Clear as Mud

When last we spoke, our heroine was whining about cheese and milk. And she asked for your donation suggestions. And we received 5 very thoughtful suggestions. I was going to put it up for a poll, but I think we’ve just decided that the Children's Art Project is who I’ll write the check out to. The other charities are really cool, and I will keep them in mind for future donations.

While other bloggers ate in all month, or ate cereal to save money, I thought I could save more money by doing what I normally do anyway. (Here’s where the water starts getting murky, but bear with me.) I have a very extensive budget. So extensive in fact, that I can tell you now if I spent $200 on something frivolous, if it will put us in the hole in December of 2009. That’s true and not true at the same time though, because I under estimate our income from our pay checks, we always get an income tax refund, which is not put in there, when we get rebates, they are deposited in there. And I over estimate our bills, sometimes by $5 or so, sometimes by as much as $100. It’s not fool-proof by any means, groceries and gas are not accounted for, and neither are general household purchases like furniture. Our normally frivolous stuff like eating out or CDs or DVDs comes out of our allowance. Anyway, back to the point. In my normal monthly routine, I take half of the difference between the estimated bill and the real bill and put it in savings.

Estimated Bill = $350
Actual Bill = $300
Difference = $50
Into Savings = $25

And this month, I will be taking half of the sum of the savings amount and writing the check to the Children's Art Project, in the example above, $12.50 would go to the charity.

This month I was able to collect $50 that way. It’s not much, but $50 is more than I’ve donated to any other charity at one time before.