I’m getting a raise: I got the official paperwork today and the extra money will be on the paycheck I get on April 27. Also on that check will be the 1% increase toward my retirement savings. I do this purposely so that I never miss that extra 1%. It comes at the same time as my average 3% raise (this year it’s 3.75%), so I see extra money on my check and extra money goesread more…
Day Amount Place Category Tuesday $54.00 Gas Car $7.00 Cafeteria Allowance Wednesday $23.00 Doctor Medical $3.00 McDs Allowance Thursday $16.50 Safeway Groceries $2,329.00 Tuition School Friday $7.00 Cafeteria Allowance $70.00 NorWesCon Allowance Saturday $7.50 Safeway Groceries $120.00 Cremation Urn MIL Sunday $3.50 Starbucks Allowance $41.50 Gas Car High spending week because of paying C’s tuition. It still makes me feel rich to be able to cash flow that. I also finally remembered to purchase the cremationread more…
I finally had some time toward the end of this week to sit down and catch up on all the blogs I read. It was really nice. Things are still a little crazy, but definitely calming down. Anyway, here are some of my favorite posts from this week. (And the way my mind finds them to be all related, which trust me, doesn’t always make sense to me, either.) I like to remind folks that financialread more…
The Budget: Our monthly eating out budget is $150. We’re currently averaging $132/month. Of course, we’ve already spent over $100 on eating out in April. Okay, that’s not true, we spent that $100 in March, but I’m paying the credit card bill in April and that’s when it gets counted. I’ll admit I’ve been inconsistent, sometimes paying for meals out with the credit card and sometimes with the debit card, so that’s kind of confused things,read more…
Gas is Expensive!: With a full quarter of the year gone, it’s time for a quick budget review. The area where I seem most off so far this year is on car expenses. I budgeted $190/month, to include paying for insurance and setting money aside for repairs. Right now, I look at this and think “where did I come up with my numbers?” Insurance itself is over $100/month, even though we pay every 6 months. Thatread more…
Day Amount Place Category Monday $60.00 Death Certificates MIL Wednesday $28.34 PetsMart Pets Friday $4.59 Safeway Groceries $192.92 CostCo Groceries $7.25 Safeway Groceries Saturday $31.61 Safeway Groceries It was a mostly quiet week. On Monday, I went into work for just a couple of hours and then took the rest of the day off. We went to the county and got 3 copies of the death certificate, so that we could do things like file liferead more…
Every time I think that maybe, just maybe, I’m getting back on track, I realize that there is something I’ve not done. This week, it felt like I was moving right along, until I realized that I’ve barely read or commented on any blogs this week. For that I apologize. But even though I didn’t do my usual level of reading, I really liked what I did read. So yes, it’s a small sample size thisread more…
I need a break from serious topics at the moment, and I love the “getting to know you” type posts where bloggers give a list of things about themselves that we don’t already know. At the same time, I’m not certain I could really give you that kind of list, because I’m pretty open about things. Most things that I could think of to put on that kind of list, I’m pretty certain I’ve already mentionedread more…
For my own sanity, my current organizational goals must focus on the upstairs. If I even start thinking about our basement, I’ll become to overwhelmed to do anything. We finished cleaning out the MIL’s apartment on Saturday. Besides three different trips to Goodwill, and two trips to Value Village that included two large bags of stuffed animals, 140 VHS tapes, and some furniture, we have added a significant number of items to our basement. Some things,read more…
Day Amount Place Category Tuesday $113.00 CostCo House Wednesday $7.00 Cafeteria Allowance Friday $47.00 Safeway Groceries $35.00 Outback Eating Out Sunday $27.00 Starbucks Allowance + $75.00 Gas Car If felt like we spent more this week than we actually did. Monday, we had our first home study interview. That went well, I think. I also discovered on Monday that I had apparently overheated our paper shredder and broken it. So Tuesday, off I went to CostCoread more…
