These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. While my husband, my girls and I are OK, we have had a few extended family members that have not been doing so well. Illnesses seemed to have struck a few family members during this holiday season. While most of them are doing better so far, the oldest one is battling pneumonia. It has been a tough battle, but she is a tough woman. I have no doubts she will be OK.
Through all this, I have been working non-stop again. I have actually been asked to come in on my days off these past few weeks and I have not been too thrilled with it. It is the holiday season, and I am not going to be a grinch, but I think I may need to emphasize the 4 day thing again to my boss. Going in on my days off has backed up my writing jobs and I just made the deadline for an order. I definitely don’t want to screw up my writing gig–because eventually I want it to be my full-time source of income.
As far as our budget and income, we have been doing well this week. I went to Super Target and bought all of our Thanksgiving dinner and meals for the week for $40. Yup, that’s 40 bucks! Did I mention I got a 22 pound Turkey too? How did I do it? Coupons, and a Target gift card that I got as a reward from a survey company. I was very pleased with that shopping trip.
Black Friday came and I did not buy one thing. In fact, I was quite disturbed watching our local news on Black Friday. You know, in one breath everyone is talking about how bad everything is and how even the food banks in the area are hurting. Then, in the next they show mile-long lines around Best Buy and Brandsmart. As they are interviewing people, most were talking about how rough they had it this year and how standing in line to save a couple hundred bucks on a Plasma TV is worth it. HUH? If you are laid off and worried about paying your bills, getting a deal on a plasma TV is the LAST thing you need to worry about. I just cringed watching that newscast.
I am all for getting good deals and saving money, but spending money on video games, plasma TV’s, and other high-end stuff when you should be worried about paying your mortgage and putting food on your table just baffles me. I just don’t get it. When I was broke and had all that debt, the last thing I wanted to do was spend money on stuff like that. If you have the money, and bills are paid—have at it! But, most people that were in those lines knew darn well they should not have been there.
I will be buying my kids a few small things for Christmas, but nothing expensive or extravagant. As for my husband and I, we are trying to save. Every year we talk about how we want to see snow since here in South Fla, all we see is sun. So if we can save a little this month, we can take a drive and see some snow next month. It will be the first time the kids have ever seen it. It will be nice and a budget-friendly trip. All we would really need to pay for is gas and maybe a night at a hotel. I will start looking into that later on this month though.
Well, until next post. Oh–and anybody that reads this, try not to spend if you don’t have it this holiday season. Spend time with the ones you love, it means so much more than material things.
Tags: Black Friday, budgeting
