Moving back to their home state meant big life
changes – that's to be expected. But a few surprises,
including a major flood, turned minor expenses into looming debt.
With Halloween right around the corner, I suppose some people are starting to think about the holiday season. A few of our local stores already have Christmas trees on display, those snazzy pre-packaged gifts are starting to show up and we’ve even seen a few holiday decorations going up on houses around town. Okay, maybe those are just left from last year! I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I love gift giving, and bringing smiles to my friends and family. The funny thing is, I despise shopping! That’s right, you’ll never catch me in a store on Black Friday searching for deals, battling through crowds. I prefer to shop year round, and purchase gifts when I find that perfect item for a special someone on our gift list. Of course that can mean big savings, but it also meant going a bit overboard sometimes, forgetting some of the items I had stashed away.
Carson had a big birthday last week, and we celebrated for four straight days without busting the budget. Thursday he celebrated with friends at school. His teachers gave him an awesome birthday crown (which he has worn pretty much non stop since then) and Carson brought his class friends a healthy snack of carrots and bunny crackers, followed up with mini cupcakes! It was Rachel’s day to be the parent helper, so she got to see the excitement they all shared. For less than the cost of purchasing treats, we splurged on buying two mini cupcake pans to bake our own treats. We decided that with 12 more years of school ahead of us, it was a great $6 investment. For about 10 bucks, eighteen 4 and 5 year olds had an incredible Thursday morning.
If you read last week’s blog, you know we just finished up a busy week. Fortunately, the budget came out relatively unscathed. Subtract a few bonus dollars for extra mileage we put on, but add a few for the food I wasn’t able to eat. Yes, it’s extremely rare that anyone in our household ever gets sick, but we all had our turn in the past week, culminating with my trip to the emergency room. It all started about 3am Tuesday, waking to an unusual queasy feeling that I just couldn’t hold back. So after 30 hours or so of no food and fluid entering my body, it was time to check things out. After several attempts, I was finally hooked up to an IV. Thanks to great insurance the only bruises from the ER visit will be physical ones, not budgetary, though just as unsightly!
It’s a good thing we had these past few weeks of quietude… this week’s going to be a wild one! All between Monday and Friday, we will: make a 100+ mile roundtrip for a Project Money video, take Carson’s very first field trip, check out a “new” house with some major acreage, renew CPR certification for work, have a yearly check up with the doctor, have an overnight visit with Brian’s mom – at our (currently messy - yikes!) house, attend a mom’s group meeting (Rachel only) and drop in on another meeting. Oh yeah, and celebrate our 8th anniversary somehow in that mess!
The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful for us. That doesn’t make much excitement for blogging, but it does mean the budget is happy! No vehicle repairs, unexpected bills or anything like that (knock on wood!) to throw us off course. With the garden dying down, we cleaned up about 2/3 of our planting space that was no longer producing and did some fall planting of our cold tolerant favorites; spinach, arugula and radishes. Carson loves radishes, and pulling them out of the ground, so we hope the weather stays nice long enough to get some nice ones for him to dig up. It’s nice to be at home more lately, as the summer was full of budget eating activity!
When we first started, Brian would have (jokingly) told you he was hoping for a Project Money win simply for the prize to buy a really nice table saw. He’d tell you all about the boxes he’s been making and how much he could do with a table saw. Brian has been in box making bliss since coworker “Ranger Mike” decided to clear out his workshop and offered a table saw for a simple barter. (THANK YOU, MIKE!) The barter was a wonderful budget savings, but now Brian is just about salivating over lumber at Menards.
When’s the last time you visited the bulk section of your grocery store? If it’s been a while, it’s time to swing through. Your normal store doesn’t have a bulk area? You may want to try a new store to check it out! Why is buying from the bulk bins so enticing to an adventurous budgeteer?
There are tons of reasons but space is limited, so here are my highlights from the bulk isle:
You can purchase the exact amount you need! No waste = greater savings.
Thanks to a fabulous life-size cardboard cutout of us at our local Summit branch, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about Project Money, how things are going for us and how it feels. It seems many expect our reply will be “deprived and making sacrifices.” Sure, we have moments where gratification is delayed…Brian is just itching to get to the lumber yard to put his new-to-him, bartered table saw to the test. Today, I passed up a memory foam mattress pad, even though it was 60% off. Do we feel like we’re missing out? Maybe for a moment, but all we have to do is think to the future and we’re quickly over it! By thinking ahead, I not only skip the deprivation pity party, I feel excited thinking of our debt free future. I know saving $49.99 on the mattress topper today will get us to that snazzy king size Tempurpedic I’ve been daydreaming of oh so much sooner.
ERRGGG, Vehicles! In the past few weeks we have shelled out nearly $1400 in car repairs and maintenance. As painful as it has been, this has really driven home an important Project Money lesson for us. When we first started our budget process, our entire focus was on debt elimination. We even toyed with the idea of using most of our savings (minus a small emergency fund) to hasten our debt destruction. Our first coaching meeting with Mike helped reign us in, and he helped us come up with a plan that aggressively attacks debt but still manages to increase our savings at the same time. Mike explained that having that cushion helps prevent future debt accumulation.
As a one vehicle household for the last week and half, Rachel has done a lot of biking lately. Since we had been toying with the idea of selling one of our vehicles to make some extra cash, and save on gas in the process, this has been a good test period to see if we could actually hack it! There have been a few snags of course, but nothing we couldn’t get around.
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