Kendall has been in charge of taking baseball pictures this year!
Wordless Wednesday 5/16/2018
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Author Archives: Sheila
Overwhelmed
I am the first to admit, I am an organizer, a planner and a list maker. I usually jump right in and check items off my to do list as quickly as possible. But I am also seeing that when I am overwhelmed I avoid. Guess I should go ahead and admit upfront that I have definitely been avoiding things over the last week.
I have already explained how May is one of the most expensive months that I can remember. Dave Ramsey puts it very clearly “we have an income problem”. Both Matt and I have are actively seeking ways to increase our income in whatever way possible. First way of increasing our income was our yard sale on Saturday May 12th. We did ok with the yard sale. We (people who live at home) earned a profit of around $90. The second way, Matt and I are trying to increase our income is adding hours at work. Matt is working as much as possible. In fact last week, he worked every day except Wednesday.
I have applied for and will be starting a new part time job as well. This is where a lot of my feeling of overwhelmed is coming from. I have been juggling 3 or 4 different paper applications that are require in addition to completing continuing education hours both for the new job and for renewing my Occupational Therapy license. I also agreed to become the treasurer for our youth group at church.
Back to my avoiding, last night I spent close to 4 hours lying in bed watching TV. I did not even want to set in front of the computer. I was very tempted to do the same today but have caught up on everything not directly related to the new job. I still have another 5 plus hours to complete this week but writing this blog post is my reward to at least seeing the end in sight. Hopefully, by the first of June, things will settle down and I can return to quickly checking things off my to do list!
Expensive Month of May
I can honestly say that this May 2018 is probably the single most expensive month that I can remember.
First the “known” expenses-
- Pool dues $375
- Swim Team Fee $ 110 plus around $80 for new suits
- Car Insurance $325
- Van Tag $44
- Deposit for church camp $150
Other expense (not planned)
- Cow butchering $510
- Zach braces initial payment $400
- Moving of building $300
- Lily Additional medical expenses currently $300
- Malpractice Insurance for me $160
As Matt stated “We have an income problem” The good news is that he and I both are picking up extra work and hope to cover as much/all of this with extra money this month. Twenty- four hundred is a lot of money so we will be saving each penny and finding creative ways to add to our income this month. First up is a Yard Sale this coming weekend.
Random Wordless Wednesday
April in Review
Financial- We are attempting to use a cash only method for the first six month of the year in order to get us some better financial balance. We have had several large expenses this month but we continue to focus on the small gains.
- Total paid to credit card debit $1483 total reduction in credit card debit approximately $612.We are final down to a level that is less than we ended with in December of last year. We have experienced a boast in income which we hope to increase and continue in the summer.
- Grocery budget $475- Total spent $531.77. Yikes, It happened again and this does not include our cow purchase. The good news is that I have already made a menu plan for the month and plan to stick to $100. We will be receiving our cow sometime this month but I really don’t expect this to add to our cost at all. I am going to limit spending to what we are out of and Suddenly Salads if they go on sale.
- Gas budget- $280- Spent $230. Gas prices are starting to increase in our area so I seriously doubt we come in under budget for the next couple of months.
- Kid/Summer expenses :Swim team and Baseball games.
- Earned $88-this is indeed a much lower amount than any of the previous months I have tracked but it is still extra money. We have decided to use this “extra money” for gardening and other yard supplies.
Personal-
- Blogging- 9 for the month. Super busy this month. The blog was technically down for over a week. Hoping to get back in the swing of things.
- Exercise- 2 total days for the month. a goal of 15 but not sure if that is realistic or not. This weather SUCKS! I am looking forward to the summer and time in the pool.
5 Things Friday-4/27/2018
- We stopped at Lowes after the baseball game tonight and purchased $95 worth of plants. The full moon is scheduled for Sunday so according to farmer’s you are suppose to plant during the upswing of the moon. I am just so excited to get my garden started this year. I do know that we will need to purchase several additional items but I wanted to at least get the majority started at the “best” time this year.
- Matt’s debit card numbers were stolen this week and I have spent almost 5 hours dealing with the aftermath. We are expected to get back the entire amount that was taken but it is a HUGE pain in the mean time.
- I can file this under the “joys of motherhood.” Tomorrow it would appear that all three of the little kids have somewhere/ something to do. Which means that I will be playing “taxi” for the part of the day that I am not planting outside.
- We are in the middle of baseball season. I actually really enjoy the games but it adds a different level of complexity to our schedule.
- Next week, both Kendall and Zach have field days at school which last half a day. Zach has a field trip on Thursday. I am basically take off 2 days of work. But I do realize how quickly they grow up.
Wordless Wednesday- Cute Kids
Monday Update
So I think it is pretty obvious that I will not meet my blogging goal for the month. I do have a legit reason for it this month, so I wanted to make sure that I have it recorded. We ended up having to move things from Go Daddy due to price and this web site disappeared for approximately a week. That is as technical as I understand. I am very happy that it has all been saved including the huge amount of pictures that I post each year. The good news is for now we have three years until we have to deal with the same thing again.
I am over grocery budget again. So far this month I have spent $436 in addition to purchasing our cow. We will still have to pay the processing fee in May but this is a years supply or more of beef.
On a positive note, we have been able to reduce our total debit this month. I am so excited about this small accomplishment. I do anticipate that the next 3-4 weeks will be very expensive as we have several summer expenses that are due. These include pool membership, swim team, church camp and baseball camp. We also have our car insurance due in the month of May. Yikes
My plan/goal is to get some baseball pictures posted in addition to some other special ones over the last week.
Trying to Save on Saturday
One of the largest expenses that we have each and every month is groceries. I spent a lot of time trying to control these numbers. If you will recall I had a HUGE grocery budget overage in the month of March ($726). I was planning to attempt to keep the April budget to less than $100. But to be honest that is already not possible and we are in the middle of April. What I can say is that I have been able to stock up on lots of canned items and grab some quick and easy breakfasts for us as well. Harris Teeter has been having some huge sales in the past couple of weeks, for example, I grabbed 15 cases (12 packs) of soda for $1.99 today. This alone is a saving of $50. Cereal, grits, oatmeal and yogurt round out the list of items that I purchased today as well. My plan for the rest of April is to only purchase things we are completely and totally out of that we can not survive without milk and eggs being the biggest things that I can thing of. Otherwise to be honest I am going to avoid all grocery shopping. I am going to allow for one exception “Suddenly Salad” Pasta that usually go on sale for approximately $1 a box. I need/ plan to purchase 25 of these to use once a week this summer as a quick easy and delicious meal.
I received the news today that we will also be purchasing a cow in the next month. This cow currently weighs 1400 pounds. This meat should last approximately 2 years. I am super excited about this meat.
The other food related good news is that within a month we should be able to start harvesting items from the garden. I am excited this year because all the plants should be purchased with gift cards earned from Swagbucks. This means that the entire garden is a profit not matter how little we may harvest.
5 Things Friday
- Yes, it has been over a week since I posted. My only reason life. I am hopefully to get up a better post over the week but here is the short version.
- Zach had his first official baseball game today. I am so excited that his team won 8-7! Zach is playing catcher and doing a great job.
- Spring is hopefully here! We have the windows open!
- I am so excited about our Square foot garden! I have planted potatoes. Honestly, I probably jumped the gun and went ahead and planted several cucumbers, squash and a jalapeno pepper. The worst thing that could happen is that I will have to replace them. I just really am ready for Spring.
- April is going to be a really expensive month for us as we have to pay a deposit on both the girls camp, Pool dues, and need to pay for Zach to attend a baseball camp.