Finances Shimances

From DadsAdventure.com

Wow, guys, I've been SWAMPED lately! Between dishing out advice on eyeglasses and gearing up for the Gratitude Blog Summit, I'm down to ZERO extra time. Sunday night, on the eve of what could have been a major catastrophe (had the general strike lasted longer than 4 hours), Craig and I found time to sit down and do our finances. Hello Rude Awakening! Sh*t here is expensive! After totaling up what we owe, we're left with mere pennies. OK, maybe not THAT bad.

The funniest part of doing finances with Craig comes in the form of puppies. Every time Craig put the pen to paper, Cecil decided he needed to make an attempt at stealing the pen from Craig's hands. This dog is beyond hilarious! As I turn to add stuff on the computer, Sparky comes up and bats at me from below the chair. They wanted attention - we wanted to finish our budgeting. Once our budgets were finished, we took a long hard look at what we spent money on:

• Chiropractor
• Dentist
• Groceries
• 10Bis (carry out)

Then we (and by we, I mean "I") devised a plan for how to penny pinch the Israeli way. We often use Groupon for trying out new restaurants but this month, we won't be eating out very often. There's really no time. Between Craig's school and work hours being stuff and me being insanely busy working - any time we spend together will be spent at home because we have no energy to leave once we're actually in the apartment.

Anyway, the stuff we spent money on and the stuff we currently spend money on are mostly necessities... the chiropractor helps keep my back from pinching during pregnancy (which is great) but he didn't make the cut for our finances for the coming month. He charges an arm and a leg for a 5 minute adjustment. My dentist - well, that's already paid up and with the amount of teeth that keep breaking, I'm happily going back to him. It cost me nearly $1,000 to have my teeth fixed up but when you consider it would have cost me over $12,000 in the U.S., I'll sit quietly.

Groceries are the thorn in my side. Food here is expensive but thankfully it's almost soup season. With soup season comes a drop in cost for my groceries. When it gets cold outside, all I eat is soup - it's all I crave. We just did a big shop (like 700 shekels/$190 worth) so now we're just picking up "small" things like eggs (30 shekels/$8 for 24 eggs), milk (6 shekels/$1.63 for 1 liter), bread (13 shekels/$3.50 per loaf of white bread), fruit and veggies. See why I hate buying groceries in this country? The only way to penny pinch here is to go on a diet... and eat nothing.

10Bis is a carry out site that many Israeli companies use. Some hi-tech companies give their employees a daily voucher for food. For Craig, he gets about 30 nis ($8) to use for lunch or dinner. You'd think that goes a long way (because in America, it does) but in Israel, it doesn't. It's hard to find one dish that's less than 30NIS much less an entire meal. We often pay a bit out of our pockets for the excess cost. My company doesn't offer the lunch voucher but we use 10bis. Since I have an account, I often order for people, put it on my credit card and then take their cash. I may have done this a little too often in October because my 10bis bill was high. So, this is getting cut out of my budget for November. While it's great to have cash on hand, I won't really need it because we're not spending anything this month.

Right now, I have a fridge full of soup chicken, "Orange Soup", cheese, other various dairy products, and cookies. My freezer is filled with frozen veggies, 2 frozen pizzas, and other stuff that I may want to eat if I ever find it. Let the games begin.