I'm not immune to Black Friday sales

So much for my plans of not buying anything this Thanksgiving weekend.  Many people spend more time planning their purchases than how they spend their time with their families during this time of year. I actually loathe Black Friday shopping. I think it's stupid how on a day where you're suppose to be thankful for everything you have and then before dinner even started you go and buy even more.

Although I haven't done any brick and mortar shopping during Black Fridays in years,  I'm not immune to their online sales.

I really wasn't planning on buying anything this year, but on a trip up north, I realized my daughter has outgrown her winter jackets, so I hop on to Carters.com to get her one. But oh no, there is a super cute sweater with a dog on it... It's sooooo cute! And added to the cart it goes. Oh, can't leave baby brother out, even when he's still in the womb. Gotta get him some shirts too.
Total spent at Carters.com $50

That super cute sweater with a dog... seriously, so cute! 

Oh, even before that, I saw a great deal on carseats from ToysRus. We been thinking about getting one for my husband's car, so he doesn't have to wait till I get home to pick up our baby. It's exactly like ours except the cover isn't removable. It's pretty excessive to have two carseats. But the convenience is worth it to us. We'll eventually need another one when our new baby out grows his infant carseat anyways.
Total spent for carseat $215

Got some emails that I 'forgot' to unsubscribe to. Damn you hollar.com and your cheap prices. They had a 40% one item. But free shipping starts at $25. I'm actually am pretty excited about these two purchases- the packing cube and storage boxes.
Total spent at Hollar.com $26

$10 for these packing cubes. 

$10 for these storage boxes. 

We visited my parents up north, while cleaning her kitchen cabinet, she asked if I've found the vegetable seeds she lost. She went crazy looking for it... turned out they were the kale seeds I bought her. So I immediately hop onto the good old internet and got her some. They were having a 35% off sale and I totally did not know until I check my email. I later hop back on to buy some herb seeds.
Total spent on seeds $6

It's the season to be giving right? So I've been on the look out for super deals. If I see a good deal that is too good to pass up, I will buy and donate.  I actually found a few that I felt the store was loosing money on. But I guess their lost is my gain. I bought a few fleece blankets for maybe the homeless or will be donating them to a woman and children center. I also found some great deals on dog beds. I bought a total of 6 from two different deals and stores.
Total on fleece blanket $16
Total on doggie beds $30

We actually had rain this pass weekend, and the weather dipped into the low 50's. I don't have any long sleeve sleepwear and decided it's time to buy some. Ultimately I ended up on the Old Navy website, everything was 40% off and an additional 20% off I believe.  But free shipping still started at $50. But guess what, on Cyber Monday, they had 50% off plus free shipping and a free gift.  I'm still piss off about that.
Total spent at Old Navy $58

I also bought some diapers and wipes from Amazon, they were too good of a deal to pass up and my baby is not potty trained so I better stock up.

Wow, so my total for this weekend was $401. That's just me on one credit card, my husband bought a few things too... probably another $50 worth. But next year, we'll do better, hopefully.

We Saved Half of Our Income

That got your attention didn't it? Husband's been working at his new job for a few months now. Even before he started, we vowed to not inflate our lifestyle and save all of his income. We did pretty well with the exception of the $1700 that we used to pay for our car insurance for the whole year. It felt really good for a few paychecks. All we see is money coming in and staying in. But, that didn't last long , once we had enough we took out about $6k to pay off his car. A few paychecks later we dive in and bought a minivan. We cleaned out his saving and now owe about $17000 to the bank. Not the most financially sound thing to do, but we think it's a good car at a very good price. And it being a Toyota, that machine will last us years to come. Which is good, we're keeping this car for as long as possible.

This is Sexy Beast.

Even though, we saved half of our income, our not so proud moment comes when we got a loan from the bank to buy the car. We got a very low APR, 1.74%, but any debt is a chain to your legs weighting and slowing you down from reaching your other goals. I seriously don't like debts, I don't think any one does. But to me, having debt is like having a gray cloud over your head, damping your mood and makes it hard to see anything else beyond it. We're paying it off asap for sure! 

Saving half of our income is fairly easy. I'm making ok money (not 6 figures, not even close to being close to 6 figures) and with the income I make from my rental, we are not living on a tight budget. So we're not really holding back on eating out or buying toys and clothes for our baby. However, this free spending streak is going to end. Because now aside from our emergency fund, we literally have no savings, not only that, we're in debt. 

One of the most important and most effective way to save a lot of money is to trim your reoccurring expenses. By that, I mean your rent. We went from paying $1200 a month to $820.  We don't live in an apartment or house, we're renting someone's extra spaces. It's cut off from the main house, we have our own entrance and everything. It has a nice size living room and bedroom ( with a small walk in closet), a bathroom and a kitchen space with no appliances. But, they do have an outdoor cooking space just right outside of our kitchen door. It's been fine, we're not cooking much anyways, we have no time and my mother in law cooks for us. The great thing about renting someone's house is that  the rent usually covers everything, gas, water, electricity etc. We lucked out on this place, it's in a nice neighborhood and our landlord is my sister in law's coworker. So if you need to find a place, start by asking your friends and family if they know anyone who has a space to rent out.

We also shop to make sure we're getting the best price for the coverage we want on our car insurance. Mercury came out on top. My husband carpools to work which cuts his driving by half. Not to mention he drives a gas saver. So we estimated that he gas costs him $100/month. I drive the van now and it will probably cost $150-$175/month. We haven't had our first gas fill up yet, so we'll see. 

Here is a list of our monthly bills: 
Rent:$820
Life Ins.: $256
Cell Phone: $100
Van Payment: $293
Childcare: $500 (yay for family) 
Gas: $275( roughly) 
Baby expenses:$100 (roughly) 
Food: $300 (I haven't been keeping track, but I'm limiting us to that much from now on. I think this is plenty considering we eat most of our weekday meals at my mother in laws)

This doesn't include misc. things, because I really don't know how much I spend on everything else. I'm terrible at documenting everything I buy. Although I really tried, but it's just a method that doesn't work for me or my husband. 

Our annual expenses include: 
Term life ins: $656
Car insurance: $1700 (for 3 cars, one's for my brother in law. We still need to add the Sexy Beast and take off the Subaru)
AAA roadside: $74

Our goals now is to pay off the car asap and save for a down payment.