Why we upgraded our Costco membership

We had to renew our Costco membership this weekend. They sold us on upgrading to the executive membership. See my fancy new black card! It costs an extra $50 but you get 2% cash back on everything you buy at Costco. Which is pretty cool. Plus I get to go at 10:00 in the morning rather than having to wait til 11:00 when it opens for all the “normal” people. Which is way easier for me.

We normally spend about $100 a month just on groceries, so if we buy any big stuff, like stuff for my brand new Wii, it could put us over the $2,500 we need to make $50. We also buy tires and Christmas presents for the kids there. I bet over the year we could come pretty close to spending another $1,300. Especially if my husband gets his wish and we buy a new plasma TV for the living room.

But the cool part is that the program is risk free. If you don’t get at least $50 back they refund you the difference. So if our check is only $40 then they give us $10 back from our membership. So really, might as well do it, because the worst you can do is break even.

I can’t help but think, why do they offer a risk free cash back program. Where is the benefit for them? It didn’t take long for me to figure it out. I’ve been an executive member for about 5 days now and I’ve thought of several things I should start buying at Costco. Plus I automatically take 2% off the price of everything there. I need to stop doing that. The first $2,500 I spend there isn’t extra money anyways, so I shouldn’t be shopping with that in mind.

What we really hope to do is earn $100 a year, that way we can get our entire Costco membership for free. That would be awesome!

If you liked this article I recommend the following articles:
I didn’t know I was frugal

Watch your staples! (part 1)

Watch your staples! (part 2)

Are hybrids cheaper?

Ginger over at Girls Just Wanna Have Funds recently wrote about hybrids. She specifically wrote about SUV hybrids but it got me thinking. My husband’s car, a 2003 Hyundai Sonata, is next in line to be replaced. Pretty much the only thing we use his car for is to for him to drive back and forth to work. I also take it to school or to run errands if he is staying home with the kids. It’s our utility car. So in reality it doesn’t need to be fancy although I would love for him to get the Mustang he has been eyeballing since we met.

But anyways, back to the hybrid thoughts…Ginger’s post made me think about the cost of owning a hybrid. I had never done any research but for some reason I thought hybrids were really expensive and the initial cost outweighed the gas savings. Maybe that was true before gas hit $3.00 a gallon, but it doesn’t seem to be true anymore. So let's take a look.

I looked around and from what I found the Prius is the best deal going for a hybrid. It says on that website that they cost $20,000 but I’ve never known a dealership to sell a car for the online price. A quick stroll through auto trader and I figure it would cost us about $25,000 for a barely used Prius. And I’m assuming nothing for our trade since we still owe quite a bit on it. Kelly Blue Book breaks us about even, so nothing there.

I figured our payments on the Prius to be about $483.32 a month. ($25,000 at 6% for 60 months) Well, that pretty much settles it right there. The Sonata is costing us about $462 with the payment and gas. So, just the payment alone is $21 a month more than we are paying right now. And we haven’t considered gas yet.

We drive the Sonata about 1,500 miles a month and spend about $200 a month in gas. If the Prius gets their estimated 46 miles per gallon and we drive for 1,500 miles at $3.20 a gallon it would cost us $104. Which is amazing really.

In the end it would cost us $125 a month more to have a Prius. Our total outlay right now is about $462 and the Prius would cost us about $587. Gas would have to get up to $5.50 a gallon before the Prius would be cheaper. Either that or the price of hybrids would have to come down, which looks likely. It seems there are several low cost hybrids in the works right now.

Of course there are other considerations such as insurance, licensing, potential tax breaks, maintenance, ect.

While this means we won’t be running out and buying a new car this weekend, I’m certainly going to look into it when the times comes to buy a new car. Which is hopefully still a few years away.

Getting off on the right foot. (part 2)

So many people start out their marriages by getting into tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt. That just seems so crazy to me. Especially when you consider that 50% of marriages end in divorce and the number one reason sited is money problems. Maybe the first thing you do after getting engaged shouldn’t be to get some new credit cards and go hog wild planning a huge party. When you’re leafing through the latest issue of Bride magazine keep in mind that you should be planning a marriage, not a wedding.

The average cost of a wedding in my area is $29,090. That is a jaw-dropping figure! It hurts my frugal little brain to even think about spending that much on a wedding. I was talking to my husband about this post and I mentioned that I wish we still had our wedding budget. The next day he surprised me with it. I swear, he never throws anything away. Once in awhile that comes in handy, cause it was really cool to look back and see how we spent our money.

So here it is…

Wedding Budget
Ceremony			Reception
Rings	959		Decorations	56
Venue	270		Cups	12
Invitations	15		Plates	14
Dress	563		Napkins	9
Tux	80		Cameras	20
License	50		Table Cloths	10
Hair/makeup	0		Silverware	6
Nails	50		Picture Mat	10
Shoes	20		Food	309
Photographer	421		Drinks	34
Total	2428		Cake	75
			Cake topper	33
			Thank you cards	10
			Total	598

Here are some ideas to help keep your wedding costs under control.

Before you do anything sit down with your partner and figure out what is really important to you. For me, I wanted to have a real wedding dress and a professional photographer. But mostly I just wanted to marry my husband and if the important people in my life could be there then that would be great. We also didn’t skimp on our rings. I mean, we didn’t go crazy either but we got rings we love. I figured this was the one part of our wedding that we would always have. You know, besides our love.

Once you have your priorities straight stay away from wedding planning websites, magazines, and anyone who loves planning weddings. They will just give you ideas that will cost you money. It’s easier to stay focused on what’s really important if you don’t have these outside influences. If you start using words like ‘should’ or ‘have to’ then you are off track. Go back and look at your list of priorities again.

Figure out what you have to spend. Decide how much, if any, of your savings are you going to use. Also figure out how much of your discretionary income you can put to your wedding each month. Let’s say you have $1,000 in savings and you can spend $200 a month on your wedding. If your wedding is a year away then you have a total of $3,400 for your wedding budget. Not enough? Then maybe you should push the wedding back or make some cuts in your regular budget that you can put towards the wedding.

Make your budget. List all the things you can think of that you will need for your wedding and how much you have to spend on each. Keep the priorities you discussed earlier in the front of your mind while you do this. You might want to do some research to make sure your estimates are accurate. Wedding stuff can be way more expensive than you would expect. I know I said to stay away from wedding websites, but The Knot has a pretty nifty budgeting tool you can use for free.

My tips for staying on budget.

Keep the guest list small. You see this one on every list of frugal wedding planning. The more people you invite the more it costs. The bigger hall you need, the more decorations, the more food, ect. Luckily for us we have small families, so this was easy. We had a grand total of 26 guests.

Rent your dress. I didn’t rent my dress, but really, I might as well have. It has been hanging in my closet in a garment bag for the past 4 years. And that is probably right where it will be for the next 50. I could have saved myself hundreds of dollars, and some precious closet space, by just renting it. I would have looked just as pretty!

Have people chip in. I knew we already had plenty of household stuff, so if someone asked me what I wanted for a wedding gift I suggested something that we needed for the actual wedding. My mom’s gift was to have my hair and make-up done that morning. It was one of those things that I really wanted done but couldn’t justify spending the money on. But it doesn't have to be a gift of money. My friend's brother works at a restaurant and when she got married he was able to get her a great discount on food.

Print your own invitations. We got plain invitations from Target and printed them at home. There are several websites that have wording ideas that will help you figure out what to say. The same goes for the thank you cards.

Use silk flowers. Unless this was one of the things you listed in your priorities then you don’t step foot in a florist. I made my own bouquet with silk flowers. It wasn’t in the budget so I don’t remember how much it cost, but I would say it was less than $20. Even if you want real flowers you could save a lot of money by also using silk along with fresh. They don’t all have to be fresh. Maybe you could settle with just having your bouquet fresh and the decoration be silk. Or just fresh on the tables, where people might actually notice.

Use a free hall for the reception. Even a local park will work if the weather is going to be nice. This will save you huge money. You might save so much that you can beef up your guest list. Reception halls are expensive. Since we were buying a house at the time, we had planned to have our reception in our new back yard. Unfortunately the house was all but finished by the time we got married. I was so stressed at the idea of trying to book a reception hall last minute, but my in-laws came through with the rec. room in their retirement community. I’m not saying it was prestigious, but it was available and it was free. I wasn’t complaining.

Use outside catering. Ok, so I understand that using a room that is normally holding the nightly bingo game isn’t for everyone. If you decide to rent the local Moose lodge then ask if you can bring outside food. We had our reception catered by one of our favorite restaurants. It was cheaper, and tastier, than if we had gotten a hall and had to use their catering service.

Cheap shoes. If you have a traditional wedding dress then no one is going to see your shoes. Go barefoot! You’ll have less chance of falling down. I spent $10 on my shoes and $10 for my daughter’s shoes.

Skip the DJ. Again, unless this was one of your priorities then you most likely can make due with a friend or relative playing the music. We burned a few CDs of songs we wanted played and set it up ourselves.

Get your cake from the grocery store. I didn’t know grocery stores sold wedding cakes until I needed to buy one. There really isn’t any need to get one from a bakery that is going to charge you hundreds. I got ours from Wal-mart for $75. I got our cake topper there too.

Don’t serve alcohol. We had some champagne for toasts but that was it. Alcohol is expensive!

Lose the favors. No one goes to a wedding hoping to get a little baggy of silver Jordan Almonds. We didn’t have favors but I went to a wedding recently that gave out a CD of songs they played during the reception. I thought that was a cute idea and could be done for pennies per couple.

There is an endless supply of cost cutting ideas for weddings. I listed the ones I used. If you have other ideas please feel free to leave a comment.

Watch your staples!

Like everyone else, I have about 20 or so things I buy every week at the grocery store. When I first started shopping at my local grocery store I looked at all the prices of each individual thing and picked the item with the best value. For example, my husband really likes the gourmet bread but it’s pretty pricey compared to the regular sliced bread. So I’ve been buying a cheaper “middle of the road” version. It’s the same story on pretty much every other staple in our house. I get the cheapest milk, cheese, eggs, pasta, orange juice, ect.

Or so I thought.

Over the years the prices on these items has really crept up. But since these are things I buy every week without thinking about it I really hadn’t noticed. This weekend I realized that my “middle of the road” bread had gone up a whole dollar. I have no idea when this happened but now it’s more expensive than the fancy bread my husband likes.

It’s so sneaky. The only reason I even noticed was because I sent my husband to the store to buy a few little things that we needed and he pointed it out. Since he doesn’t do the shopping most weeks he didn’t take the prices for granted. He was actually looking, rather than grabbing things off the shelf without even slowing down.

So today when I go out to do our weekly shopping I will be looking at every price and making sure I really am getting the best value. I challenge you to do the same. Goodness knows I will be getting a different brand of bread.

*Picture by Ratterrell*