A Few Minutes To Myself

The husband is bowling, son is at school and the baby is napping - so I have a few minutes to myself. I know there's things I should be doing, like another load of laundry or cleaning up the bedroom, but I just feel like sitting here for a few minutes.
I'm working on a stock-up list in Excel. We used to use something like it when I worked at the restaurant to ensure we did not run out of product before the truck came again. So, I have made a list of all the products we use that are non-food. I labeled each category at the top - for example: Baby, Bathroom, Cleaning, etc.. My goal in doing this is to only shop once a month for these products. I figure the less time I spend in Walmart (or wherever) the less chance I will buy extra stuff. For the first few months it may be a little hard to figure out how much we use in a month, but after a while I'll know how much we use. I plan on buying extra then we need for the first few months. I will start this next week after the husband gets paid and will post how it is going.
Here's a tip for saving a little toilet paper. You know how kids (and some adults) use way too much toilet paper? Well, all you have to do is when you put a new roll on squish it. This will make it harder to pull and your kid won't be taking using half the roll....

Now a Stay-At-Home Mom

I am now a stay-at-home mom, though it really doesn't feel that different yet. Feels like I'm on vacation from work or something. One would think that I would find so much extra time, but with a 4 month old around I don't seem to be getting anymore done now then when I was working. .
My husband and I took the baby to do errands today. She's always really good when we go places. We went to the grocery store and I saved quite a bit of money. I had quite a few coupons.. 4.50 off enfamil, buy one get one for enfamil, $.35 off gallon of milk which they doubled, $1.50 off of Huggies which were already on sale, Buy one get one for Kraft singles, and I bought 3 cans of diced tomatoes at 89 cents each (the ones on sale were $1 Hunts). Goes to show that just because something is on sale doesn't always mean that it's the best deal. I ended up saving $23.85 all together!!!

Online Bill Pay

Paying online through my bank is one of the best things I have ever found. My bills always go out on time so I need not worry about forgetting to mail them and end up with late fees. I also save money on stamps. I figure we send out at least 20-25 bills a month (we have 3 hospital bills that we pay on weeekly). It's also nice because you can pay your bills weekly and it feels like it's not such a big thing as when you take out one lump sum. I also have it set up to pay credit cards and loans 2 times a month; half at the beginning and half at the end. I'm thinking that this will reduce the amount I pay in interest, though I am not 100% sure because I just started doing this. We shall see.

Taking classes

I shall be taking a few classes at the local community college beginning January 16. They had the books online today through the college's website. Wow. I'd forgotten how expensive they can be. Even if I buy them used at the bookstore the one is $58 and the other is $104. But, I looked on Half.com and Amazon to see what I could do about getting a better price. Unfortunately, my economics book is still really expensive even if bought through one of these sites, probably because it is a newer book. The computer book is from 2004 so I was able to snag that up for $20 including shipping and handling. I saved $38.. not too bad. Textbooks really are pricey and you never get back very much for them. I used to sell mine online because our university bookstore didn't give back much at all for them. I like to get a head start on getting organized so I will be going up to the bookstore tomorrow to get the other book I need. Any jump start is probably good, with having a 4 month old around....