I was reminded recently that I have a baby shower quickly approaching. As you know, I like to have a little stockpile of gifts for occasions that I either forget about or get invited to at the last minute. After ducking into this present closet, I’ve realized I have no baby items in the stockpile. Which means, I had to do some last minute shopping off a baby register.

What amazes me about first time parents is all the items they usually put on these registries. Most of the items that baby stores, or baby departments say you ‘have to have’ I never used. I think every baby is different and some items just didn’t work for my babies. For baby shower gifts, I tend to take the practical (or boring) route. I buy the diapers, wipes and other miscellaneous items most people overlook.

Some tips I have for last minute shopping?

If you know where your baby shower recipient is registered, check the online registry before you shop. Sometimes you can snag deals online, but you can also get a feel for what you will be shopping for. Now, depending on where you are shopping, only part of the registry may be available online.

Second, don’t feel bad about checking a coupon database to see if there were any coupons available for the items you have your eye on.

While I didn’t score any awesome deals, I was able to snag practical items and a decent price that didn’t blow my weekly budget.

Do you have any tips on baby shower shopping at the last minute?

Prior Months Equity Balance: 24%

 I’m pretty excited to see that equity balance is over 50%! I’m not going to be as excited when we decrease our bars on the right side to reflect the House Account funding. Shifting our focus on having this mortgage paid off by September, 2013 is a huge commitment. But making the huge CRAZY payment now, instead of next year will really save us on mortgage interest.

We will continue looking for ways to increase our mortgage payments this year, in hopes to be able to have money in savings when the payment is paid off. Wish us luck!

I think it was more nerve wracking for me to make the payment from our bank account, than it was for Hubby to pull the money out of our savings account.

It’s done, and we will be saving about $7 in interest every single day! I know $7 doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of the next 18 months it will be a significant amount of money.

While we increased the equity we have in our land by 27%, we’ve lowered our House Account by 64%. It is a little scary to see how little cash we have in our House Account, but it is awesome to know we have over 50% equity in our land.

I’m pretty excited to watch the equity in our land grow even faster than it has!

We have saved an additional 1% in our House Account! We are at 85% saved!

We have actually been making just over 1% deposits in the House Account, but the extra isn’t enough to tip us into the next percent yet. The strategy going forward will be to hit 1% each month. The rest of the less than a quarter of a percent savings will actually be set aside for our summer vacation! Hopefully, we’ll be able to save enough CASH that we won’t have to ‘borrow’ funds from the House Account.

This weekend, we started talking about changing our goal (already, I know we just set them!). Watch to see if a decision has been made!

We paid off an additional 2% of our outstanding debt! We only have 69% of our starting debt left!

Credit Card debt- We paid off an additional 2% of our outstanding debt amount we listed in July, 2010, and we only have 37% to go to be credit card debt free!

Student debt- We decreased my student debt by 1% in January leaving us at 85% to repay. January gave us 1/4 tuition reimbursement for classes taken in July, 2010 and 2011. While it wasn’t a big reduction, I’ll take it! (I can’t wait until May when my tuition reimbursement amount will be in the 4 digits instead of 5 digits. The only problem with the tuition reimbursement, is that it is a waiting game and can’t be paid off early.

What is January bringing us? A new beginning and new goals to try to achieve!

We always try to find the perfect items for the kids’ Christmas, even though I start shopping as soon as Christmas is over! I love buying gifts but I don’t want to completely blow our budget for their birthdays or Christmas. The great thing about having a bigger extended family, with younger cousins, is that if I do happen to buy something for the kids on clearance and by the next present time they are no longer interested in the item, there’s a pretty good chance a younger cousin has grown into loving that item!

After Christmas, we went shopping. It wasn’t really meant to be a ‘scope the clearance deals’ shopping trip- we just really needed groceries! Hubby found a half priced Star Wars Lego set that we purchased for the Boy to get him to cooperate for the rest of the shopping trip. That half priced set has turned into one of his favorite Christmas gifts- and it wasn’t even a Christmas gift!

Seeing how much he loves that lego set, led us on an extensive clearance shopping trip on the way to my families for New Year’s Eve, where we found several more sets that were 50-75% off. Super excited for the next couple of gift points (Easter and his birthday) to be able to give him just what he wants in a very frugal manner!

The positive is that the Girl has grown to love Lego’s as well, so if we run out of girl items we can always give her a Lego set too!

Have you found a present your child loves and stocked up for future gift giving?

Hubby wants to pay the land off in full before we start building. I’m not so sure about that plan: it will mean we will be in our duplex for an additional 18 months (which would be a pretty good stretch goal). Our mortgage is due September, 2013. By my calculations we will have almost enough in our savings account to pay off the mortgage in full at our current savings rate AND mortgage prepayment rates. But this is a huge stretch goal. Not to mention it would completely deplete our savings account.

Then we started talking about the amount of money we actually have in our savings account, which is a pretty substantial amount. Which leads us to the point of- we have a significant amount of money in our savings account earning half a percent. We have a mortgage loan at 7.54% interest.

WHY?

If our goal is to use our savings to completely pay off the mortgage in less than two years, WHY are we losing money by having all that excess in savings? We could save over $3000 in interest if we applied a portion of that money to our mortgage loan right now!

It does feel nice to have the security of having such a huge nest egg. It does make me feel like I will be out of this rink-a-dink duplex and into our spacious dream home sooner. But in reality, we won’t. We’re just wasting the interest savings of that money for a false sense of stability. If we are just going to use that money to pay off our mortgage in 20 months, why wouldn’t we just use it to pay off a portion of it now?

As we’ve discussed this, we keep coming back to keeping about a 3 month emergency fund in our House Savings account. We are still going to work toward that BIG dream of having the 3 month emergency fund AND the full 20% to build our home, but as soon as the land is paid off we won’t need as much cash to actually build our dream home.

I really like having the money liquid, but I also really hate wasting money on interest every single day. I like knowing that if I get laid off we have plenty of money to cover us until I get back in the work force. I’m incredibly thankful for the job I have with all the perks it provides, but at the same time the future is unsure with third party administrators visiting and sending requests for proposal to outsource the whole company.

It takes about a week to pull the money from our online savings account, so it gives us a little time to change our mind and be able to put it back if we decide we need that extra stability of having the money in savings.

What do you think? Have we been incredibly silly by paying interest when we could have applied our extra savings to the mortgage loan?

She received several kits to make jewelry. My favorite had to be from my grandma, the kids’ Great Grandma Cat. It contained lots of beads, lots of bling and elastic string. The Girl absolutely adores it and has been busy making bracelets and necklaces for all of her friends and me.

However, one great present sometimes leads to needing more gifts. Currently we are making a list of items she just has to have the next time we go to the store. These items include beads and elastic.

The elastic is pretty cheap, but the beads can be rather expensive. Luckily, Great Grandma Cat has raided her own craft stash and has put together a package for the Girl. We just need to find a time to travel the three hours to pick it up! Or wait until my mom can bring it over spring break.

Did you or your kids receive any gifts that have left you needing something more?

Our STRETCH goal for equity is 15%. We are going to work hard on trying to achieve the 15% this year, but we are also planning on trying to take a vacation, which may hinder that growth in equity. Wish us luck as we start our new 2012 journey!

Prior Months Equity Balance: 23%

Good luck as you start your 2012 year!

About a week before Christmas, we decided that it would be their ‘big’ present from Santa.Both kids had been asking for pillow pets for awhile and it seemed like everyone had them but them. Throughout the year we had seen these things everywhere and in no short supply. We thought our trip would be a piece of cake! The Girl was a friends and we thought it would be pretty easy to do our shopping, have Hubby take the Boy to the car while I checked out and grabbed the two presents.

WRONG! And I mean in a pretty big way. We had stopped at a store the night before and they didn’t have either of the pets we were searching for: a pink zebra and the dog. We originally didn’t think this was a big problem since we live relatively close to more big box stores and they were everywhere, right?!

Off we went, and we were so confident we even took the Boy out to lunch, something we rarely do when we only have one kid. We searched everywhere at the first store. We were about to give up when Hubby found the dog at the very bottom of a basket full of happy nappers. One down, one to go.

We proceeded to go to four more stores over the next few hours to no avail. We were finally about ready to call it a day, and start calling stores around the KC Metro area that one of us could possibly pick up during the week, when I suggested we try CVS. They were advertising the pee-wee pets, so maybe they had a zebra pillow pet.

Miraculously after about four hours of searching, I found not only the zebra pillow pet but the dog too. To top it off they were on sale: buy one get one 50% off. I snatched them both up and homebound we were. Now, I did have to return the first dog to the store, but I was much happier spending $30 on two than $40 on two.

Did you have any trouble finding any of your gifts this season? How long would you search for a particular toy your child wanted?

The last month has been  busy month for me at work. A big portion of my job revolves around the budget for the entire office. We use a bottom-up method and interview department heads and then compile information. All the numbers and line items have to roll up into three separate company budgets and then finally into a full budget.

I’ve been working a lot of long hours. But the light was at the end of the tunnel: we are heading into board week and the approval of the budgets. But then it was decided I have to go to the board meetings and assist in the presentations. Nerve wracking! These men made decisions within the last year to eliminate 80 positions in my company. We went from 210 employees to 108 in 2011. They are still looking into things that may result in the lay off of more positions, or the entire offices.

At least, I thought, my work load was going to be reduced to a normal size this week and going forward. UNTIL a manager in my small department was laid off on Thursday afternoon. No one really saw it coming. She wasn’t given any time to transition her work load to others in the department.

Friday was an emotionally draining day. We had people asking us a lot of questions and we didn’t have any answers to them. To top it off, the manager was working on some projects that I had to jump into the middle of without knowing what had been done or what was left to do. I feel like the next few weeks are going to be the same. Finding projects that are halfway complete and trying to start over on them.

I think my cushy job I’m used to just disappeared. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to, and I’m definitely going to have to start looking for better time management. Here come the lists of projects and the prioritization. This may be the kick in the pants I need to start looking for a new job. I think our family has proven over the last few weeks that Mom can work more hours and things will still get accomplished (a huge hats off to Daddy in that aspect!) In the winter when Hubby’s work is slow this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but as it gets toward summer during his busy time we may have issues.

If you don’t see or hear from me much, that’s what I’m doing. Working longer hours, and trying to spend time with my family.

Have their been any major shifts in your work life? Or your families balance?