Despite the academic credentials, the idea of writing and sticking to a budget has never been easy for me.  When I was single, it really just wasn’t that important.  I’d choose to charge something on one of three credit cards basically on a whim, and would pay at least the minimum due, and maybe a little more.  I was basically treading water– paying bills on time, generally with an idea to get rid of the student loans and credit cards in a few years.  I was able to charge and pay off the occasional vacation with friends or a visit home, and that was good enough for me.

After I got married and started a family, I realized that the whole budgeting thing is a lot more important.  I wanted, and still want, to be able to take care of this part of our family’s life.  I want to be able to pay the bills and have money in the bank for our needs, with a plan to take care of some of our wants.  But, without a written budget, there is just no easy way to communicate the situation to your spouse.  Talking about what’s due and what’s in the checkbook helps, but without knowing how much you should spend on groceries this month, it’s hard to make decisions without going further and further into debt.  So for the first 7 or so years of our married life, we sunk financially lower and lower.  It wasn’t healthy on many levels, and it had to change.

This year, we finally decided to take care of the budgeting problem.  After a few fits and starts, we came up with a system that is working.  We are still fine tuning the process, but having a process has allowed us to achieve some measure of peace and direction, financially.  As a computer professional, I decided that physical paper envelopes with cash is not the way to go for me.  Call me obtuse in this area, but I really like my debit card and don’t see a reason to vaccuum out my checking account each payday and divide the cash out.  That said, I really like the idea of identifying the spending realities in each category.  So, our system had the following requirements:

• Perform the function of envelopes (Spending limits, allocations) without using cash
• Plan for recurring bills, mortage payments, dues and subscriptions, etc.
• Construct a plan for communication of virtual envelope balances that will work anytime, anywhere.

The next few articles in Funderbudget will explain the system I’ve been using, in detail.  I’ll go through our initial planning, tool usage, forecasting, and tracking.  The budget is a powerful vehicle to tell your money where to go and hopefully there will be something here to help you harness that power.

First, make sure you are a member of their rewards program.  If you pay the (usually) higher-than-Walmart prices for their file folders and binders and such and aren’t a member of the rewards program, you are paying a premium you should not be.  Every quarter Staples sends a check in the mail that is good toward your next purchase at Staples.  Last night I used my check for $16.25 on my purchase.

Another tip is to check their online circular (or in-store circular) for specials but especially for a % off coupon.  Just before I left, I checked the website and printed off a 15% off Staples coupon, and was able to apply that to my purchase.

Finally, Staples often has products offered with a mail-in (or online) rebate.

Beware, usually when they offer this kind of deal, the price advertised on the shelf is the AFTER REBATE price.   So you get a decent price on that box of printer paper or labels, but if you forget to do the rebate, you are back to paying an unnecessary premium.

So here’s my receipt from purchases last night:

And as you see on this receipt, yet another one Staples discount offers, they will give you $50 off the price of a printer when you recycle your old one.  (Cash for clunkers for printers, sort of.)

So I can actually say that once that rebate is processed, I will have made $2.66 on my trip to Staples last night.   It helps make up for my office supplies indulgence of the past.

So just for fun, check this out.  First you need the software on your mobile phone (so you have to have internet capabilities on your phone).  You go to get.neoreader.com and download the app.  Then you can scan any compatible 2d barcodes you come across.  Granted, you won’t stumble on very many right away, but this is likely to catch on.  It does (to some extent) even work on bar codes.  I was able to scan the bar code on a box of a product I am testing out (part of my online survey efforts) and it was actually linked through the NeoReader to the product.

So here is the funderbudget 2d bar code:

With the software to read this on your phone, you just open the app and it activates your phone’s camera.  You point at the code, and it automatically “clicks” it.   Then it automatically directs your browser to this website.

Right now, this is just plain fun.  It makes me feel like I’m a Star Trek character with a tricorder.  (Or, maybe like a Wal-mart employee with a hand scanner.)  If you’re looking for something to entertain you, there you go.  The software is free, and making your own 2d bar codes is free too.

We had just been thinking we ought to try to find a good deal on upgrading to smart phones, preferably an iPhone or a Droid, and of those two we were really hoping for a Droid.  (iPhone’s 3G network is not even available yet where we live).  We are Sprint customers at the moment, but the best Sprint deal I could find was $99 a piece for the new phones.  Even though it is a business expense, we need to pull everything we can out of the business for debt repayment. It’s bad enough our monthly fee will double having the internet capability with the phones, but we really wanted to avoid having to fork over that initial pop for the smart phone itself.

So when MyPoints sent us the Verizon deal, we had to check it out.  We were soon approved, but there were a couple of drawbacks.  First of all, they could not port our new phone numbers from Sprint to Verizon.  Something to do with the Sprint/Alltel merger not yet having made it to where we live (our little city is apparently too isolated from the rest of civilization).  Secondly, we didn’t have any say in what our new phone numbers would be.  I always have trouble memorizing phone numbers, so I was hoping to get something easy.  Oh well, a small price to pay in order to get free Droids!

If you’re looking to get a Droid, you may want to get yourself a free membership at MyPoints and poke around to find that Verizon offer.  You’ll even get 4,000 bonus points for doing the sign up, and that is saying something for MyPoints (who tend to be somewhat stingy doling out the points).   Welcome to the world of smart phone mobile!  Now if I can just figure out how to use it…

Here’s a picture of my first two checks (for $5 each) from Global Opinion Panels:

If I had known they’d both be sent so close together I suppose I could have waited and requested the $10 at the same time.  But my theory is, cash in as soon as possible to get paid as soon as possible, because you never know when they are going to be writing checks.  Could be now, could be 6 weeks from now.

Are you getting paid for taking surveys yet?  If you’re serious about paying off your debts, taking surveys is one easy way to make a little extra cash on the side to put toward the debt snowball.

So now I can say with more authority that taking surveys for cash really is a way to make extra money online.  It is not glamorous, it certainly won’t provide a living wage, but you can throw it in with your debt snowball, and as you know, every little snowflake helps!

JCPenney’s reward program: you can sign up for it at www.jcprewards.com.  It asks for a code to verify your sign-up, but if you don’t have the code you can choose to have one e-mailed to you.  The rewards program pays you back at least one point per dollar, and when you hit 250 points, you get a $10 gift certificate.  To participate in the program, it’s similar to Upromise, where you have to register your credit or debit cards.  Of course they give you more points when you register your J.C. Penney card and pay with that, but since we are all getting rid of our credit cards including store cards, that is irrelevant.  Register your debit card. 

Also, JCPenneys has a survey program like many stores do, and the invitation is included with your cash register receipt.  What makes their survey program different from other stores is that they aren’t just offering you a chance to win $5000 or whatever in a drawing.  They actually give you a coupon for 15% off your next purchase at the end of the survey.

And don’t forget you can also earn cash back through ebates.  Right now they are paying 3% cash back on online orders for JC Penney.

So if you like shopping at J.C. Penney’s then make sure you take advantage of their discount programs.  There is no reason to pay full price, or to not receive a cash-back reward.

There is one last way in which I’ve been able to save money at JCPenney, and  that is in the styling salon.  I don’t know if it’s the same at all JCPenney salons everywhere, but at the one I go to the stylists have the freedom to offer you discounts or throw in freebies.  They also have a punch card that gives you a 10% off after 10 services.

Happy savings!

Are you thinking of cashing in some of your stuff for money?  Here’s our list of stuff sold so far.  Maybe it will give you some ideas of things you can sell.

Dollar amount sold to date:  $7,480.21

Date       Amount     What We Sold

However, I do not think I will ever pay $2.59 to buy Hershey’s syrup again.  It is so easy to make your own!  Most of us have cocoa powder in our pantries for use in baking or cooking.  If not, pick some up for $3.49.  You only need 1/4 cup of powder + 2 cups sugar + 1 cup of water, a little vanilla, and a little salt to make your own syrup.  I don’t know exactly how many batches you can get out of a can – maybe 4 or 5?

And then you can reuse an empty honey bear bottle for your homemade syrup!