Can't Believe it's December!

Wow! I can't believe it is already December. Where has the year gone? I have been a total slacker in regards to Christmas shopping. I hate the whole process! My husband loves Christmas and always wants to spend more on gifts that I think we should. He got a little upset with me after I told him that my family and his family decided to do the White Elephant Christmas game instead of buying for everyone. We also set a price limit as to how much we can spend on each gift. He was mad because I didn't discuss it with him before we decide to do this. Sometimes he does not understand that we have to think about everyone else as well. With the economy in dire straights everyone is feeling to effects of reducing their expenses. I for one think all the gift buying is crazy! I would love to be able to spend as much as I would like and buy everyone big expensive gifts....but I just can't do that. I have to sit down and have a talk with him. He think I a cheap.......which I don't think I am cheap just reasonable with regards to spending too much money on things that are not necessary. After all, is gift giving really where our focus should be on Christmas?

As for shopping, I am going to try to stretch my dollars by shopping the sales. I have a good idea of what all I am going to buy. Next year I really want to try to have most my shopping done early. I am also going to set up a detailed budget and focus on saving for all those presents and that way I will have money set aside for gifts and if I see something on sales I can purchase it early.

Happy Shopping!!

DLD

Frugal With The Laundry

I stumbled upon a website yesterday explaining how much you can save by making your own laundry detergent. I am having a very hard time each time I go to the grocery store to purchase supplies to clean and run our house hold. I have a family of 4, two daughter, my husband and me. I do probably around 15 loads of laundry a week. Both of my daughters play sports and even though we are in the fall of the year our temperatures are still in the mid to high 80's. They usually come home totally wet from sweating. Just wanted to give you an idea of our situation in regards to the large amount of laundry. So, with that being said, I starting researching making my own laundry detergent. Based on my research you can save around 0.14 cents per load of laundry. I would be saving around $8.96 per bottle of bought laundry detergent verses making my own laundry detergent. I am going to give it a try and see if I can really see the savings. I will keep you posted and let you know how I am doing. If you are interest in making your own laundry detergent you can check out this website here for more information.

Update on the change jar. I work for a financial institution which has a coin machine. I noticed that my husband has been dropping other items in the change jar besides money. So, before I run my change through the machine I need to sort through the change so I don't break the machine. Those machine get a lot a wear and I don't want to be the one to break it. This will be on my list of things to do this weekend.

DLD