this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

My five-year-old recently announced that he wanted  money. I asked him why and he told me he wanted to have some in case he wanted to buy something. Nothing in particular, it seems he just wanted to prepared. He's had an allowance before, but for a variety of reasons, he isn't currently getting one. He said he wanted an allowance and, most likely encouraged by his younger brother's recent sticker chart for potty training, said that he wanted a chart where he'd get a sticker for each chore he did and then money for each sticker. I told him I'd talk to his dad about it after he was in bed. In other words, it wasn't happening.

I do think it's important that he learn that you need to work in order to get money, but I think that it's more important that he understand that there are things you do simply because you are part of a family. I don't want him to expect to be paid for every little thing. He did a nice job of proving my point on Friday. I asked him to do something for me and as he grudgingly headed up the stairs he called out "I'll get a sticker on my chart for this!" Um, no. You do not get a sticker for walking up the stairs to get your little brother's shoes!  There will be no sticker chore chart.

The other reason it just isn't happening is that after nearly six years of living with this kid, I know how he operates. Money's cool this week, but next week when I ask him to pick up his toys in the family room I'm sure I'd get the following response, "no, I don't want to, it's okay if I don't get my allowance". Yeah, but it's not okay for you to not pick up your toys!

He will get an allowance. It will just be a generic "because you help out and do what I ask" type of allowance where nothing is taken away and nothing is added. This will work for us. For us, allowance will just be a way for him to have money so he can learn how to manage it.

I've been trying really hard to stick really close to my budget numbers. It reminds me of when I was newly married and I'd see that I had $15 to spend for a week's worth of groceries because I had overspent in previous weeks. I'd look at it as a challenge and stretch that $15 as far as I could. Eventually I got to a point where the budget numbers were more of a guideline and not so much a rule.

This week's last shopping trip left me with $10.37 to spend (I had spent the rest at Costco earlier in the week). I was doing super great up until I hit the ketchup row. I could have kept it under $10.37, but the slightly larger and more economical (it was cheaper per ounce) bottle of ketchup was calling my name. In the end, I ended up fifty-three cents over budget - and it was all the ketchup's fault.

photo by Leonid Mamchenkov

Since I always swipe my plastic at the grocery store, it wasn't a big deal. The larger ketchup bottle makes sense, I mean we'll use it all in a timely manner and per ounce it was cheaper, so it was a justified fifty-three cents, right? But if I would have walked into that store with nothing else but $10.37, I couldn't have bought the larger ketchup bottle, or I would have had to give up something else on my list in exchange for the cost-effective ketchup.

How do you deal with trying to get the best deal while still staying within your budget?

For the past several months, I've wanted a Lego table for my boys. But I didn't want to spend money on one (that's certainly the story of my life). I remember my mom once making a Lego table by gluing on some Lego base plates onto a coffee table, so I decided that's the route I wanted to take. But when I saw this at Creating Random Things (via Knock Off Wood), I realized I could get my kids a Lego table without even spending a dime.

We've had this toy storage unit (it came from IKEA) for a few years. And now it is a toy storage unit/Lego table after I simply glued on a few Lego base plates to the top of it.

Not only did I get what I wanted for free, but I also didn't need to bring any more furniture into the house, so I didn't need to find space for something new.

Visit Emily at Remodeling This Life to see how she made her own ottoman slip cover.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

March Madness is upon us. You don't have to be a college basketball fan to know that it's tournament time. All over the country people have set up their brackets and joined pools. All over the country people are cursing because their brackets aren't looking so good (but at least they can take comfort in the fact that most people's brackets aren't looking so good!).  With two rounds down, a number one seeded team is out, a number two seeded team is out, and three number three seeds are gone. These are all teams that, for the most part, you can be certain will last through two rounds! But basketball game winners are unpredictable. Though it can be highly likely, you can't guarantee that one team will surely beat another.

Money is the same way. You can't count your chickens before they've hatched when it comes to money. You can't spend money that you currently don't have but are pretty sure that you will have soon. Things happen and it just might not come as you expect it to. Why is this such a hard lesson to learn? I know we've done it before. Sometimes it's worked out okay, but sometimes not so much. Flexibility is key when dealing with your finances because life doesn't always go "how it should".

photo by The D34n

I adore facebook. I love staying in touch with friends and family members that I don't see often. I love that it's allowed me to reconnect with old friends.

But it brings the term "keeping up with the Joneses" to a whole new level. Now, it's not just about the people in my immediate social circle, but also those people that I knew in elementary school that now live on the other side of the country. And for some reason, that makes it harder.

For me, the problem is not going out and buying things to ensure that I have the latest and greatest (thus "keeping up with the Joneses"), but rather that jealousy tends to rear it's ugly head.  There is a very odd link between how well I know someone and how much their behavior makes me turn completely green with envy. I tend not to be bugged by things when they happen to people I know well or have a lot of one on one contact with. But when someone that I only kind of know, or that I used to know posts on Facebook about her fabulous upcoming trip or her cool new outfit, well than I want it too!

 So far it's never actually had any adverse effects on my spending, but it often makes me wish we were doing "better" in the whole financial scheme of things.

I had a pleasant suprise last week when our Discover card bill came. It was the lowest it's been in over two years. We charge most of our purchases to this card (and then pay it off in full each month), so it's fair to say that our spending overall was quite low last month.


But can we do it again?  I feel like we bought what we needed to and didn't make any special extra efforts to not spend as much, so it's possible. But it's also the beginning of outdoor season which means we tend to spend a lot of money getting our backyard and garden in tip top condition. If we do keep up this pace of spending (thus saving the rest), it won't be long until our bank accounts look like they did before we bought our car, and that would be so great!

I often take my boys to Barnes & Noble so they can play at the train table in the children's section. I always do a bit of browsing through the books while I'm there (and don't normally buy anything), but my most recent trip was a little different. This last time I went specifically to look through a book that I didn't want to buy and only wanted to look through.

I'm currently working on getting my teaching certification up to date, and to do so I need to take one more test. I know that there's a more intensive study guide out there and I wanted to look through it, but not buy it. So I took found the book and then looked through it while the kids played with the trains. Going specifically to look at a book that I wasn't going to buy felt strange, much more so than just picking up a random book.

I know that bookstores encourage browsing to some extent - there's couches and chairs everywhere after all - but I think they usually prefer that you buy something. Any time I do need to buy some books (I just bought a bunch for birthday gifts for my son's friends), I seek out Barnes & Noble specifically because I like the fact that they offer that fabulous train table for the kids. And actually, I might have bought some books during this last trip (they had some that we really like on their buy 2 get 1 free shelf) if I would have had my wallet with me!

What are you thoughts on bookstore browsing?

I have plenty more of this blackout fabric, so I just may do this to a few more windows!

I'm adding this to DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land. Be sure to click through for more DIY projects.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

Selling a car is almost as hard as buying one!

I am happy to report that we did sell our jeep. It only took a little over a week, but it felt like much longer! At one point, someone offered us $2000 less than what we were asking before even seeing the car, and honestly that felt almost insulting. We felt as if we were offering a very fair price and wanted to stick to it as best we could. But that led us to start wondering what prices we would accept. We needed to balance out getting a good amount of money from it with the fact that we just needed to sell it rather quickly! We didn't want to pass up an offer only to have to hold on to it for several weeks and sell it for an equally low price because no one wanted it in the first place. On the flip side, I'm glad we didn't let it go for $2000 less than our asking price!

Selling a car (or anything for that matter) is simply supply and demand. You are supplying something that people just might not want!

Sometimes the solution to a problem is incredibly obvious, but that doesn't mean I can figure it out on my own! Recently my mother-in-law suggested that I purchase some blackout fabric from a fabric store and just sew it on the back of the curtains in the boys' room (apparently she didn't like my quick fix for keeping the light out, funny huh?). Why didn't I think of that?

When I first put the curtains up in this room, I bought a blackout panel to hang behind the curtains. I was not impressed with the amount of light blocked from the window, especially considering how much I had paid for them. So I returned them and never bought anything else.

My mother-in-law's solution was so easy, I just sewed the fabric right on the back, no hemming or anything because, well first off I'm lazy, and second I didn't think fraying was going to be a problem for the blackout fabric.

You can see the difference in how much light comes in when the fabric is sewn onto the back as opposed to when there is nothing.


It's also a very inexpensive option. Blackout fabric really isn't expensive to begin with and with this method I didn't need another curtain rod to accommodate another set of panels.

Come back next week to see the different method I used to put up the fabric in the baby's room!

I'm adding this to DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

The other day Bug (who's five) told me that we didn't have to worry about saving money since we already bought our new car. You see, he wanted this new car as much as my husband and I did, so anytime he wanted to do something that involved spending money, I'd throw out the "easy" reason and tell him that we needed to save money for our new car. It worked in all kinds of situations, when he wanted to stop for lunch after running errands, or if he was mad at me for walking to pick him up from school as opposed to driving (drive less means spending less money on gas, I'd tell him). I'd simply tell him we needed to save money for the new car and he'd accept it with no argument.

Now I need to come up with something new, or better yet, just explain to him that we don't always need to spend money on whatever he wants.

What do you say to your young children when they want to buy something that you aren't going to buy? Tell them you don't have enough money? Tell them you need to save your money? Explain that sometimes you buy things and sometimes you don't? Please share!