As I perused the holiday checklist, I've realized that the amount of people I have to shop for has decreased significantly. Hubby and I have racked up points with different reward cards and now it pays off!! We've redeemed over 12K in points- taking care of ten gifts which are being shipped (recipients not known yet)
8 3-pc pizza maker sets
2 mini Coach (changepurse) bags

Since there are five people outside of the family which I have to shop for, the pizza sets go for the ones with family.

BBL!

My daughter has taken an interest in saving and making money in order to fund more entrepreneurial activities. I am so proud of her!

I figured I'd document her ideas on here so other tweenagers would like to undertake the same tasks to make a few extra bucks.

What do your children do to bring in some extra spending money?

Last night my daughter made a "tip jar" similar to those in Dunkin' Donuts. She approached my sad husband (the seahawks lost) and asked him how much coffee he drinks daily.

"About Three cups a day", he replied. We found out two out of the three cups come from Dunkin' Donuts. The afternoon cup hails from the office where his assistant brews and gives out coffee for free as an office pick-me-up.

"How much do you spend on your Dunkin' Donuts coffee?" she asked him.

$3.00. Two dollars and change. The rest goes into the tip jar on the counter. She also learned that if he doesn't have enough for coffee, he scrounges up change.

My daughter handed him a jar with an opening up top. She vowed to wake up earlier in order to make him coffee. Instead of paying D&D $3.00, he is to put $3.00 in her coffee jar in exchange for a thermos full of cafe con leche. Easiest six bucks she could ever make. Let's see how long this accord lasts? lol

I've been bad.
What started off as a good year with lots of excess money and little trips here and there has now become a budgeting nightmare.

My bad points:

I have student loans which threaten to report my payments as late (they kinda are)(20+yrs)

I've got a horrible contract with DirectTV which I have no power to negotiate with (1 yr)

I've got a new lease for a car that barely moves maybe once a week (it's semi-luxury) (3 Yrs)

I've got nice furniture which I now have two zero finance credit lines that give me two years to pay off before turning into giant inflated financial train wrecks. (2 Yrs)

I also have a huge personal debt which I pay monthly and cannot budge or face serious issues- leaving us with one functional check per month.

AAACK!!!

I won't despair too much.. here are my goo d points:

Thinking ahead of time, I separated two CD's which are due to expire right before thanksgiving- just in time to shop for the holidays so no worries about that.

I have managed to save a few dollars here and there with my envelopes despite not having a budget- though not as impressive as it could have been, three hundred is still a good number for saved money.

I haven't touched the found money but it's nice to know that if I ever need it, I have some money there in case of emergency.

Now that i've got those things off my chest.. it's off to step 2- naming the bills and placing them accordingly. Since I've accumulated two credit card bills, I have to budget out a certain amount of money in order to pay these cards off before 2008. I'll work on those now and post it later

Thanks for reading... and it's great to be back!

On October 9th, my found money jar celebrated its first birthday. The total amount of money we found and redeemed came out to exactly $365.50. During our inspection of coins we found a few valuable coins that proved to be of some value. Their face values were added into the 365.50 but the profit we'd received in exchange came out to exactly 14.00 (five silver half dollars: $17.50- $3.50 (face value) : $14.00)- making our grand total to $379.50.

I am quite happy because these change hunts have also helped my entire family slim down at least five pounds apiece. My daughter Bri is the most enthusiastic of all because she has discovered a new hobby- Numismatics! (aka coin collecting)

In the past week my family has found $20.05 (just enough to start the $20 challenge ). This money marks a new fiscal year for the changepot- we hope to have more or less the same amount at this time next year... is it possible? Stay tuned here and on my blog for updates!