Success!!!

I finally got Joe to quit the gym! It is not that I am against the gym, it is just spending money every month when Joe NEVER goes to the gym!

So finally after a solid two months of gentle reminding and urging (nagging), tonight he did it!!

Hooray! I feel richer already!

Cheap Entertainment

Living in Korea has changed the way we entertain ourselves entirely! Since there are no shopping malls with stuff that interests us, no Best Buy, no scrapbooking stores, etc...we are not shopping like we used to. This is a pretty good thing as far as money goes, but the internet has thousands of places that are willing to ship to us...

Since our options for going out are so severely limited, we have found a few things to entertain ourselves. By far my favorite is Lost! We borrowed the DVDs from some friends and have been hooked! Every night when I get home from work we have dinner, then Jordy gets a bath, then straight to Lost! For several weeks I have been fairly sleep deprived b/c I end up staying up way too late!

Instead of buying 4 seasons of Lost on DVD, we borrowed them from a friend and saved at least 100 dollars. We have spent every evening for the past few weeks watching it! This great trade has made me wonder what else my friends have hiding in their DVD collections! What a great way to save money rather than buy something and only watch it once.

Usually Joe doesn't like people to borrow our DVDs (he is super paranoid about people touching his stuff!), but he will make people copies for them to take. That way I don't feel like we borrow and then never loan stuff out.

Another thing we have been doing a lot of is Jordy playgroups. At the food court on base they recently added an indoor play area. It is pretty nice and has a magazine rack filled with women's magazines like Allure and InStyle. I like to sit and read a magazine and watch Jordy play. This activity would be entirely free, except Joe likes to buy food from the food court everytime we go.. It is so much fun watching all the kids playing. They don't know not to push or hit yet, no idea what sharing is, but they all know how to cry when something doesn't go their way. It is very entertaining. Somehow everytime we go, the kids flock to Joe and I. We are the only parents who actually play with them! All the mothers just sit with the other moms and talk.

When the weather gets a bit warmer, I am looking forward to hiking in the hills behind our apartments. It is really beautiful back there, and Jordan seems to really enjoy running along the trail.

Before Jordan came along, Joe and I used to really like to go to the gym together. It was so much fun spotting for him. He makes the funniest faces while working out. Out here we can't go to the gym together since we don't have anyone to watch Jordan, but we still go. I have started going after work. It is easier for me to make it part of my work day, rather than try to make it back another time. Joe usually goes on my days off. I do look forward to getting back to the states and going to 24 hour fitness where they have a day care.

I really enjoy cooking, and trying out a new recipe is a fun way to spend the afternoon. I found a website called spark.com that has all kinds of healthy & low fat recipes. Some of them turn out pretty good. I like the crock pot ones so I can turn it on when I leave for work, and then come home to a delicious meal. Joe also gets on board for cooking sometimes. Last week he helped me make Chicken and Shrip Paella! Yummy!

Of course I love to scrapbook, so that takes up a ton of time. My only drawback here is the lack of storage space. I don't want to buy a lot of stuff to store things in here. The scrapbook room is a disaster with papers all over the place! Joe still gets his video games regularly. Right now he is waiting for the Bx to get Resident Evil. Everyday he goes to the Bx really early to check and see if it is out yet. What dedication!

Before we moved here I was working a DVD slide show of all of Jordy's first year. I didn't finish it though, perhaps I should.

After doing taxes with Katie, I am vowing to keep better records this year. I just put in a receipt to the 2009 tax file that she made for me. It was for 6.65 for uniform alterations. The old me would have thought that 6 bucks wasn't enough to matter, but we'll see what it adds up to!

I found a website called Postcrossing. It is a postcard club. I send a postcard to some random place in the world, and get some back too! Just yesterday I got one from South Africa. I have gotten about 10 postcards; from China, Thailand, US, Finland... It is free to join, and fun to do!

My point of doing this post was to remind myself, and you too!, that there are a lot of activities in the world that don't require spending money. I am just so used to shopping being my main past time, it is hard to get out of that mindset.

Any other ideas to add?

Budgeting Lessons...AKA OH CRAP!!

My goal of making & maintaining a monthly budget went great for January, not so for February...

Previously I had no method at all. I would just pay the bills when they came in, and then check them off of a list for the month to make sure I paid them all. If we had extra money we would spend it.

My financial genius friend, Katie, helped Joe and I come up with a budget. Katie is the wife of one of guys that I work with and keeps the best financial records I have ever seen! Someday I would like to be Katie! Anyways, we did great sticking to the budget as soon as it was implemented. Joe was wonderful about not spending more than the amount he was allotted. He did spend extra a few times, but it was always to bring me lunch at work (how do you complain about that!). We were saving more, spending less, and I felt on top of our finances!

Then this month, my old habits kicked in while I was still trying to maintain the budget (Katie you should stop reading at this point...it will only disappoint you!). It all happened one day at work when I checked the exchange rate between the dollar and the won. When we first got to Korea the rate was almost 1:1. With the current economic disaster, the dollar to won is 1:1.5. Since we pay our rent in won, if we exchange money when the rate is like this we get "extra". For the last couple
months our 1200 dollar rent, has turned into 900 dollars or less per month!

So two weeks ago when I checked the rate and it was really good, I logged onto my bank account and saw how much money was there. Then I transferred 500 dollars to the bank account here to be withdrawn in won. Joe went and got the money and we had "made" extra won!

Then I got a rude awakening...an overdraft fee! In fact there were two of them, each 29 bucks!

My old way of doing the money collided with the new way! I forgot that now every dollar is accounted for. There isn't just 500 extra dollars built into the budget! That money is already earmarked for something else. Damn it!

Well even with paying the 58 dollars of overdraft fee, we still ended up ahead by exchanging when we did...but it is still infuriating!

Lesson learned...

Waste Report

Well this week I didn't do much better. Partly b/c last week I didn't clean out the crisper, which many years ago my dad renamed, "The Rotter". Unfortunately it's tendency to rot food has carried onto my household as well.

Pictured here you will see all my good intentions of eating good. I full intended on eating celery sticks (bottom right of picture), salads (which I actually had a few as evidenced by the partially eaten lettuce). I planned on eating cucumbers with my salads, but forgot they were there...

I accidently bought too much cilantro for a recipe and meant to make some salsa with it...but forgot. This one really pisses me off since at the commissary cilatro is 2.50 a bunch!! In the states we got 3 bunches for a dollar!

In the back of the photo is a tv dinner for babies that Jordy would spit out everytime we forced him to take a bite.

There is also a jug of some Korean drink that I thought was aloe morning- not the same. It is "Be Original" and is not quite as yummy as the Aloe Morning. The Aloe Morning has a yummy tropical flavor and tastes like the carribean (if you can imagine that).

Anyways, I can't add up how much all this waste has cost me this week. Partly b/c I just polished off a bottle of wine and no longer have the ability to add two numbers together. Also b/c sadly, this picture does not detail all the waste we actually incurred. Today I tried to make a salad out of some lettuce that looked okay in the bag, but when I got it out it was pretty slimy :(

For my birthday I asked Joe for Quicken. Being the wonderful husband that he is, he got it for me instantly. I have been learning how to use it. It is harder than I thought. My friend at work has a genius wife who is a financial wizard. Katie is helping me get my finances in order and become a responsible money manager. She actually tracks every penny they have and has a yearly budget! I don't know how she does it! Maybe someday I will actually know how much money is in my bank account at any given time. Interestingly enough, she did suggest the "envelope system" until we get the hang of it! Joe and I rolled laughing explaining that Joe's mom LOVES the envelopes!

I will keep you posted on the evolution of the budget and the waste report...