Embezzling?!

Daniel and I have really enjoyed working on our budget together and setting goals.  It has been fun to decide where to save money & research more ways to earn and save.  It takes self control and dedication, but we work through it together.

Last weekend I went home and Daniel was left to update the budget.  He had put his part off for a while, so it was a big job.  Later, when I looked at our budget/ savings goals, I realized just how hard it had been on him.  I think he might be suffering from a bad case of -I Miss My Ford Truck Syndrome.

This is what our savings plan looked like:
Vet School Savings: 0
Medical Savings: 0
Trips, Travel & Fun Fund: 0
Emergency Savings:  0
Retirement: 0
Truck Fund: $$,$$$!!

I am glad he is not an impulse buyer!  A new truck in our driveway would have been a lot harder to deal with. :D

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover...Right?

Our Apartment-
As you can see, when looking for a new apartment, the cosmetics of the exterior was not high on our list of priorities. :D

This is our new apartment in Idaho Falls.  :D  It was definately a bit of a culture shock moving here from Rexburg.  We moved from a city that is probably 99% LDS to a neighborhood full of potential members.

I am pleased to say that it is much nicer looking on the inside & probably twice the size of our last apartment. Here is a brief tour:

  This is our living room.  We have lamps because there are no ceiling lights in the living room!  Weird!

This is our Dining Room.  We found the red curtains on clearance.  I love them.

This is our Laundry Closet.  We are so excited to have a washer & dryer in our apartment!  We got the Washer for Free and the Dryer for $50, which we thought was a sweet deal.  No more laundry mats for us!

This is our Kitchen.  We are not crazy about the yellow counter tops, but we have a lot of cupboard space!

This is our bedroom. Daniel was excited that we have room to walk on both sides of our bed- no more crawling over eachother!

This is our spare room/ office/ storage room/ recreation room/library.... yup, it is our all purpose room where we keep all our stuff.

This is my 2nd favorite part about our apartment (after the washer & dryer).  This is our dirt.  Actually, it is the garded spot next to where ours will be.  We have not dug out the grass for our spot yet, but we will have a garden!  We are so excited to have fresh produce again.  Hopefully we will have enough to can!

Well, that is it.  Welcome to our home.

San Francisco- The City of Hills

Daniel & I went on a quick trip to San Francisco. It was great! One day we will go back with more time & more money to spend. :D

Lombard Street was our favorite! It is the Crookedest street in the world. We drove down it- Crazy! San Francisco has crazy hills anyway, but this one is the best. Below is a better picture of the whole section of street.

Driving on the hills was definately an experience. I thought we were going to roll back down the road several times because the hills are so steep!

We ate dinner on top of the Macy's building in Union Sqaure. It was a pretty neat little place. Daniel ordered a pizza... We did not realize it was a whole pizza! He ate all but 2 pieces!

There were a lot of cable cars & trolly's. We did not ride one ( it cost $5 a trip!!) But they looked fun/scary!

Of course, we saw a lot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

We found a nice beach on the west side of the penisula that had an awesome view of the Bridge. Don't look too close at the picture though. We thought that there were just some crazy old men who had something against wearing clothing. But when we asked our friend about it, we were told that it is a nude beach... oops!

It was a great trip. We were very grateful for the Garmin GPS system we had with us. Without it we would have been very lost!

Why did we go to San Francisco? Our Friends, Dave & Larissa Wilcox, got married in Oakland, California. We are very excited for them. It was great to be able to attend their wedding. Sorry, we did not have any good pictures of the Bride & Groom.

We have Internet again!

After nearly a month long break, we finally have internet at our apartment again!! Hurray! I knew that we were dependant upon it- but I did not realize how dependant. Did you know that you can look up addresses in the phone book? Yeah- Google Maps is a lot easier. :D

For those of you who don't know, we moved to Idaho Falls! Yup- it was kind of sudden. We had talked about it for a while, but the actual move happened pretty quick. We decided to move, found an apartment, went on a trip to San Francisco, and moved in 2 weeks time. Yup- it was crazy!

Living Like No One Else- Farewell Truck

Until this last Monday, frugal living has not been too much of a sacrifice. We have very few real needs & it has been an adventure to find new ways to save & earn money.

On Monday we sold Daniel's truck.

It only got 16 miles to the gallon.

It was our only debt.

A small car with good gas mileage is more practical.

We did not really Need a truck...

But we will really miss it!!!

This was on our first date:

Yup- Daniel picked me up in his white truck to go snowshoeing. One the way home, we got stuck & had to be pulled out by a bigger pickup.

One day we will have bigger, better truck that we own 100%. For now, we will be frugal.

At the end of last year Daniel & I sat down & made some big financial goals. Our long term financial goal is to get through vet school debt free. (I posted more about it on my coupon blog) We don't know how we will do this- but we decided to shoot for the stars, do our best, and hopefully get really close. We have listened to a few Dave Ramsey books about financial freedom & staying out of debt. One of thing Dave Ramsey says is-

Live like no one else Now
so that you can live like no one else later

The meaning is that if we make the necessary sacrifices now to live within our means & stay out of debt, we will have financial freedom & be self reliant later. Daniel & I decided that the benefits of a debt free (or close to debt free) life is worth a little sacrifice now.

For now, until Daniel is accepted to school, our goal is to work hard & save as much money as we can. There are 2 parts to our savings plan.

1.) Increase our income by working hard
2.) Decrease our spending through frugal living

Saving money has become our little adventure/ addiction. I am incharge of minamizing our grocery budget through using coupons. Daniel is in charge of tracking our savings. He has created a "Grant Family Income Allocation" excel sheet. Daniel has set this excel sheet up to show our monthly expenses, our monthly income, and where each penny we are saving goes. Daniel gets really excited about his excel sheet. We have an account for vet school savings, an emergency fund, our summer trips, retirement, etc.

At the very bottom of our excel sheet is an 'account' labled: Daniel's Truck. Right now there is $0 being allocated to that fund, but one day....

LeaDawn & Daniel

The Waiting Game Continues...

2 weeks ago, Daniel had an interview at Washington State- exciting! The interview went well, and we have been waiting to hear back ever since. If he was accepted, he would get an email & then a packet of information in the mail. If he was rejected, he would get a letter in the mail. We have been hoping for an email...

Friday Daniel got a letter in the mail from Washington State University, College of Veterinary Medicine. When Daniel saw the letter, he immediantly assumed that it was a rejection letter, and almost did not open it. :D

But Daniel opened the letter and was suprised to find that he is an Alternate for the incomming class of 2010. What does this mean? He was not rejected!! And we have a lot more waiting to do. They can contact us as late as August to let us know there is an open seat for us. If they contacted us in August, we would move to Washington in August & start school.

What is our plan?

Good Question! We know we will be going to school eventually- so we are planning towards that. Our goal is to save as much money as possible towards paying for vet school so that we can come out as debt free as possible. If Daniel cannot find work here, we will move---somewhere.

Our Christmas Adventure

I hope you all had a fun Christmas! We were so lucky to get to spend Christmas with Daniel's Family in California. It was great to see everyone and enjoy the warm weather for a change!

Before we left for our week & 1/2 trip, we visited my parents and family in Paul.

My sister Natasha & her husband & 3 boys drove all the way from Mississippi to be with the family for Christmas. We were glad to get to see them for a few days. Natasha and I have been exploring the world of coupons & coupon blogging together. We had to restrain ourselves so that we did not spend the whole time talking about frugal tips and coupons. :D
We had this cute little tree in our appartment- for all of December and half of January! :D We cheated and opened presents from my family before we left for California.
Both of my grandparents gave us blankets. They must know how cold it is in Rexburg! Don't they look warm?!

We left the Wednesday before Christmas to make the 13 hour drive to the much warmer state of California!

It was so fun to see the family traditions of the Grant family. We ate with family and played chimes on Christmas eve. Then we drove to Mellissa and Tylers new house to spend Christmas there.

Kids sure make Christmas exciting. Daniel and I probably would have slept in... but not with 4 nieces and nephews waiting to see what Santa brought them!!

The Grnat Family is very efficient at opening presents. We were done by 9 am! I called my family to say Merry Christmas, and they were eating breakfast & they had only opened the presents from Santa! (And they had an hour head start!)

On this trip to California, we learned that Payton is a pianist (We only heard this once, since Granddad has the piano clamped closed...), a singer (she will sing about anything & everything), and a dancer!

Since we were in the warm state of California, we had to go swimming. We had a date with the hot tub one night since the pool is not warm in the winter. We did to give the pool a try, just to see...

Daniel was dared to do a cannon ball into the pool.

Yup, it was freezin'!! I walked in the shallow end, but I could not make myslf get much farther than my belly button! The water was freeeeezing!

We walked from Daniel's house down to the Rose Parade. It is such a fun tradition. This was one of our favorite floats. The airplane turned.

Payton really enjoyed the parade. I am not sure why the glasses are upside down... :D This float had dogs snowboarding in tu-tus! It was so cute.
This was my favorite. It was labled the scissor wizard.

Happy New Year Everyone!