Money Walks

Lets face it, we’ve all at some point tried to find ways to save money when going out for some grocery. I’ve come to this simple conclusion on how to save money. Buy everything in bulk. You can save so much money this way. Forget spending your Sunday mornings cutting out coupons, just get everything from a wholesale store. I have been buying things from wholesale stores off and on but it didn’t strike me until recently when I went to Costco and realized how much I actually saved.

Here are the things that I bought that saved me some money:

1. A case of bottled water (36 bottles) $4.56
2. A case of eggs (36 total) $3.29
3. 24 variety pack of Gatorade (20 oz.) $10.79
4. A huge box of Honey Bunches of Oats(46 servings) $5.67
5. A case of 12 cartons of Soy Milk (4 servings ea.) 10.79
6. A box of 32 Yahoo $6.29

The total came to  $41.39 but if I would have bought these at Safeway or Giant, I would have spent well over $50.  I know in Costco there is a one time membership fee of 50 dollars but it’s well worth it. You can split this in half with someone else to reduce the cost and you both can get a Costco membership card There are plenty of wholesale store. Some of the ones I know of includes Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s. There’s probably a lot more out there so do your research and find the wholesale store near you!

Sorry for the late post on these carnivals, better late then never. 

I want to thank Will from wisebread for hosting the last weeks 7th edition of the Carnival of Money Stories. As usual I want to point out three posts that caught my eye.

1. Don’t let romance cloud your financial vision from Queercents.
2. Rad from Daddy Financials on Debt Repayment Strategy.
3. Clever dude shares his story on The stupid thing I did today.

Lazy Man and Money hosted the 92nd edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance

1. Stuff You Outta Know posts Why hoarding airline miles is a foolish game. 
2. Flexo from Consumerism Commentary writes The cost of buying a home over 30 years.
3. What is your market value from Money and Such.

Ask Mr. Credit Card hosted the 79th edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction.

1. Free Money Finance writes a piece on How to get out of debt.
2. Digerati Life shares with us How to Throw a Kid’s Birthday Without Spending a Fortune
3. The Thinking Men writes an article called Financial Insecurity in America.

Well that about concludes it for me. I also want to mention the next edition of the carnival of money stories which will be hosted over at moneysmartlife, you can submit your articles here.

Wow that was a nice spring break. Boy did that week go by super fast. Speaking of which, this whole year is going by super fast. I can’t believe that it’s almost April! Where did this last 4 months go? Well anyways, I know I haven’t been posting for a while but I should be able to get back on track now that midterms are over and I have more time

Good news: Today I finally got my taxes done!  And boy was I disappointed(still good news).

So here’s the verdict. Last year I made about 25k with two jobs and paid a little over 5k in taxes.  Five thousand US dollars! I was thinking, “man…I’m gonna have a really nice refund this year, I can finally take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner”. I was wrong. It came down to me OWING the state 104 dollars and getting a refund of 600 dollars from federal. The bright side is I get something back, but I was expecting that something to be more like 2k or something. I mean I paid 5k so 2k sounds reasonable right? Overall, after subtracting the 100 bucks for the state balance, I’ll be getting about 500 or so. Better then nothing eh?

Bad news: I’m still in debt. And doesn’t looks like I’m gonna be debt free within the next month

With all the recent bills tackled onto my credit card, looks like I’m back where I was in February. My credit card is back up to a little over five thousand dollars again. Here’s the lineup for what’s been slowing me down:

• Six months of auto insurance
• Last 3 months of cell phone bills
• Membership fees
• Grocery/gas
• Car maintenance

So all that has put me back up to a total of $5,404.22. I do have some incoming cash so I think I can knock it back down to about 3-4k. My goal is to get this whole thing paid off before summer starts. I would love to start my summer off being debt free.

I want to remind everyone that the last day to file your taxes are April 17th so if you haven’t done so get them done!

As always, there were a lot of great articles that were submitted to this weeks carnivals. I want to highlight and share some of them with you. So here are my weekly carnival roundups.

Golbguru hosted the 6th edition of the Carnival of Money Stories

1. Lessons learned from being unemployed by wisebread
2. Getting green posted How I live on $600 a month.
3. Cash Flow is King by Reflection of a BizDrivenLife

*I want to thank Golbguru for the wonderful job hosting the carnival.  Although I only pulled 3 articles from the carnival all 16 were really good so if you haven’t visited the carnival yet, I suggest you stop by. Once again, thanks Golbguru.

Gina’s Tax Articles hosted the 13th edition of the Tax Carnival

1. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity tells us where to get missing W-2s and 1099s.
2. Pizza Delivery Story explains how to claim their unreimbursed business miles.
3. Free Money Finance explains why cash rebates are not taxable

MapGirls Fiscal Challenge hosts 90th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance

1. FiveCentNickel presents How to Profit from 0% Balance Transfer Credit Card Offers.
2. Frugal Lunch by Clever Dudette from CleverDude.
3. BluntMoney explains why he bought a condo at 21

I hope later this week I will be able to post some more. Spring break is coming up in about a week and a half so that should finally give me some free time. I’m looking forward to it

Wow what a busy week it’s been, time is going by so fast I can’t believe it’s already March. I know that I had made it a goal last week to have my taxes filed then, but unfortunately I was not able to get them filed. Hopefully this weekend will be a better time to get them done. Well anyway lets get to the point, here are the carnivals for this week. There were many great entries so make sure you take the time to visit them. I picked out 3 articles that I liked from each carnival, enjoy.

Carnival of Personal Finance edition #89 at Binary Dollar.

1. Sushimoney on Supercharge your Ira for 2007
2. Simple guru writes Federal excise tax refund.
3. Getting Green tells us How to pay for college without student loans.

Carnival of Debt Reduction #76 over at Money Smart Life.

1. Change can be a good thing posts How I paid my debt in 26 months.
2. Opportunitiesaplenty wrote 3 more money saving ideas to help you get debt free.
3. Waroncreditcards writes a piece on Should borrow money to pay off debt?

Festival of Frugality # 63 at  Stingystudents

1. Bean-sprouts posts Save money, save the planet.
2. Ask Uncle Bill shares an article on Saving on Taxes.
3. Bargainquest Saved 50% on her prescription drugs.

Also…I would also like to remind everyone that the Carnival of Money Stories #6 will be hosted on March 5th over at Money, Matter and More Musing so if you have some money stories, submit your article here.