Saving money one handful of change at a time.

Every year when the holidays come, I am stuck trying to figure out how to pay for gifts and do any activities we'd like to for the season.  I recently joined a Facebook group for budgeting run by A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Someone posted about the 52 Week savings plan.  I know this challenge would be hard for me to stick to, especially toward the end of the year.  Then I read about the 365 Day Saving Challenge.

This challenge was first shared by SavingAdvice.com.

For this challenge, you save your change each day.  Depending on what day of the year it is, that is how much you put into your jar or piggy bank.  Today is the 29th day of the year so you would add 29 cents to your jar.

I have started a savings jar for all 3 of us.  My co-workers are also doing this with me.

Each day I add money to the jar, I cross off that amount on my savings sheet.

I hope to have enough by the end of November to use for Christmas gifts this year.

If you'd like to join in on the 365 Day Savings Challenge, below you can print off a copy of the savings sheet.  I have formatted this one to print full size on 8.5 x 11 paper.  You can also find the sheet on the SavingsAdvice.com website.

365 Day Savings Challenge printable

Update on us.

Update on us.

My last blog post was in October!  Many things have happened since then that have really taken over our time and kept me away from blogging.

First was Halloween.

Yes, she was one of the 1,000,000 Elsas out there that night.

Then several things happened in a short period of time.

Girl Scouts took off and as a Daisy co-leader, that meant I had extra duties to try and make our troop great this year.  Then my body decided it wanted some attention.  I started noticing my heart was always racing.  No matter if I was up moving around, sitting at my desk or lying down at night, my heart was pounding so fast.  One morning I had just sat down at my work desk and it felt like my heart pounded twice really hard, stopped, stopped, stopped, and then slammed right back into my chest.  I immediately got up and went next door to my doctor.  At first, they didn’t have a lot of answers.  I was told to stop all medications – allergy and supplements.  I went back and still my heart was racing.  They drew some blood and I found out the next day I had hyperthyroid and possibly Graves Disease.

Graves Disease is an autoimmune disease where your own immune system starts attacking your thyroid.  I was sent to an endocrinologist and was told I did in fact have Graves and my numbers were “off the charts”.  They were concerned I would go into thyroid storm.  I can’t tell you much about it but was a nurse told me “when it happens, you think you are going to die”.   That doesn’t sound too peachy.

I was told they were going to start me on medication to try and get my levels back down (T3 and T4). The only problem was I might be allergic to the medicine.  So I spent the day before Thanksgiving at the doctor’s office – a cup with a pill and an epi pen ready to go – starting this journey.  I thankfully had no reaction and by now my levels have come down a little.  I have another doctor’s visit soon and from there we will decide how to proceed with all this in the future. 

But due to this Graves, and (really, couldn’t we think of a better name?), I have had to step down as co-leader because it was just too much.  My heart was still racing, my nerves were shot and I had no patience.  I realized I wasn’t much help so I have now gone back to being another set of hands to help out here and there. 

Then we has some fat man bearing gifts show up at our house.

New Years rang in and life is starting now to get back to somewhat calmer living.  Somewhat.

We are planning a 7^th birthday party. 

Can you believe it – 7?