$ave Money

Some of you know that Jake and I are leading a Crown Financial class. A woman named Barb told me about one of our church members named Kara Rozendaal who runs a website called PracticalSaver.com For a mere $25 a year, yes I said YEAR, she will email you weekly lists of grocery store (currently they are all Prescott and Phoenix area only) sales. She gives you tips on how to organize and use coupons, where to get them doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. There are helpful hints on how to cut costs around your home. Here is one item I am going to try:

Homemade Laundry Detergent This stuff is 13 times less expensive than store bought brands. I'm all about saving money anyway I can. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

There is a website called Soapsgonebuy.com that sells all of these products cheap and also in kits already to make. They have the Fels-Naptha already grated (for a higher price) if you prefer that. They have other recipes on there as well including a powdered detergent using the same ingredients. These products are also available in retail stores locally also. Kara wrote that the Fels-Naptha is the cheapest at Ace Hardware.

The ingredients are:

Dummy Book

Well, I'm about half way through the Personal Finance for Dummies book and I have to say it is pretty good. There is a lot of good advice in there. I feel that a lot of it I already knew. I'm at the chapter on how to increase savings and decrease debt. It's getting good now!

A New Read

Jake and I are taking a personal finance class through church and decided we would buy additional books as well. The more we can do to organize our money now, the better. Our class officially starts 14 October and I am very excited to get ourselves into a better habit of organizing and budgeting our money. The class will end by Christmas and it will be nice to start 2009 off right with new great habits. We bought Personal Finance for Dummies and I'm going to start going through it tonight. I figured this is a good one to start with since it's written very simply for us "dummies." I'll keep you up to date on how the book is!