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June 24, 2011, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! I mentioned the business cards I was ordering for the Financial Blogger Conference 2011 a couple of times now. Well, they have finally arrived! I ordered two types and think they are both pretty cool. Woot woot!
Since they are small and my camera is not awesome, here is the best picture I could get of the front and back of the main design (you can click on it to zoom in if you’d like to see the details):
 Love them! And here is the tote bag:
 It is a little yellowed but I like it! What do you think? I am satisfied overall but wouldn’t suggest the mousepads from Vistaprint – mine was cut crookedly…
June 23, 2011, at 6:00 am
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by Easy Canvas Prints asking if I’d like to review their product in exchange for using their service to order one free print. As you may have noticed, I rarely do reviews on Budgeting in the Fun Stuff since they are more time consuming than my normal posts and I usually don’t want whatever item I am being asked to review. But I had already seen an ad or two for Easy Canvas Prints and was intrigued. Here is my honest review of their website service and product.
My Picture
As you will see below, I selected an image of a flower bouquet that Mr. BFS surprised me with a few years ago. He pops up with flowers once or twice a year for no reason at all, which is fantastic to me, but this bouquet was by far my favorite ever. I love whatever type of Lily that is! It’s just gorgeous!
Ordering the Print
As I was saying, ordering the print was extremely easy in my opinion, which is the most important aspect of any site for me. Once I downloaded the photo, selected what size of canvas I wanted, selected the edge option, and selected the depth of the frame, I adjusted the placement of the image and added it to my cart. It was a very simple process that the software walks you through step-by-step.
I personally liked how interactive it was – as I was choosing what part of my picture to zoom in on, the program would automatically recreate the image so I could see how it would look. It seemed a little too hair-trigger, but it ended up helping me figure out exactly how to center my picture and how much I should zoom in to get the best out of the colors.
Three days after I ordered it, it came VERY well packaged to my door. I was impressed with how they protect their canvases! Only truly horrific delivery circumstances would ever be able to damage the prints since they are packed dead-center of a bigger box. No part of the canvas touched a part of the box that could be damaged. When you are talking about paying good money for what amounts to art, I appreciate it when packaging is taken into account.
End Result
As you can see below, my picture was turned into a very nice canvas print. Mr. BFS was kind enough to hang it above my new blogging desk while I was still at work, so it was a surprise when I walked in! A very pretty surprise at that! Here’s how it looks on my wall:
 Here is a close-up. Isn't it pretty?!  I went with the 16" x 20" size and 1.5" edge in black. Price-wise, it looked like Easy Canvas Prints would be an affordable way to create a really great gift or artwork set for your home, but I personally will not be able to splurge on them more than once or twice a year. The one I ordered, a 16″ x 20″ with a 1.5″ black edge, is currently running about $90 total and the 8″ x 10″ ones with 3/4 inch edges are about $35. Keep in mind that they seem to be having a 25% off sale right now, so those prices may be higher in the future.
Overall, I am impressed and would honestly suggest this site to family and friends like you as a once in a while indulgence. I may be ordering two additional 8″ x 10″ ones with more bright colors soon just to finish off the wall above my desk…
What do you think? Have you ever considered having a photo turned into a print?
June 22, 2011, at 6:00 am
It’s been a while since I’ve given all of you an update on my dogs. In case you weren’t around here last year, my husband and I live with two dogs – Miss Doxie, the 13 year old Dachshund, and Mr. Pug, the 8 year old Pug. They were both rescues - Miss Doxie was from the Houston SPCA in 2005 and Mr. Pug was from Pughearts in 2009.
Mr. Pug
Long story short, Mr. Pug developed major food and environmental allergies last year and was slowly deteriorating. It cost about $2000 altogether last year to get him back on a healthy track and will run us about $500 a year from here on out to maintain him. Yep, he’s an expensive pet.
In fact, he is the reason that I pretty much tell everyone that if they aren’t ready to put in $1000 a year on a dog, don’t risk it by getting one and definitely stay away from Pugs. They are inbred and have a lot of natural health issues, but they have the sweetest personalities ever. We got very lucky that Miss Doxie hasn’t had any major problems and we know it.
Anyway, the end result for Mr. Pug last year is that he is officially allergic to meat, dairy, soy, wheat, and corn. Yep, he is a vegan dog that can’t eat soy, wheat, or corn. His food is sweet potato and rice based and his favorite treats are frozen green beans and pieces of melon.
Vet Lab Work
He is also going to be on steroids for the rest of his life, but the vet requires he gets lab work done every 6 months to make sure the steroids aren’t killing him too quickly. We know they will probably shave a year or two off of his overall life span, but if they hurt his liver before then, the vet would want to try something else.
The Vet Bill
His visit a couple of weeks ago was for his first bi-annual lab work. $275 later, he was pronounced to be in good overall health with a slight skin infection that they gave him an antibiotic injection for. Here’s the breakdown of the bill:
- Recheck Exam (fee to walk in the door, yay *heavy sarcasm*) - $65.00
- Hazardous Waste Disposal (seriously, they threw away a needle or something) - $6.00
- Pre-Op Chemistry Screen (actual lab work) - $68.75
- Urinalysis (actual lab work) – $42.75
- Skin Cytology (actual lab work) - $36.00
- Convenia Injection (way overpriced 0 I saw it online for $20) – $57.80
- GRAND TOTAL: $276.30
OUCH! Stupid skin infection cost us $100. He is a crafty little dog that sometimes gets into things he shouldn’t like Miss Doxie’s food or the pantry when we are throwing something away. That leads to allergic reactions and possible skin infections. I swear he is suicidal when it comes to food…
In short, my poor dog is expensive and I just wanted to share that with you today. 
Do you have pets? Are they pretty expensive too or did you get lucky?
June 21, 2011, at 6:00 am
The longer I am alive, the more I realize that it is really a great idea to just let people know what you need.
My Personality
As you may have guessed, I am not an introvert. I don’t keep my feelings or thoughts to myself much. Usually that leads me to apologizing profusely for sticking my foot so far down my throat that I could tap dance on my spleen, BUT it also seems to lead to me getting help with whatever issue is currently on my mind.
Help with My Business Cards
For example, I am in the process of getting new business cards made for Budgeting in the Fun Stuff so I can hand them out at the Financial Blogger Conference in Chicago. I tried to tackle them about 2 weeks ago, but my Gravatar image was too low of a resolution to come out nicely on my cards. After asking around, I realized I was going to have a heck of a time trying to figure out how to fix this on my own.
Please keep in mind that I am not good with technology…at all…I am the lady who tried starting a new blog (Crystal Clear Thoughts) and accidentally overwrote BFS in the process! Yep, I tried to do what millions of people do every day and deleted my baby.
That said, my stupid business card logo problem was on my mind all of last week. Anytime someone asked about my blog or brought up current events, my logo resolution problem popped out of my mouth. I didn’t harp on it, but it was on my mind, so I did vent about it to friends and a few coworkers at my day job.
The strangest but most awesome thing happened while I was venting to a friend at work – my surpervisor walked by, heard a snippet of what I said, turned around, and then VOLUNTEERED to make my logo in whatever resolution I wanted with Corel Draw!!! He spent about 4 hours over 3 days recreating my logo in a program that makes the clearest, coolest images ever! Seriously, my business cards are going to be amazing!!!
Past Help
The moral of the story? You never know who may be able to help. If I wasn’t as non-filtered as I am, I’d still be up the creek with my business cards. In fact, my general openness has led me to a ton of great info and help.
A past coworker introduced me to Roth IRA’s when I mentioned that I didn’t really know what all of my options for retirement investing were other than our 401(k). I got puppy stairs for my Pug by mentioning we were looking to family and friends. Heck, I met my husband simply because I was in a chatty mood and he hadn’t built up the courage to talk to me yet.
So despite the fact that my generally too-talkative self can get me in trouble sometimes, it also has helped me out along the way too. 
I’m ecstatic about my business cards and will definitely scan them in for you all to see when they arrive from Vistaprint. I splurged and even paid extra to have something printed on the back with another color image of my logo. I hope you all like them!
Have you ever gotten help by simply mentioning a problem to somebody? Isn’t it the coolest thing?!
June 20, 2011, at 6:00 am
I was running our monthly budget numbers last week and realized that there are several steps to our budget that I may not have shared with all of you. You may have seen the plan and the end results before, but here are the actual steps of how I budget:
- We mainly spend using credit cards, the Discover More card and the Penfed Visa. If we take cash out for any little extras, I put it into our budget under “cash”.
- After the end of our budget month, which is on the 13th of each month, I print out our credit card statements.
- I look at every single item on each statement to make sure it belongs.
- I then go through each statement with different-colored highlighters. Pink is for any vacation or big fun expenses, yellow is for blog expenses, green is for my husband’s fun money expenses, orange is for my fun money expenses, and purple is for any big home or car expenses.
- I add up all the amounts of each color and transfer that much money from each of the appropriate bucket accounts. For example, if we spent $325 on a car repair and I spent $30 on my blog, I transfer $325 from our ING car account and $30 from our ING blog income account into our ING checking account to cover those parts of the bill.
- Once all of the extras have been handled, I pay both of our credit card bills.
- Then I pay all of our savings goals – $350 to the emergency fund, $500 into the car and home account, $400 into the tax account, $240 into the cash for extra investments account, $120 into each fun money account, and $200 into the vacation account. I pay them in that order, so if we run out of money, only the fun money and vacation accounts are gypped for the month.
- After the bills and goals are paid, I take a look at our ING checking account again. I like to keep $1000 in it for padding, but if there is more than that left, I divide the remainder as follows: the Emergency Fund/Savings account (25%), the Extra Cash for Investments account (35%), the Vacation account (20%), and our two individual Fun Money accounts (10% each).
- Once all of that is done, I enter every single expense and savings amount into the correct category of our Excel spreadsheet.
This whole process takes me 2 hours a month and lets me know if we went off the deep end on spending in any specific category. My ING account bucket system is why our budget is so even every month – you don’t ever see the occasional huge expense since I covered it with the appropriate account’s money already. I simply am able to show you that we are paying a certain amount into those accounts every month. I will let you know if there is ever a time where an expense can’t be covered by its designated ING account, but that hasn’t happened yet for us.
What do you think? Is my system crazy complicated to you? What system do you use?
June 20, 2011, at 5:00 am
The following is a guest post brought to you by Compare The Market.
We all try to save where we can. You can save money on your monthly insurance payments by applying the following techniques.
Add a Security System
You can lower your homeowner’s insurance premium payments by installing a personal security system. Monitored security systems reduce the risk of your home being robbed or vandalized by thieves. You can save as much as 20% off of your regular insurance premiums just by adding an alarm system. Find out from your insurance company which system entitles you to the largest discount.
Make your Home a Smoke Free Area
Making your home a smoke free environment is not only good for your health but good for your wallet as well. Be sure to let your insurance company know that you do not smoke in your home, as this will lower your insurance payment since it reduces the risk of a fire. Install a smoke detector on each floor of your home so that you are eligible for additional discounts.
Shop Your Quote
Get a quote from your current home insurance company and shop it around both on the Internet and in person. Compare The Market prices, compares, and selects the one that offers the lowest premium payments for the dollar amount of coverage that you need. You might be surprised to know that your insurance company will lower your price to match or beat the quotes from other companies.
Fix your Credit
Credit scores are being used a lot more often in everyday business transactions. Insurance is another one of those areas where your credit rating matters. People with bad credit have higher insurance payments since they are seen as high credit risks. As you improve your credit rating, your insurance premium payments will decline as well.
Increase the Deductible Amount
There are several pros and cons to increasing your insurance deductible. One of the biggest reasons that you should raise your deductible is that you can save anywhere from 10% to 37% off of your premiums. This makes sense since home owner’s insurance is usually only used in the event of major claims anyway.
These small moves can make homeowners insurance a lot cheaper proposition for you and your family.
June 19, 2011, at 2:08 am
By popular suggestion, I will only be having monthly blog stat updates from here on out. But I am still a proud participant of The Saved Quarter Challenge!
The Saved Quarter Challenge Update
I joined The Saved Quarter Challenge this year and was aiming to save at least $21,000 by the end of 2011! WE HIT THAT GOAL THIS WEEK!!! WOOT!!! My new goal is to save a cool $42,000 by the end of 2011 instead!!! That would be a tiny bit more than 50% of our GROSS pay from our two full time jobs!!!
Here’s how I’ve done this week for the Saved Quarter Challenge:
I have better updates after the 13th of every month since that is when our billing periods end, so here is where we funnelled away money this past week:
- Roth IRA – $300
- Home and Auto – $500
- Emergency Fund – $350
- Extra Cash for Investments – $120
- Blogging Income – $500
That blogging income was a combo of a side deal, freelance work, and regular ads. I’m building my blogging income account up with as much padding as possible by the end of the year to be a backup fund when I start blogging full time.
The new $42,000 goal is hopefully going to be reached solely through 100% true savings – 401(k), Roth IRA, emergency fund/savings, home and auto maintenance account, extra cash for investments, and blogging income.
Total This Week: $1770
We can save what we do because we live off of a little more than my husband’s salary as a school librarian ($38,000 take home pay). That means we save most of what I make ($26,000 take home pay a year) and all of our hobby job incomes (reffing for Mr. BFS and blogging for me). Reffing usually brings in $2000-$3000 a year and blogging is bringing in $15,000 or more a year (we’ve already hit more than $10,000 for January-May 2011).
Total to date: $21,978 guaranteed, $20,022 to go.
Additonal Info
I will continue posting monthly and yearly blog statistics and income updates, so stay tuned at the beginning of every month!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you don’t already, you can follow me via RSS or Twitter by following those links.
To learn more about the Yakezie, the blogging group that has helped me in SO many ways, check out my Yakezie page! Feel free to email me if you are a Yakezie member or challenger and don’t see yourself on the list!
If you are interested in seeing how I went from an 8 million plus Alexa rank to about 50,000 in less than 8 months, you can see My Blogging Schedule, which breaks down everything I do related to blogging. If you want to see how I brought in $6000 in less than 10 months, you can check out How I Make Money Blogging.
THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING THE BEST READERS EVER!!!
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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