so much to catch up on!

so i have several posts in the works but to start with- just wanted to share about my trip to the grocery store tonight. i have been long over due for a trip to the store (mostly because my mustard stash has been dry for WEEKS), so i gathered my growing pile of papers with coupons i hadnt clipped and went thru my cabinets and made my list. an hour and a half later, this is what i have to show for it!

yeah, pretty good stock pile! altogether, i got:

5 ben & jerrys ice cream (if you must know, 2 late night snack, 2 red velvet cake, & 1 creme brulee)

2 mustards

o.j.

2 olive oils

2 hebrew national hotdogs

1 package bagel thins

3 pams

1 peanut butter

1 nutella

1 package yeast

1 toothbrush

2 things of ritz

1 tin foil

1 whipped cream

1 caramel topping

4 cans diced chilis

2 jars pickles

2 cans black beans

2 things of solo cups

and for how much you might ask? well, altogether, the cost would have been  $136.13

what did i pay? well, so far $72.02

but, i am due back a rebate for $20, making my total

$52.02!

yeah, i was pretty proud! :)

mint.com

i want to take some time to tell you about one of my favorite websites. nathan and i have been using this for about a year now and it is a great way to track your money, plan for the future, and visully see where every penny goes. the website is mint.com and is just too stinkin' cool!

my mint.com homepage (with amounts erased)

   this site is just so cool! so how it works is that you create a free account, and then you set up all of your accounts within it. it is hosted by intuit and is completely safe. you can pull in your bank account, your credit card account, loans, all sorts of things. then, you can create a monthly budget and "tag" transactions to each budget item. additionally, you can create "goals" that allow you to do things like save for the future, pay something off, or something along those lines. so, you can input your monthly income, and it will show you how much your budget adds up to, as well as what you will have leftover after your budget and goals are spent. you can set it to alert you when you are about to go over in a certain area, when different types of transactions post, and when bills are due. the other cool thing is since this is "in the clouds," i can access it from my computer, the ipad, nathan can pull it up- its not stuck on our computer at home. for nathan and i, this has been a VERY helpful tool to get our spending under control, and i love the graphs you can pull up. we are working on paying off our edge and saving for a house, and its fun to watch the line go further across the page! so check it out. it's so important to budget and spend wisely. plus, it makes planning- both the short term kind and the long term kind- a lot easier when you know what you have to work with.