Create a Regular Monthly Budget

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’m working my way through Tsh Oxenrider’s ebook One Bite At A Time, tackling each project in order. All previous projects can be found here.

Project 28, Create a Regular Monthly Budget, is one of my favorite sorts of projects from the book, because it’s something I already do. That’s right, it’s a super-easy week for me!

I am a Quicken fanatic. I have records going back to when I first graduated from college. I can see just how little I earned at my various jobs. I can see how much I spent on books, or meals out, or groceries, or …

Yes, I am a budget nerd, but it makes me happy.

I don’t actually budget in Quicken, although they claim to have that capability. I never liked their setup for working with sinking funds, and I use sinking funds extensively.

For true budgeting purposes, I use an Excel spreadsheet that I based on a template I found online. I have since modified it quite a bit, but it is my (money-related) brain on paper in the computer.

Our budget has lots of line-items, but I prefer it that way. Most lines I use as sinking funds, allowing money to stockpile until we need it for that purchase. For example, our home maintenance fund. I put aside a certain amount of money every month that is allocated towards home repairs and maintenance. Most months we don’t spend any of it, but some months we spend a lot of it. The spreadsheet lets me keep track of how much we have available for every budget line without me having to have separate baking accounts for every budget item.

Do you have a monthly budget? Do you follow it?

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Filed Under: Finances, One Bite

Streamline Your Email

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’m working my way through Tsh Oxenrider’s ebook One Bite At A Time, tackling each project in order. All previous projects can be found here.

Project 27, Streamline Your Email, is a project that I’d never have come up with on my own. I don’t have the amount of emails arriving daily that many bloggers lament, so it’s never been much of an issue for me. I dealt with so many more emails at work that my home emails still seem like nothing!

That said, I did take the prompting to finally delete a few newsletters that I never read, and other promotional emails that have ended up finding their way to my inbox.

My biggest email issue is one I still haven’t figure out how to fix. I can very easily view my emails on my iPod touch. I can reply via the iPod as well, but typing anything other than a very, very brief response is obnoxious so I tend to avoid it. Then I have to remember to get back to that message the next time I’m on my laptop, which can easily be a day or two. Sometimes it’s hard to resift through emails to find ones that needed a real response (either a longer email, or something else that can only be done at the computer or on the phone). Maybe I just need to be better about archiving or deleting the ones that don’t still need any sort of response.

How do you handle emails? Do you think you’ve got a good system?

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Filed Under: One Bite

One Bite at a Time: Quarter Two Recap

April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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One Bite at a Time: Project 26 {Cook Staples From Scratch}

April 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Project 26, Cook Staples From Scratch, is another one of those projects that I’m already sort of doing. However, just last week I was thinking that I should try and make yogurt because with a boy that loves it, our family goes through a ton of it every week. Making it myself might save some money.

Honestly though, making yogurt isn’t something I’m ready to try just yet. I feel like my brain needs to be sharper before I tackle something that seems like it has the potential to make us very sick. If baby girl would ever sleep through the night, maybe I’d feel like I trusted myself to follow directions on how to make it. I did just see a post again from someone who always makes it, and she makes it sound so easy. I’m going to have to try it soon.

Granola though? Granola I make now, after getting fed up with the price for premade granola. Oatmeal is CHEAP, and granola is not. Plus, by making it myself I can pick and choose what I want in it. Coconut? Yes, please. Almonds? Of course. Raisins? Not a chance.

I make bread from time to time, but I still have never managed to make a sandwich loaf that satisfies my husband. Or me for that matter. I keep practicing. English muffins are another one I’d like to master, but so far I can’t quite get them to taste exactly like the brand I love.

This is a project where I think as long as I’m able, I’ll continue to increase the number of items I make myself. It’s a process, and I’m still working on it.

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Filed Under: Baking, Cooking, One Bite

One Bite at a Time: Project 25 {Organize Your Photo Collection}

April 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is another one of those projects that’s going to take awhile, so I can’t completely call it “done.”

However, I am caught up on sorting my monthly photos and getting them ready to share with family – I am just spacing it out so I don’t flood everyone with them all at once.

It’s always satisfying to me when I read Tsh’s write-up of that week’s project and I realize I’m doing something right. In this case, it’s curating my photos. Since the boy was born, I’ve been culling my photos and pulling out the best of the month, then I share them online in a Zenfolio account (sorry, can’t share the link because it’s got some photos I’m not ready to share with the world.)

What I haven’t been so good about is archiving the photos and getting them off my hard drive. While the Zenfolio (not an affiliate link) account works as an archive, there are more photos that I would be upset to lose than I share each month. And getting all those pictures off my hard drive would probably be good for my computer too.

Tsh recommends ThisLife, and since the first 1000 photos are free to store, I thought about signing up for a tester account for all the second-tier photos. But then I realized that I already pay for that Zenfolio account, and I have plenty of space there – and it allows albums to be marked as private, so no worries about overwhelming family with too many photos. I can just make two albums for each month – one that is shared, and one that isn’t. Why didn’t I think of that before!?!

So, I’m in the process of creating those albums and uploading the pictures. There are a lot of photos, so it’s a slow process as I have computer time. But I’m chugging along with it, and I wouldn’t have if not for this project, so once again, thanks Tsh!

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Filed Under: One Bite, Organizing, Photography

One Bite at a Time: Project 24 {Switch To Non-Toxic Cleaners}

April 2, 2012 By 1 Comment

Project 24, Switch to Non-Toxic Cleaners is a work in progress for me.

What I mean is, I am not dumping all of the cleaners I already have, but I am replacing them with a mix of homemade cleaners, and some greener ones. I just haven’t been entirely satisfied with the job some of the homemade cleaners have done to use them entirely!

I do use white vinegar a lot, and I love that I can let my son help me when that’s what I’m using.

What I’m wanting to try next is some Mrs. Meyer’s cleaners – they’re supposed to be greener, and smell better too. That might be the sort of compromise I’m looking for at this stage.

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Filed Under: One Bite

One Bite at a Time: Project 23 {Regularly Turn Off Your TV}

March 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

Project 23, Regularly Turn Off Your TV, is one I’m not sure how to address.

I’m not a huge TV watcher, but to someone who watches no TV I’m sure it seems like I do watch a lot.

I have a handful of shows that I record on the DVR and watch on my own schedule. There are a few shows Mr. SJ & I watch together after recording them. I used to watch football every Sunday, until the Colts started being so painful to watch that I wasn’t willing to give up my time to watch them get destroyed (bonus to their new quarterback situation: I’ve still got my Sundays as football-free, because I don’t think I’m going to want to see them next season either.)

My husband? Wants the TV on all.the.time. Even if it’s just background noise, he’s got it on. And now G-man wants to watch TV all the time too (he’s got two shows that he watches, and some movies, but he would watch them over and over and over.)

I don’t want to raise children who are couch potatoes. I don’t want to be a weird family who never lets their kids watch TV. I’m still working out how to strike a healthy balance.

The advantage to Mr. SJ creating his man-cave in the basement is that the TV in the living room isn’t on for him so much, so there is less random stuff for the kids to catch sight of (ESPN, why must you have such trashy commercials?)

How do you handle TV-watching? How do you handle it if your partner has different levels of TV-watching desire? What do you do with your kids and TV?

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Filed Under: One Bite
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