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When I moved into my house, I had four shelves awkwardly hung on one of my closet walls. (I have now moved them to my garage) They stuck out farther than the door which made them always be in the way and did not have much storage space. I quickly decided to take the shelves down and put a shoe rack against the wall instead but taking the shelves down meant having many pretty large holes in the wall. Lucky for me, I always have Spackle around the house.  Typically, I buy the Spackle that goes on white because I ...

Last week we made our spreadsheet a bit more robust by adding in a Checking account and Savings account rows.  If you need to review, you can find the post here. This week, I will explain how to use this spreadsheet on an ongoing basis as your expense tracking tool in addition to being a budgeting and projecting tool. Let's start with the most fool-proof way of sticking to your budget and meeting your projections. Each month, in our example, remove $300 (the incidentals) from your checking account.  You can do this all at once at the beginning of the ...

My favorite part of any Chinese meal is the Crab Cream Cheese Wontons.  One day I decided to try to make them from scratch and I determined that it's actually really simple! As we know, I'm an abstract cook, thus I don't typically use timers or measuring devices. Ingredients Flour Egg Water Salt Cream Cheese Crab meat or imitation crab meat Worcestershire Sauce Green onion (if desired) Oil (I used vegetable oil because that's what I had) Quick Steps The Dough 1. Put a pile of flour onto your table. 2. Mix a pinch of salt into the flour. 3 ...

I would consider myself to be a modest couponer.  I am cautious about the sales and coupons available but do not go overboard stocking my cabinet with 20 bottles of ketchup just to save money. Here are six couponing tips that will help you save money without spending all of your time dumpster diving for coupons. 1. Pick One Store - Unless a store doesn't have something you need, going to more than one store to grocery shop could be costing you money.  The travel time and time in line both go up each time you add a new store to ...

This is Part 2 of the ‘How to Use Excel to Project Your Savings’ series.  If you have not viewed the first post, you can find it here. Now that we know how much is possible to save, let’s talk about how to stay on track with savings, starting with a bank account. I’d recommend getting a checking account to serve as a place to hold enough money to pay all of your bills for one month.  Having a checking account with enough money in it for one month’s worth of bills will allow you to use auto-pay on many ...