Pampers and Olay

I was pretty bummed out when I didn't make it to Walgreens a couple weeks ago for the really good deal on Huggies so I was excited to hear about the P&G deal going on at King Soopers that included Pampers. I bought 2 packs of Pampers and 2 Olay Regenerist Cleansers for $18.32 after coupons. I will submit for the $15 Olay Regenerist rebate so the final cost is $3.32 for 2 packs of diapers and 2 cleansers! Thanks Katy Couponers for the matchups! I even got my P&G esaver loadable coupon to work(I've always had problems). I think I may have to go back again for some more Pampers, Tide, Pringles and Ivory.

2010 Grocery Budget

Over the past year I have seen our grocery bill go down from around $500 a month it's current level of less than $250 a month. I can remember spending between $100 and $150 on a single grocery trip. Now it's rare that I spend more then $30 per trip, but I am usually making more than one trip a week.

Our budget for 2010 is set at $250 for groceries per month. For our budget groceries include all food, health and beauty items, dog food, diapers and wipes, formula(if and when we switch to it), cleaning products and the money I spend purchasing coupons. By the end of the year I hope to have our budget even lower to around $150. I figure we could probably spend around $10 - $20 per week on produce and dairy and another $15 - $20 on stockpile items.

Toy Roundup

We've been spending the last couple of days getting all the old toys out and the new toys in order. I packed up most of the older toys and put them in the top of the baby's closest. Once he's old enough to play with them I will get them out for him. For the new toys I picked up some great bins at Target to store them in. By cutting out parts of the boxes I was able to make custom labels that I attached with packing tape. This way my son can see exactly what toys go in which container. I love how each toy has its own home and my son knows he is only allowed to take out one bin at a time. If he wants a new toy he needs to pick up the one he already has out and put it away.

2010 Debt Payoff

I'm using this blog to track our debt payoff in 2010. We hope to pay off credit card debt, a truck loan and 2 student loans.

Credit Card - we currently have $1,500 at 0% interest that we need to get paid off by summer 2011 before the interest rate goes up. We plan on paying $100 a month and and extra $300 at some point to get the balance paid off at the end of the year. We do not carry a balance on any of our other credit cards and make sure they are paid off each month.

Truck Loan - we have a $9,173.06 loan on a truck we don't even own anymore. The interest rate is 5% and the monthly payment is $478.98. We do have a car that has no loan on it so we like to think that this loan applies to that even though it is more then what the car is worth. This loan is through a family member who doesn't need the money and is happy to loan it to us so although we would like to get rid of it we don't know yet if we want to pay this off right away. If something drastic were to happen we could get away with not making this payment for a while if needed. We also have approximately $30,000 on a loan for our primary vehicle at an interest rate of 0.9%. Because this interest rate is so low we don't plan on paying this off early.

Student Loans - my husband has $39,330.25 in student loans. Student Loan #1 is at $23,709.21 with an interest rate of 4.875%. We currently pay $125 a month on this loan. Student Loan #2 is at $15,621.04 with interest rates ranging from 2.5% to 3.9%.

All of the above debt totals to just over 50k! Our plan is to make Student Loan #1 our main priority and then revaluate after that is payed off. We hope to be able to pay a minimum of $700 a month extra to this loan. I'll updating as we progress and show how our family saves as much money as possible.