When my sister and I lived together in Indianapolis, we had a little…incident.

My sister worked in the building we lived in, and accepted a package for work on her way into the building one morning, before office hours. Little did she know, the package was full of marijuana and there was someone outside waiting for it to be dropped off thinking that UPS would leave it at the door.

Turns out that the gentlemen waiting for the package lived in our building, was able to track the package, and knew that my sister signed for it. He also knew that she lived in the building just by passing her in the halls.

There was police security and he was eventually apprehended, but we went out to buy pepper spray the minute we found out the suspect lived in our building.

Pepper spray was hard to find and pricey when we did find it, but it was worth every penny for the sense of security it offered us! Since then I’ve always been prepared, and you can too with Freedom Security Products. They carry everything from stun guns to pepper spray to personal alarms so that you can protect yourself at all times.

• $25 Doctor
• $5 Wendy’s
• $40

I had a doctors appointment last night and picked up some Atkin’s friendly Jr. Cheeseburgers on the way home. Tonight, I have to go pick up my prescriptions. One of which coverage will be iffy on.

My husband had a little overdrawn account drama, so we’ll see what that ends up costing us in the long-run. For now, $40 had to cover his butt, and he still ended up in the red.

My husband and I had cabin fever yesterday and had to get out of the house even if the temperatures were still hovering around 0 degrees.

• $55 Hooters
• $78 Target
• $79 Costco
• $112 JC Penney

Who knew there were Atkins friendly meals at Hooters? I know I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed my shrimp and oysters.

We also had to make an emergency electric blanket purchase from JC Penney. Ours bit the dust last week, and it really does help to keep the electric bill down when you can turn the heat down to 58 degrees 16 hours of the day and crank the blanket up at night.

Though, if we don’t watch out trips to Costco, we’re going to need some storage rental. I can only store so many cases of water in my office.

One thing I’ve noticed about being on Atkins (along with my pants miraculously fitting) is that I’m actually saving money. No stops at Starbucks for a Caramel Frapuccino, no Egg McMuffin from Mcdonald’s on the way into work, and no ice cold Coke on the way home from work (I miss that one the most).

• $0

You may have noticed that I don’t use many photos on this blog; that’s because they cost money, and spending money on blog photos wouldn’t be prudent on a personal finance blog, now would it?

Luckily, I found a website for free blog pictures! It only takes a second to join, then you’re free to search their vault of royalty-free images and hotlink them in your posts! There’s no downloading or resizing. Just plop in the code!

I’m a little worried about our next electric bill. With negative temperatures all this week, I’ve been keeping the thermostat up higher than usual. We usually keep our thermostat at 62, so having it on 70 is a huge heat wave, but the actual temperature is still only hovering around 65-67 degrees.

To keep your home toasty warm, and hopefully your electric bill down, here are some tips to keep your house warm from the WBEZ blog. Some are fun, some are practical, and make sure to add your own!

One of my (many) New Years Resolutions was to use coupons every trip to the grocery. I’ve extended that to include using coupons for as many purchases as humanly possible. One of the easiest ways I’ve been able to do that is to use coupons discounts from ebates.com on all my online purchases.

All I had to do was pick a password and I had access to thousands of coupons for purchases everywhere form Nordstorms to Sephora to Target. It’s the quickest and easiest way to find discount codes and save money on every online purchase!