Monday Night Football on a budget

One of my buddies was telling me a little trick he and his wife use to keep up on their budget. They are some of the best coupon users I have ever seen. Drive by their house on a Sunday morning and you will find 5 Sunday papers in their driveway. It may seem funny to you, but they are laughing all the way to the bank.
Every Monday night during monday night football, my buddy watches the game with scissors in his hands to cut out all the coupons he can find. Just a little football game for him turns into hundreds of dollars of savings each month. His wife is happy that he is helping with the coupons, he gets to watch football with no interruptions, and they both are making their budget grow and grow.

Ever used Envelopes

At every convention we visit, we always find people using the envelope budget system...read more at www.mysistersbudget.com/blog/

New Blog Site

Today we have created a new official blog on our website to follow. In addition to this page, we now make our postings available right on the mysistersbudget website at www.mysistersbudget.com/blog

MEET MY SISTER --

In 1988 I was living in Oregon with my husband and 2 small children. We were living paycheck to paycheck and never seemed to have extra money. Even when we had a little money set aside, something always came up (insurance premiums, car repairs) to eat up our savings.

I developed a budgeting system that helped us save automatically and incorporated a kind of mini-savings approach. Within a couple of months I knew I was on to something. My categories were growing and I felt calm about our finances. My brothers and sisters started referring to it as “my sister’s budget”.

After 18 years and much encouragement and support from my siblings, we bring this system to you in its original notebook and software form.

Good Advice

There is one thing I can guarantee. Whether or not you want it or not, you will be receiving advice all the days of your life. When my wife and I got married, I was given a great piece of advice that has stuck with me all these years. "MAKE SURE YOUR WIFE HAS SPENDING MONEY." When I first received the advice it almost sounded like a joke, but it is so true. We all need to have a little spending money that belongs to us and us alone.
That is one thing about My Sister's Budget that is so great. In our family, we create an individual category for each member of our family. I get $50 a month in my category and my wife gets the same. (our kids get $10-15) I chose not to spend all of the $50, so the next month it builds to $100 and so on. I now have $572 in my category and I can buy the TV that I want and no one can deny me because it is my spending money. My wife is doing the same with her money except her goals are a bit larger (a piano).
Take a little advice from me that i received the day I got married...Make sure you and your significant other have some spending money...we all need that kind of freedom!!!

State vs State in Debt and Bankruptcy Filing

It is not always the funnest conversation to have but it seems that most neighborhoods these days have at least one house in their neighborhood that has dead grass and a little white piece of paper taped in the window. Sad as it may be it seems that foreclosure and bankruptcy's are all around us. I always hear that Utah is high amongst the bankruptcy filings, so I wanted to get a little more background and information to see what is happening around me. In my searching I found a site with data from 2009 that I have found quite interesting...http://www.uscourts.gov/News/TheThirdBranch/BAPCPAmap.aspx

Do I have to pay back the tax credit?

Lately a lot of questions have come up about the Federal Housing Tax Credit. Do I have to pay it back? From the research we have done, the answer to that question is: "It depends on when you bought your home." Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but it really does. In researching I came across a website that answered many of the questions you have been asking so I am including that link in this post. Hope this answers your questions...but if not, just ask us and we'll dive in deeper to get you the answer. http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/

Soccer Drinks and Budgeting

Soccer season is coming to a close and with both our little kids playing this year, we are looking forward to a break in the action. Two games a week per child and one practice was a little too much for our taxi cab this year. Funny story from the soccer day our family was in charge of bringing snacks and drinks. I travel for work a lot, so naturally our home is full of hotel shampoo and soaps. Until today, we didn’t know how weird we had become…we started serving our half time water break and giving each child a cup to get some water. Well our plastic cups were individually sealed and have logos of various hotels. The kids had a heck of a time getting their cups out of the plastic and their parents got a good laugh out of how we had collected cups from staying at hotels. I have been known amongst our friends as a good budgeter, but now they joke that I have gone too far…hotel cups??

The budget light went on

I still can’t believe it!!?? You know that feeling when you have been teaching one of your children something (like math) when all of a sudden the light just turns on. Well we had a budget moment with my daughter this weekend. We were at Wal-Mart walking down through the toy section when the usual calls for everything on the isle began…but this time it was all about the Wizard of Waverly shoes. But mom, they are only $20…so I blurted out, “How much do you have on your page?” (we still call our categories pages because we used to use the notebook budgeting system on pages) The response back was, “20 dollars”. So I told her she had enough to buy the shoes, but all of a sudden the talking stopped and the lights turned on in her head. She realized that if she bought the shoes, she would not have any money left….

Software give-away

Life is constantly changing and we want everyone to have the chance to use our budgeting system, so we are giving away a FREE copy of the My Sister's Budget software! For details, visit us on facebook.

My Sister Says---

Let the new school year hype begin!! What? That's right. It’s already in full swing. Call us crazy but we just got home from the hospital with our fourth child and what do we get right before checking out of the hospital, but a phone call from the billing department. They say they will give us 20% off our bill if we would pay our portion of the bill before we leave the hospital.

Well that is a no brainer...save $200 just by writing a check that day. BUT--How do I know we have the money to do that. Just happens that we have been putting $95 a month into our new baby category for the past year and a half...AND NOW because of paying this bill early, we have a surplus in that category of $200....guess we have some extra money to buy our new baby some clothes or maybe start saving for all those check ups he's going to get...or maybe the start of his college fund category.

That is a new way to look at your money!!!

My Sister's Budget: Welcome

My Sister's Budget: Welcome: "Welcome to the beginning of the my sisters budget blog. We are about answering budget questions and giving you a new way to look at your mo..."

Welcome

Welcome to the beginning of the my sisters budget blog. We are about answering budget questions and giving you a new way to look at your money. Check back often for tips from "My Sister"