August in Review

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Sheila

Personal-
1. Blogging– Post 20 per month. Fail. This is post number 17. I feel much better about my blogging this month. I am trying to be consistent. I knew this would be a stretch to begin with so I am proud of my progress even if I did not meet my goal.

2.Weight Loss– 175#. Fail but a positive fail as it is once again moving in the right direction after vacation.

3. Spiritual– Spend at least 5 days a week, reading and studying The Bible. Nope. I am most upset about not working harder on this goal. I am going to make this my most important goal.

Personal goals are a failure for the third month straight. However, I am going to give myself a break, I dealt with a lot of stress this summer and decided to focus on my kids and making memories so how can that be a fail.

Financial-

1. Set aside money each month in every budget category. Fail

2. Establish and maintain Emergency Fund- Fail.
3. Groceries: Goal is for $550. Fail . We spent $615 in Groceries this month. I reduced the goal from $700 in June and have been over the past 3 months so that tells me that I may have been premature in reducing the budget but will wait till December to make any other changes.

4. Gas: Spend $300 a month- Goal Met! We spent $263 this month including our gas for our trip. The next couple of months will be expensive with oil changes and renewal of tags but I hope to spread out over a couple of months instead of just one month.

5. Pay off all Credit Card debit by December 2016- Fail. I am meeting bare minimal payments on everything but really was hoping to begin to get control and reduce this number.

Overall, August was a better month for us but we still need to work on getting our spending under control. I am planning on a very low spending month in September!

First Day of School

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Sheila

Saving on Saturday 8/27

Posted on August 27, 2016 by Sheila

This week has been back to normal for us. We also are really trying to control spending and focus on saving. First this weekend, we have been taking stock of what foods we have in our pantry and freezer. I am very pleasantly surprised to say that we are very well stocked with food and not over our grocery budget this month either. I ended up making a meal plan for the month. We are going to have a different meal each weekday with no repeats. I leave the weekends open and we can have something that sounds good or try a new dish if we want. I also went to Food Lion this morning to pick up some lettuce and a couple of other items. My total out of pocket was 59 cent because I used the gift cards that we earned several weeks ago that I talked about.

My bigger saving is on sports equipment. ALWAYS check on line and ask around before buying new sports equipment! Zach has decided to play baseball this fall and after asking around I was able to purchase most of the equipment he needs for less than the price of a new pair of shoes!

How did you save this month?

5 Things Friday 8/26/2016

Posted on August 27, 2016 by Sheila

Today is the last weekday before Zach and Kendall start school.
Lily has been “attending” school all week at North Carolina Virtual Academy. I have had several people ask me how it is going. I want to wait until next week to give everyone a change to adjust before honestly answering. I will say I see it as very positive given the fact it is a totally new experience and we are still all learning.
Meet the Teacher was on Thursday night. I am extremely pleased with Kendall’s teacher. She is a third grader and this is the first year of EOG testing. Kendall is very much a people pleaser and follower so a nice calm steady teacher is exactly what she needs! Zach is excited because he has a teacher that NONE of his siblings have had. I know this is a big deal when you are the youngest of 5.
Zach has decided to play baseball this fall instead of soccer. I am admittedly nervous about this.
Matt and Zach have gone 2 months this summer without hair cuts. This is a extremely long time for them as usually at 4 weeks they are complaining. Zach has a blonde streak that he decided he wanted to keep! Check it out.

Wordless Wednesday-Beach Dress Up

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Sheila

More Beach Fun

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Sheila

We had an awesome vacation and I want to share some more pictures. The weather on Saturday was rainy and humid. The tide clocks are changing due to the full moon. So high tide was not expected until 9;40 am. After checking out these two things we decided to go play putt putt. Putt-Putt is one of the things that we have been talking about doing for over a year and the timing never seems to work out. Most of us had a great time. We did stop at Sonic that was next door to the course at 10:55 am and purchased 99 cent drinks for us! Here are the pictures.

Can anyone guess who did not like Putt-Putt? For the record Matt scored the best.

Beach Edition- Saving on Saturday

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Sheila

We have enjoyed the last week as a vacation which included lots of fun but also a budget. Today, I am going to share some of the ways that we are able to enjoy this week without breaking the bank.

1. Schedule- I am very fortunate that my employer has a condo located ocean front that is available to employees only at a great rate. In addition, the price drops almost by half beginning in August. In order to take advantage of this price, I call the first buisness day of January. A deposit of half is due within two weeks. On the budget side, I usually recieve an extra (not budget) check in both December and July. I automatically use this to cover cost.

2. Food- Part of me enjoying our vacation is not spending a lot of time in the kitchen. An average meal out for just 5 of us is $50 times 3 meals a day times 7 days equals $1050, which is three hundred more than our regular grocery budget for a month. So we have found a happy medium, which includes some eating out and more eating in. I purchased snack food ahead of time but this is also a week in which you get to eat much more junk food and individual servings than any other time. This week our menu has looked like this. Breakfast- 2 meals out, Jimmy Dean Breakfast Crosiant x 2, cereal x 1, gravy and biscuits (both frozen) and poptarts. Lunch- Lunchables- this usually go on sale the first of August for $1 each. Matt and I have sandwhiches supplies and pasta salads. Dinner- Baked Ziti (frozen), Pasta Salads (prepared on Saturday morning), Nachos (frozen taco rice), Chicken and broccoli casserole (frozen) Seafood (resturant ), Special Dinner (Privates Voyage- Amanda paid a large part). Leftovers or pizza. This year we decided to try a variety of ice cream shops, one each day actually which totaled around $120.

3. Stuff- We stay in a condo so we must bring or buy all supplies. This year, we are using Disney shampoo and soaps from our trip in December. I also have collect other items from our travels such as dishwashing soaps and single serving coffee packages. I bring fast food packet for ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. I am usually pretty brand specific for toliet paper, paper towels and laundry detergent, not for this trip. I use ECB especially on Black Friday, to purchase the cheapest possible and store for this trip. Paper products are another way we save money, any left over plates and napkins no matter the occasion are placed in a bag and we use for this trip.

One advantage to the condo is that it has a washer and dryer. I make sure that everything we bring leaves clean. This way we have truly saved a week of electricity. We did leave on our a/c but set the temperature at 85.

Do you have a suggestion for saving money on vacation that I have missed.

5 Things Friday

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Sheila

1. Our vacation is coming to an end very quickly. I have enjoyed the time with just family as well as some trashy tv, reading and just wasting of time on the Internet .

2. The kids favorite activity of the week has been digging holes. Each day that have attempted to make a bigger as in deeper and wider hole. Lucky for them that the tide is going out during the morning so they can dig for hours without worry.