to find next winter’s clothes. Right now! While I love Kohls, and Elderbeerman, for their high quality clothes that are decently priced. When it comes to clearance racks, I’ve learned that Sears and JCPenny’s have the best deals.

A friend and I went shopping last week and I found a couple cute items at JCPennys. Then we had all this fun stuff with our dishwasher quitting and needing to buy a new one. Hubby had the idea to try the Sears Outlet store in Huber because they have store models, and slightly damaged goods there for sale.

We found a dishwasher within our budget and I hope it’s a good one lol. But while hubby was taking care of getting the dishwasher I found the clothes racks. Really good prices to begin with, but then I found the clearance racks!

Outlet store prices plus clearance, plus department store brands equals a Big Fat Win for the deal seeking shopper in me!

I found one shirt (for night shirts), two sweaters and 2 3/4 sleeve sweaters. Add them to the nightshirt and fleece lounge pants I found the day before… I ended up with 7 items all for under $16!

So, if you don’t mind buying clothes a season ahead, hit the clearance racks at your local stores! I know Target still has some good deals as well. But we don’t have one real close to us.

Have you ever had that “aha!” moment where you realized that cheap doesn’t always mean second-hand?

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It’s easy to see a number larger than most of us see in our accounts at one time and think we deserve to go on that shopping spree and buy those shoes, or truck, or, well, just about anything we may have been drooling over in the past few months. And I’m not shooting down a few small purchases for fun. But what else could/should you do with your tax refund?

7 Things you could do with your Tax Refund:

1. Save. You should have enough funds laid by to get you through 3 months. Most of us don’t have even one month. But, if you take half of your refund and put it into a savings, suddenly you have a nice little emergency fund.

2. Credit Card bills. Interest rates on credit cards are well, crazy. But I’m sure you don’t have to be told that. If you have excess credit card debt. consider making one or even two payments from your tax refund.

3. Mortgage. If you have credit card debt, use your tax refund to make extra payments. But if you don’t (yay for you!) consider making an extra payment on your mortgage. We were told when we bought our house, that one extra payment a year would drop a 30 year loan to a 21 year loan! Obviously, that number will differ depending on your interest rate and amount borrowed.

4. A special fund. Long before I even knew who Ramsey was, I was “stashing” money, in envelopes! Now we have a separate account for our “fun” money, but that is what we use to do things like eating out, vacations, and even things like bowling or movies. You could put a small amount of your tax refund into a “fun fund”.

5. Big ticket items. This year, we had to put a good chunk of our refund into vehicle repairs. We both drive older vehicles with well over 100,000 miles and they needed some work done on them. Now was a great time to do it because we had the money. If you are needing to replace appliances or other household stuff, using your tax refund to do so, would save you having to pay off more credit card or store debts.

6. Charity. Now is a great time to give that additional bit of support to your favorite fund, or charity.

7. Treat. A very small amount of your tax refund could be used for treating yourself. Maybe a special date night with the love of your life. Or a family dinner at your favorite restaurant. or, those new shoes. Don’t go overboard, but sometimes a little treat can make you feel a lot better and help you focus on wisely spending or saving the rest of your tax refund.

We are called to be good stewards with all that we own. This of course refers to money as well. The most important thing is to be aware of your finances, don’t just let your tax refund go to your bank and mix with everything else. Pay attention, when your refund arrives, make sure you do something with it on purpose. Because if your don’t intentionally use your refund, you will unintentionally spend it, until once again, you have nothing left.

What do you and your family like to do with your tax refund?

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5 Great Ways to Save on Vacation:

1. Determine your priorities. Is it really important to stay in a 4 star hotel with all the amenities, or can you be happy in a smaller, slightly outdated but clean room?  We found a 2 star hotel that was rated excellent for it’s cleanliness and and the friendliness of the staff. Our room was small, but the bed was comfortable and housekeeping kept our room so nice and clean. This gave us a larger budget for activities.

2. Talk to the locals. The desk guy at our motel recommended the neatest state park to visit and it had a lovely beach. A crew member on a sailing ship we went on recommended the greatest restaurant where we stuffed ourselves with the best food ever, and didn’t pay any more than we would’ve normally.

3. Pack food. We took milk and cereal for breakfast and sandwich makings, chips, yogurt and fruits for lunches. We also took down our electric skillet and made supper once or twice. We ran out of food once and visited the grocery store. So if you are flying and cannot bring your own food, you could buy it later at a grocery store. By eating breakfast at the hotel and packing our lunches, we saved at least $30 a day. Giving us a larger budget to try new restaurants and new foods when we did eat out.

4. Coupons. Motels, travel centers and other places often have all sorts of flyers for different attractions. Many of these flyers have coupons. Better yet, we found two different booklets filled with coupons. So, we went through, pulled out everything that looked interesting and then did some online research, and compared different places and prices. We saved about $50 with those coupons.

5. Set a daily budget. Decide how much you have to spend throughout the course of your vacation on food and attractions. Then decide what your daily budget is, based on that.  It meant we didn’t get to do several things we wanted to, but we were also able to spend way less on some days and so for our last day we were able to go on a 6 hour cruise and do some really fun things.

Fun doesn’t have to cost a lot. Sometimes, just being together in a beautiful place is enough. Do you have any ways to save on vacation?

Sharing at The Purposeful Mom

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5 Easy Ways to Save Money.

1.  Consider getting rid of your home phone if you haven’t already. Hubby and I save about $30 a month by not having a home phone. Sometimes we need a fax machine and in that case we go to the library. Usually we can just scan in and email.

2.  Online bill pay. Postage is going up, again. The average family has 5-10 bills that need to be paid monthly. If you are mailing them you could be saving upwards of $7 a month by taking advantage of online bill pay. Your cellphone bill is the easiest, you can pay that by calling an automated number on your phone.

3. Get e-statements. Many banks and companies, offer onetime discounts if you choose e-statements. One bank we are with, actually charges for sending you a statement. At $2 a month for paper statements, it’s much cheaper to print them off yourself!

4.  Loyalty and rewards cards. I have a little stash of loyalty cards in my purse. My favorite would be the Speedway card. If you live close to Speedway, and don’t have a Speedy Rewards card, you are missing out. Before we went to KS we redeemed our points and got a $75 visa card to use for gas on the way out there!

5.  This last one is a little unique to us. Sure we track our purchases and can see where our money is going, but every month I would pull up the reports and consistently we saw one area where we spent way to much! That area was a dining. I’m not talking a date night or dinner out, I’m talking a little here and a little there. I would leave work and stop for a mocha, hubby would stop for a snack here and there. Just a little bit at a time, but it really added up!
So what did we do about it? Well, we each get an allowance! At the beginning of the month we get a certain amount that is ours for snacks, coffee and such. If we run out before the month is over, to bad. I think that alone helped us save $20 or more a month.

So those are the 5 easy ways to save money that we use each month. Do you have any easy ways to save money?

Sharing at The Purposeful Mom, Womanhood With Purpose, Consider the Lilies, Your Thriving Family, Seven Alive, Frugally Sustainable, Titus 2 Tuesday

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As a teen I remember how thrilled I was when I was given my first real spending money. I was 15 and mom started paying me a little each week for helping out around the house. (As the oldest of 6 in a farming, homeschooling family, you better believe I earned it!)  I was thrilled to have money to spend on myself. But I also knew that $10 wouldn’t last long.  So I found a nice tablet and I drew some columns in it. At the top of the page were these categories: Store. Item. Spent. Using that little method I meticulously tracked every single penny I spent. Woe was me when that ledger was a few cents off!

Sometime within that next year, my mother realized what I was doing and offered me a computer program. Quicken. Set up to help you track all of your personal finances.

To this day, I still use this program. We don’t have a real budget in place, although we probably should and could benefit from it. Today, I thought I would share with you how simple it is to track your spending and saving.

How I Track My Spending ~ A Keeping of Accounts

Quicken software is the program I have used for years and it is very simple to learn.  You can connect it to all of your online accounts. However I do not recommend this, because if someone gets that password, they now have your virtual wallet. I keep my program offline and backed up. As should you with any program you use.

Here is my main page in Quicken.

In the left hand column, you can list your accounts. I actually list our credit card as a debit card, that way it shows negative numbers. You can add any other debt accounts you wish under the property and debt, as well as any investments. I do not have any of those listed because my main purpose is to track my every day spending. In the center is the Projected Cash Flow. This section pulls together all my bills, paychecks and transfers.  You can see what’s supposed to come in, and go out, and you can see what’s left. Can you save extra this month or do you need to tighten your belt?

At the bottom is a list of your scheduled bills and deposits. These can take a little time to set up, but then it’s a very simple matter to enter them into your register when you’ve made a payment.  I also have scheduled transfers listed there. Transfer to savings, transfer (payment) to credit card, and stuff like that.

Each account has this register.

  The date of each transaction is listed as well as who you paid/received payment from, a memo. And most importantly below each payee is listed a category. The categories show you where your money is going. My categories include: Gifts, Clothing, Household, Home Repairs, Crafting, Groceries, Dining and, well you get the idea.

  Why are the categories important to me? Because of this little number here.

   This pie chart shows me where my money is going. I can exclude certain accounts if I wish or include them all. I can also track my spending and saving side by side. The grey area includes the remaining categories that couldn’t all be fit on, and I can click on it to see them.

  So when I go through my finances at the end of the month, I can see how much we spent, where, and what we spent it on.   It takes about 20 minutes each week to enter all our receipts into the registers, but it’s so nice to pull it up and see where we are saving and where we could be saving. Now, to cut back on eating out….. lol

  I know you can still buy this program at any office store. I’m not sure of the going rate though. I paid $50 for mine 5 years ago. Most likely it will be set up a little different as well.  Regardless of what program you use, having a way to track the money that flows through your hands is very important. We are called to be good stewards after all.

Well, what do you know? They still carry the old version! Now I wonder if the new version is much different.

This is not a sponsored post, nor did I receive any compensation for it. However there is an affiliate link listed.

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4 Ways to Eat Healthy and Cheap

Everyone knows it’s important to eat right, but the costs of doing so can be daunting. But never fear: Eating well doesn’t have to break the budget! Follow these four tips and work your way to financial and physical health.

1. Get a Rice Cooker

Although packaged foods have an appeal because they are easily microwaved or heated up, they can be expensive to eat every day for months at a time. A rice cooker can be purchased for less than $50 and used for years, and cooking your own rice costs much less than buying prepared rice from a deli or boxed instant rice. Not to mention that stir-fries are one of the best recipes out there, providing a perfect receptacle for all the food in your fridge that’s about to go bad. You can even start replacing your bread consumption with an equally filling, but much less expensive, carbohydrate. The average family spends $100 per month on bread; they could get that cost down by over 90% if they switched to cooking their own rice.

2. Make Coffee at Home or Quit Drinking It

Another do-it-yourself savings strategy is to make your own coffee. Though this process may seem like a pain to some people (especially in the morning), it can also result in significant savings over time because of the high cost of coffee from retail outlets. Specialty coffee drinks – the ones that have extra fixings or require more time to make – are typically the most expensive.  Some people drink coffee brewed at home from bags of ground beans purchased from grocery stores and coffee beverages from shops, which means they might save $800 a year. Over just five years, that expenditure adds up to $4,000 and over ten years it is $8,000. Drinking coffee also may not be healthy, because it can elevate cortisol levels and when they are elevated for long periods there can be detrimental effects such as high blood pressure, stress, and weakening of bones.

3. Reduce or Quit Alcohol Consumption

The federal government has an online drink cost calculator that offers a sobering truth: If a person had two drinks five times a week at a cost of $3 per drink, he or she would spend about $1,560 a year. Over five years that total would be over $7,500. Consider if that same amount was invested and could yield a five percent return for ten years, the return on investment would be about $11,500. When we waste our money and don’t invest it in ways that have growth potential, we are throwing away opportunities to reap financial benefits. This wasting is known as opportunity cost.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, about half of American adults are regular drinkers. Though alcohol consumption is not unhealthy if done in a controlled way, it can also lead to addiction. Alcohol consumption can also be related to weight gain because some beverages are high in calories and can increase the appetite for food.

4. Stop or Reduce Consuming Meat

A common belief about eating meat is that it is essential for protein and iron intake. There are many plant-based sources of protein and iron, however, from soy to nuts to eggs. Another false belief about meat is that it is cheaper than plant-based diets. This might be true if you’re looking at high-end, gourmet vegetarian options, but a quick look at the meat section in your grocery store will show that most often, meat is far more expensive. Simply compare the cost of one pound of steak (about $6) to that of one pound of lentils (about $1.50) – and keep in mind that a pound of lentils can provide for far more meals. Eating red meat has been linked by research studies to greater risk of heart disease, cancer and even death. So, like eating junk food, there can be long-term health damage from eating red meat frequently. If becoming a vegetarian or vegan is unacceptable, at least consider quitting red meat and focusing on chicken, turkey, fish and more fruits and vegetables.

This article comes to you from NerdWallet.com, a quantitatively oriented, analysis-driven decision website.

Thank you Anisha! Your advice is great. And to you my readers, how do you find ways to eat healthy and cheap?

Sharing this here: Adorned from Above, We are That Family, A Wise Woman Builds.

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