Report Card Time!!

It’s the end of the semester and it is time to see the results of the hard work that the kids have been putting forth. REPORT CARDS ARE ARRIVING!!! Grade point averages seem to make a bigger difference now that we are 8th graders. Next year is High School!!!!

Report cards tell a lot, but they don’t tell everything. Larry and Lexie got pretty good results this past semester. A little distracted with a few missed days of school and a misunderstanding of an assignment deadline. But the negativity of that grade and what it cost that child in lack of “Phone and Phun” at home made quite an impact in knowing the correct due dates and requirements for the upcoming assignments!! There were NOT ANY MISSED assignments after that one. I doubt there will be. (Texting is LIFE when you are an 8th grader!!)

Larry and I were talking about our Report Card for Project Money. There were a few assignments that we are so glad we were told to take care of right away. Setting up our monthly bills on Auto Pay was an A+ for us. Writing checks, finding envelopes, and stamps and remembering where to mail bills… that seems like twice as much work. Auto Pay really makes things smoother for paying bills.

Having less monthly bills helps! We cut off our Cable. We haven’t really missed it that much. Of course tomorrow is the Rose Bowl… We may show up at one of your houses. Another bill that we no longer have is a couple of medical bills that we had been paying the minimum on for quite some time. We paid them (almost) all at once and then it felt like we had freedom in our budget!

Our Coach, Mike, really pushed us to pay on a personal loan that we have that is a higher interest loan. During Project Money we have doubled our payments on that loan because we have decided that the money we earn from our Wisconsin State Journal Delivery Route is going to be the money that is going directly to pay off that loan. (That’s the reason we took the job in the first place was to PAY OFF DEBT!!) It has been working great. The payment comes out on the same day that the WSJ check comes into the bank, so there is no “holding our breath” to see if there will be enough money in our account.

One of the changes that we are REALLY, REALLY, REALLY happy about is that fact that we have savings accounts that are actually GROWING!! One of them is specifically designated for our School and Sports and Auto items. These are the things that had always taken us by surprise in the past. We never seem to think ahead to sports fees, or school clothes or new tires for the cars. So we end up using that account, but we are always automatically putting money into that account as well. Our other two savings accounts have specific designations as well, but they are not ones that we are always withdrawing from. They continue to grow weekly.

There are quite a few other things, but these are the ones that make us smile the most!

The Brown House doesn’t get good grades in everything. We use the envelope system very well for Gas and Groceries. But we still are not very good at recording checks we write. We try to NOT write them, but it’s almost impossible.

I guess there is a final “Report Card” coming on February 21st. The Big Grand Finale of Project Money. It is going to be the time when the Judges will announce which of us Project Money Teams have won the big monetary prize, but we are all finishing here with a lot of winning ideas. Life changing ones, too.

Funny thing… People keep asking if we are going to go out and spend some money this week!! Well, OF COURSE WE ARE! (Right Penny?!) But spending is different now. Spending is more orderly and with our accounts fully known. It’s a good way to spend money. It’s a healthy way to spend money. I’m glad we have the chance to know this way of spending.