Aloha Friday #94

This is two weeks in a row now for me with Aloha Friday. Yeah me! For those of you who have not heard of Aloha Friday, every Friday on the Blog An Island Life an easy question for everyone to answer gets posted.

This week’s question is:
Are you a good secret keeper?

My answer:
I believe that I am. I agree that it can be tempting to tell some secrets, but I am always afraid of being found out. It's much better to keep your mouth shut. It's amazing the things people will tell you when you don't pass on the details.

My Question Is:
Now that summer is so close to being over, what are you going to miss about summer?

I'm going to miss not having to wear a coat or jacket. I hate wearing jackets but I tend to get cold a lot.

Tracking Cash Spending

For me, part of spending less money is limiting myself to spending only cash. I know that a lot of people like to stick with the envelope system to make sure that they are spending their cash from the correct category, but that really doesn't work well for me. I hate having a bunch of envelopes to keep track of and I feel like it clutters up my purse.

My solution is to track my cash spending on my iPhone. I use the Spend Lite app which is completely free. The Spend Lite program only lets you track daily or weekly budgets. If you want to track bi-weekly, monthly, semi-monthly or annual budgets you will have to pay $0.99 for the full Spend program.

I love that this app automatically puts my budgeted money into the proper category on the specified day. Plus I can export my spending records via a csv file in an email from my iPhone to anyone I choose. You can also password protect your file with a pin. That way if someone else picks up your iPhone you don't have to worry about them seeing your financial information. And, if needed, you can transfer money from one budget to another.

I also setup a "budget" to track my extra income. For this category my budgeted amount is zero and whenever I make extra money I do a deposit to that category. I love it. You could also use this to track your monthly savings and so forth. I can easily zero out this account each month or keep a running total. It's also super easy to see how much "extra" money I've made.

The one thing that I don't like about this app is that you can't rename a category. For example, I have a category "Food" and it should really be "Household." I would love to have the correct name on this, but I can't figure out a way to change it.

I love the Spend Lite app and the fact that it's free only makes it better. Since it is free, if you're looking for something like this and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, why not download it and try it out?

I will note that I do not use this app for tracking my bank accounts. I track them in a completely different application which is the subject for another post.

For more Frugal Friday Tips, head over to Life As Mom. And if you have any recommendations for iPhone apps that you love, I would love to hear about them. Feel free to leave me a comment with the name of the app or email me.

A Journal To Keep Me Sane

I started keeping a personal journal when I was in college. I'm talking about a private hand written journal here. When I started my journaling it was a way for me to cope with various things that were going on in my life at the time. I could write out all of my frustrations and not have to worry about anyone's opinion. It was my therapy.

Over the years my journaling habits have evolved a lot. I now write about all kinds of things, but my journal is still my sounding board. It's a completely private place for me to work through whatever issues are bothering me. I also keep all kinds of notes in there and snippets of some dreams I've had. Really, I write about whatever is on my mind.

During the course of the many years that I have been journaling, my writing habits have varied a lot too. That first journal actually took me a couple years to fill. At one point several years ago I was able to completely fill a journal in a week. There have been times when I haven't written for months, but for the most part I do write daily. The biggest adjustment came after my daughter was born. For months I simply did not have the time or the energy to write in my journal. Now I'm finally making time for it again and it feels good. I had forgotten how much daily writing helped me. Now I make sure that writing in my journal is on my to do list. By taking the time to write and clear my head every day I tend to have a much more positive outlook on life.

If you've never tried personal journaling, I suggest giving it a try. You can write in whatever is handy. Right now you can get spiral notebooks really cheap at various stores, but if you prefer a more "typical" journal you can check your local bookstore to see what they have. For your first journal I'd suggest sticking with some fairly cheap. You don't want to spend so much money on it that you're afraid to actually write in it. Wherever you write, don't be afraid to jump right in and start writing about whatever is on your mind.

For more Things I Love Thursday, head over to The Diaper Diaries.

Wordless Wednesday - August 5

Happy Wordless Wednesday everyone!

Ok, so I'm not so wordless, but I do enjoy sharing pictures of our week.

Here is Pumpkin playing with the Fisher Price Market Place daddy found her at a yard sale. Great score daddy! I think it's the best $6 he's spent recently.

Later that same day, here is Pumpkin enjoying a cookie daddy gave her. What can I say, this was a really good day for her.
And a couple days before that Pumpkin got to enjoy a cookie at the Barnes and Noble Cafe with mommy. Yeah, she's my little Cookie Monster. Daddy's even been teaching her how to lick the creamy middle from the Oreos.


And finally, how many toddlers do you know that can be this happy with a purse and a battle axe in the Dollar Tree? I had to literally pry the battle axe out of her hands so we could leave. No, I didn't buy it for her. She is way to young to have her own battle axe.


For more Wordless (or Wordful) Wednesday head over to:
5 Minutes For Mom
Look What Mom Found...and Dad Too
Seven Clown Circus
Mud Bug
Ordinary and Awesome
A Daily Dose of Toni
My Sippy Cup Runneth Over
Sweet Serendipity

Mom Dot

Google Calendar on my iPhone for Free

Note: I didn't realize that there was a Back to School Theme for this week's Works For Me Wednesday when I typed up this post. However, back to school typically means more activities to keep track of, so this could still be a good tip for the back to school season.

I have been using Google Calendar for months now. So when I finally got my iPhone I was very excited to see that I can sync the iPhone Calendar with my Google calendar. This way I can update my calendar either from my iPhone or from Google Calendar online. I've also setup my Google Calendar so that my hubby can access it. That allows him to update my calendar and it automatically updates on my iPhone. I love it.

Plus you can setup alerts so that it emails you and/or pops up an alert on your phone. I love the pop up alert. I set it to remind me a few minutes before an event when I think I could easily get busy and forget it. For example, I have setup pop up alerts for 5 minutes before a tv show I want to watch. You can turn the alerts on on off for each event, so don't feel like you're going to constantly have alerts popping up on you.

I also like to use the pop up alert to remind me in the mornings about what we're doing for dinner that night. That way I remember to pull what I need out of the freezer before I head off to work. Before I started doing this I was always forgetting to take dinner out of the freezer. Now I have my reminders. I've gotten to a point that when my husband wants to make sure I remember something he tells me to put it in my iPhone. Yeah, he has no faith in my memory.

The best part is that you can do all this absolutely free. Setting up Google Calendar is free and so is using the sync when you do it the way Google instructs. There are several apps out there that you could pay for that accomplish this, but Google has the instructions right on their website. They walk you step by step through how to sync your Google Calendar and/or Contacts with your iPhone. I have both of mine synced and love it. I highly recommend it. And remember, do it the free way. Don't pay a third party app to do something you can do yourself for free. And this will work on the iPod Touch too.

For more Works for Me Wednesday, head over to We Are THAT Family.

To Do Tuesday - August 4

Last week I really didn't do as well as I should have. I really dropped the ball with keeping my daily food and exercise journal. Sadly I don't even have an excuse, I just got lazy. This week I really need to do better.

I'm still not sure how I feel about Toodledo. I like that I can view it on my iPhone or online and that it's free. It just doesn't completely feel right to me. I don't know how to explain it. I think I'll keep looking. If you have a To Do app for the iPhone that you'd like to recommend, leave me a comment with the name and I'll check it out.

Here is my To Do List for this week:

Clip Coupons (carry over from last week)
File Coupons (carry over from last week)
Put Away Laundry
Gather more items for yard sale √
Sell lots of items at yard sale this weekend √

Here's my Recurring To Do List:

Keep daily food & exercise journal (√ √ √ √ Sa Su M)
Write daily blog posts (√ √ √ √ √ √ √ Tu)
Keep email inbox cleaned out
Track Daily Spending (√ √ √ √ √ Su M)
Walk dogs every evening (√ √ √ F Sa Su M)
Write in journal daily (√ √ √ √ √ Su √)
Complete Menu Plan for next week √

What do you need to get done this week? To see more To-Do Tuesday lists, head over to Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

Parting With "Stuff" That's No Longer Used

This week I decided to gather up some more of my "stuff" for another yard sale. The last one did pretty well and I still have a lot of stuff that I don't really use. I don't see the point in moving unused stuff to a new house so now is a great time for me to part with it. I've been going through the house and trying to pick up a few more things to sell every night. Whatever doesn't sell will be donated.

Sometimes it's sad to part with things you own. For example, I've decided to part with my scrapbooking supplies. I haven't done any scarapbooking in five years now and with a toddler I don't see me having time to scrapbook for at least the next few years. I enjoyed it in the past and love the scrapbooks that I have, but it is one hobby I'm pretty sure that I am not going to get back to. So it's time for the scrapbooking supplies to go. It's sad to see the stuff go and remember the projects I had planned, but once that stuff is gone, it feels to good to be rid of it. I no longer have all of the supplies around reminding me of the projects I'll never get around to.

What do you have that you could stand to get rid of? I'm sure everyone has something. What are you waiting for? Get rid of it already. You don't have to have a yard sale or donate it. You could pass the item on to someone who could use it or even sell it online with Craigslist of eBay. However you do it, stop procrastinating and get rid of it. You'll be glad you did.

For more Tackle It Tuesday, head over to 5 Minutes For Mom.