Thrift Store - SCORE!!

I know a lot of people are totally grossed out by the idea of going into a thrift store, and the idea of actually buying something makes them dizzy, but there is definitely a segment of the population that enjoys it. Growing up, I always thought of thrift stores for poor people and was horrified when I was on the receiving end of something from one. Now that I'm an adult, my perspective has definitely changed.

When I pull into the parking lot at a thrift store, I am always amazed when I look at the cars. You don't see many broken down, beat up, old junkers. Look next time you drive by (or the next time you shop), people who shop at thrift stores usually drive pretty nice cars! By extension, I would guess that most of the people driving those cars are doing pretty decent financially.

Yes, lots of times thrift stores are just full of junk. But by knowing your neighborhood and knowing the stores, you can come across some true gems in the midst! It takes a bit of time, and sometimes a bit of digging, but if you are a person who thrives on the thrill of a good find, it's so worth it!

Last year I started running and I thought to myself, "hey this is gonna be cheap, all I need is a pair of running shoes." Oy! I was wrong! Even worse, it turns out I like running so I wanted to slowly build up my running wardrobe and accessories so that I wasn't running in old t-shirts and cotton shorts. Those are great to get started in, but once I started running longer distances, the comfort level in those clothes drastically reduced.

In my thrift store travels I've managed to come up with a Pantagonia jacket and a Merrell pull-over hooded shirt. Both items would have easily been close to $100 each, and both of them were in excellent condition and have years of wear left in them. I've also come across some higher end things like Under Armour clothes, but unfortunately not in my size. I'll keep looking though! (Note: I would not encourage the purchase of used shoes, especially if you are using them for any sort of exercise. It's worth it for so many reasons to really buy a good pair of shoes)

One other thing that we tend to buy quite a bit from thrift stores is books. Nate is really reading like crazy and we could go broke just buying him new books. Plus, he has really taken to some older books that are much easier to find at a thrift store or yard sale. He's always excited to come across the older "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and even "Goosebumps".

Bucket List v.2012

I started keeping an actual bucket list instead of just randomly saying, "that's on my bucket list" this past year and it's been fun to look back over 2011 and see what I accomplished off the list and adding a few new things to it.

Things that are coming off the list, because I accomplished them:

1. I ran a 5K
2. I met my dad this summer, and we just spent Christmas together
3. I joined a lunchtime mentoring program through my work

The new and improved bucket list, v.2012:

1. Sing in a choir
2. Read the entire Bible
3. Go on a missions trip
4. Open a B&B
5. Visit Ireland
6. Go on a cruise
7. Give my Christian testimony
8. Finish a master's degree
9. Go in a hot air balloon
10. Take my kids to Disney
11. Be completely debt free
12. Learn to ski
13. Be in a movie
14. Visit South America
15. Visit Europe
16. Visit Asia
17. Visit Australia
18. Visit a National Park
19. Visit Mt. Rushmore
20. Go to Vegas
21. Blog my life story for my kids
22. Feed the hungry
23. Go to an NFL football game
24. Stay at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island
25. Visit Niagra Falls
26. Attend a church service at Saddleback Church
27. Run a 10K
28. Run 365 miles in a year (or more!)

November 25 - Cleanin House!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday! But what comes after Thanksgiving? Well this year, even sooner than usual, came the shopping! I can't say I was thrilled that the sales were starting at 10pm, but I made my list and headed out to tackle a few things and mission was accomplished.

Today I was working around the house and the yard a bit and decided when I went to put away some new purchases in Nate's dresser drawer that I was tired of all the chaos I was up against. I've mentioned before that I have been known to "UpCycle" things, so I thought a bit about what I could use around the house to bring some order.

Yes, I still had some old baby wipe containers stashed away that I just couldn't bring myself to part with and I used 2 of them to organize the every growing pile of Scout gear that lives in Nate's top drawer. One tub has neckkerchiefs in it, one has slides, and then I put his hat in the front. Nothing fancy, but it rounded up a lot of stray crap that was making me irritated everytime I had to put clothes away.

What else did we do post-Turkey Day? Nate had a friend come over and we took a break from organizing dressers and cleaning the basement to go to the park. The weather was amazing! I dragged the bikes up from the basement and we hit the road. We were not the only ones thinking of it because as we were there tons of families made their way up there too.

There are still plenty of leaves on the ground, and still lots of crap in the basement, but those can wait for a dreary day.

Nov 23 - Holiday Shopping

I am slowly starting to chip away at Christmas, one lunch hour at a time. It's so much easier to get my Christmas shopping done this way than having the pressure of going out once or twice and feeling like I have to get it all done in that tiny window of time. This gives me more time to spread it around, and also more time to shop around and find what I have in mind for people.

Right now my life is being ruled by a single little notepad that is tucked into my purse. What it is critical on that notepad that I would be lost without it?

The front page: List of what I wanted to get accomplished this week. Random things I needed from an assortment of stores, random Christmas gifts I wanted to get picked up this week. Movie times for Thanksgiving day to take the kids to go see the Muppets, stuff like that.

Store Pages for Black Friday: I hit up http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com to find all the ads early and start my planning ahead of time. I wanted to make sure I was looking them over carefully and not missing anything and that I had a good plan well in advance. Since Walmart is price matching this year on pretty much everything, I will be spending most of my time there instead of just going store to store for 1 or 2 things.

Holiday Schedule: Matt and I had to coordinate our work schedules, our day off schedules, the kids school schedules, and our family holiday schedules to figure out where we are going to be pretty much every day between December 19 and January 2.

Our plans are to spend a couple of days in the Detroit area visiting my family over Christmas, so I did a quick check to see what that was going to set us back and was very happy to see I had quite a few points saved up towards rooms at the Holiday Inn. For 2 days during the holidays we're only going to pay $80 for our room, so I thought that was pretty reasonable. I booked the rooms today and even had a hard time finding hotel rooms that were open! So clearly I am not the only person thinking ahead.

As I am writing this post and looking down at my notepad, I have to laugh a little about the big sales I am so excited about. Who else but a frugal nut would get so excited about the great prices on socks and underwear?!?! Even better, cereal on sale!! Woohoooo!! Somebody at Meijer is thinking of me!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Matt has to work, so we'll be having the family dinner a little later than usual. The kids won't really notice a difference, but the rest of the family will. We'll do a lot of the dinner prep tonight so that it's a relatively smooth meal tomorrow. If we can get our butts up and moving early, I'm thinking a trip to the theater in Plainwell is in order! We can go see a first run movie (The Muppets) for $2.50 each if we get there before noon.

Grocery Trip - Nov 20

A friend of mine mentioned to me on Facebook the other day that I had a blog. Yeah, welllllll, about that. I admit, life has gotten super busy and I have terribly neglected this poor blog for quite some time. There was just so much more to blog about when we were attacking our debt on a daily basis, and we had so much more of it to tackle. Now that we are down to just my student loans, it's really not as exciting as it used to be.

So I thought I would challenge myself to really blog about my grocery trips and how a non-extreme couponer uses coupons to buy things for the family that isn't just boxes of Pizza Rolls and chicken nuggets. Don't worry, you will in fact see nuggets and Pizza Rolls as I continue doing this, we certainly aren't perfect eaters! But the one thing I hear from people all the time is, "I never see coupons for stuff we eat (or use)", so I am going to attempt to show that you can in fact feed your family on a limited budget and eat a good variety of food. Maybe if I am super motivated, I'll even post a few of our meals to show what we turn all these savings into.

Meijer
Spent: $21.89
Saved: $25.27
What I bought: a turkey, fruit leather (6), dinner rolls (3doz), eggs (3doz), pineapple (2 cans), french friend onions, chips (2 bags)

Meals
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: PB&J, pudding, and banana bread
Dinner: We ate out tonight

Frugal Fitness

I realized about a year ago that I needed to start exercising more and taking better care of myself. There were a couple of issues with getting started on that, most of them geographic. We sort of live out in the sticks, so finding a fitness option that worked with my work schedule and that didn't break the bank ($$$) was definitely a challenge.

So I did something I never ever thought I would do - I started running. Well not really running at first, more like a very brisk walk that knocked the wind out of me. I very loosely followed the Couch to 5K program and it took me way longer than 9 weeks, but I am very proud to say, I can actually run an entire 5K now! Yes, that's me and my kiddos over there in the picture before the west Michigan Race for the Cure.

Running was a pretty easy way to get myself exercising with minimal start up cost. The basics:

1. Legs/feet
2. Running shoes
3. Music

I am always looking for a good deal on New Balance shoes, and a few months prior to starting C25K, I picked up a very cute pair of pink and gray shoes. When I decided to start running I looked and it turns out that the shoes I bought were specifically made for running! So no extra expense to worry about, shoes were on hand and they were in excellent condition.

I already own an iPod Touch, so it was just a matter of hunting around online a bit and finding some free podcasts to get started with. I thankfully found quite a few and was able to use those to help me get my timing straightened up. No real expense to get started there.

Now that I've been running for almost a year, I've picked up some things here and there that aren't necessary, but definitely make for a nicer experience. Things like wicking t-shirts, skull candy ear buds, and an armband holder for my iPod. I always check out the clearance racks when I hit the stores and see if I can't find some good exercise clothes while I am there and slowly I've added a few things into the mix besides cotton shorts and t-shirts.

I wish I could say I've lost all kinds of weight running, but I can't. I can say though that I've improved my fitness level tremendously over that time and I've forced myself to take better care of me. When I started out, running for 90 seconds was a challenge and I could hardly do that without gasping for breath. I hit a major wall when i worked myself up to a 5 minute running window and went to see my primary doctor. She ran a few tests, gave me an inhaler and suggested that it could be exercise induced asthma, or it very well could be I was just that out of shape and needed to keep at it. Turns out she was right, I really just needed to keep going and the inhaler did nothing to help me.

My previous primary doctor never sent over my blood work from the year prior, so I can't really compare before and after, but i know the after from just early this fall and I am very pleased! From cholesterol to glucose, everything is looking pretty darn good. The only problem area I have is my iron levels and I am focused now on boosting those through 3 times/day supplements.

Now that the fall is here, it's my goal to still keep at the running and to continue straight through winter as the weather allows.

An Update

It seems like we've been working at this debt free stuff forever, seriously! It didn't take a short amount of time to get ourselves in trouble, so it only makes sense that it's taking some time to get out of trouble.

Good news, the only outstanding debt we have is student loan debt, a total of $8648.12. Not bad considering we started out over $40,000 in debt right?!? We've had a lot come our way since we embarked on this and we've weathered the storms for sure. I know that Dave wouldn't exactly be proud of the fact I am sitting on my brand new couch right now typing this, but he would be proud of the deal I got and that I paid cash for my new couch and love seat!

We had a great summer and fall is looking like it's filling up fast too! So what does a family of 5 do on a cash flow only budget vowing never to charge a penny to have fun? Here's what we do:

1. Cold Memorial Day at Gun Lake
2. Day at Charlton Park
3. Middlville Green Days
4. Swimming in Gun Lake (lots of it!!!)
5. Hawk Island Park in Lansing
6. Run the Riverbank Run
7. Wayland Main Street Days
8. PAWS Open House
9. Cousins came to visit!
10. Gun Lake fireworks
11. Dorr 4th of July Parade
12. Michigan Adventure
13. Miranda Park Party
14. Went wild berry picking
15. Visit Detroit to meet dad
16. Vacation Bible School
17. Nate went to Lake Ann
18. Family reunion at Gun Lake
19. Home Depot Workshop
20. Boys went to Camp Manitou Lin
21. Casino family picnic
22. Orangeville Days
23. Camping at Jellystone& Silver Lake Sand Dunes
24. Sand Lot movie
25. Overnight at the White Caps

We had a great summer, and the best part was the time I spent with my kids. I can't wait for next summer!