Category Archives: Disney

5 Things Friday

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  1. We decided to go ahead and purchase a new refrigerator. After much thought and some shopping around, we will be rearranging the kitchen and playroom to accommodate a full size refrigerator in addition to the one full size and the drink one we currently have.
  2. Our November budget is already turning out better than October so as long as something does not pop  up we should be back on track with budgeting.
  3. All three of the kids got excellent report cards and perfect attendance for the first quarter. Lily was more excited about perfect attendance than A honor roll. This is the first time in her school history that she has achieved perfect attendance.
  4. I am planning to set up the snow village tomorrow if I feel better than I do tonight. Matt has been so generous as to share his cold with me.
  5. I was bumped from behind today in the van. I am so thankful for the arms of protection that meant a small scratch on the van was all the damage and it did not even really affect my day as I decided not to file an accident report.

October In Review

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Blogging:  Goal: 14 per month Actually 16 post for the month!

Weight: Goal:  Met and maintain weight of 175. This goal will be considered met each month that weight loss is achieved and once this weight is achieved, each month maintained is considered achieved.  I did make some small gains/loss in the area. The last two weeks have been a real struggle.

Spiritual-  Goal. I want to spend time reading and or studying the Bible at least 5 days a week for the year.  Does half met count? I was doing so well until this past week.

Financial Goals-
1.  Full Fund the budget each month.   Fail

2. Emergency Fund to $2000.  Fail

3. Groceries: Goal is for $700. Fail

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month . Fail but not as bad as I thought  $435 for the month.

5. Eating out- $200 another decrease from even the previous month!

Disney- GOAL MET!

 

October was a long hard month for us.  Part of the reason was that it lasted 5 weeks, another contributing factor was the restocking that was needed after spending less than $400 for groceries in September.  I am looking forward to November with a more confident air! We are focusing on our Disney vacation. In order to start the month in a positive way hear are a couple of things that hopefully will help me achieve more of the goals.
1. Gas prices continue to drop, we have just finished paying all taxes for vehicles for the year and currently I don’t know of any repair needs for the month. I will be counting gas for the trip as part of the regular budget so I expect to stay right at $400.
2. We have already made our monthly trip to Costco, did that today. We ended up spending less than $400. We will be picking up our chicken order from Zaycon tomorrow so that will show allow us to not purchase any more meat until January. My goal for the month is to keep the grocery budget to $500 which will help to fund several other areas of our budget.
3. Our trip is mostly paid for, I have already made a list and purchased all the items that I *think* we need expect for cheap rain ponchos. The kids all have spending money and I am going to use “Disney Rewards” to cover the Bippity Boppity Boutique for at least 2 of the kids. We will be eating our while traveling but this should be a minimal expense of less than $200. We did eat out today but the plan is to eat at home until we leave for the trip.

October Budget Update

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This is exactly what my October budget looks like. I am really afraid to face the hard number but we spent it so I might as well share with everyone to enjoy.  I knew up front that October would be a very expensive month for several reason. First we finished paying for our Disney trip…or to be honest, paid with my Disney Visa, leaving 6 months of interest free payment to make. Another is the fact that October was a 5 week month. I had manage to keep the grocery budget lower than normal in both August and September and made a huge trip to Costco the first of the month.

I am going to share the only good “news” this month, our eating out budget is sitting at $200. This is significantly lower than any other month that I have tracked so woo hooo!

1.  Full Fund the budget each month.   No.. I officially have 3 unfunded items this month in addition to raiding our emergency fund, which will now have to be replaced.

2. Emergency Fund to $2000.  Fail… As I just mentioned, even raid it this month to cover some expenses.

3. Groceries: Goal is $700.  No.  I have spent $860 this month. I do have a little good news in this area for the year, I am currently on track for $700 a month.

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month . Fail… The lower price of gas has helped, but we have needed to make some repairs to the car in addition to annual taxes and inspection for the truck. The total amount should be $450.

Disney- GOAL MET!

Clothes Shopping

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Last week, when the weather turned cooler very quickly, I realized that I did not have all the clothing that we needed for this fall/ winter.  I did some online shopping over the weekend but still had an index card full of items. I have been very blessed over the past two days to be able to not only purchase all the items on my list but several “wants” as well.  The best news of all, I have spent less than $100 for all!

I contacted a friend at church whose son is the same age as Zach but a size larger in clothes. Last night, I head over to check out both clothes and shoes.  I ended up with enough jeans, shoes and a couple of long sleeve and short sleeve shirts. Except for a rain coat, Zach’s list of clothing was complete!

Today, Matt and I decided to try find not only the girls some dress but also Matt some additional shorts for our Disney Trip. Our first stop was the local Goodwill, we were not so lucky and found only one dress and a bag. We decided to head to Winston, after going to 2 more Goodwill stores, Mega Thrift and the Salvation Army our morning was complete. We purchased 8 dresses for the girls including 2 red velvet dresses for Christmas, 1 shirt for Kendall, 7 pairs of shorts for Matt, 1 swimsuit for Matt and a Buzz Lightyear Rain coat for Zach. Total spent $75.68 or $4.20 each.

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Here are a couple of my favorite dress!

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5 Things Friday

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1. I was so excited and surprised to get an email today that told me, we owe $300 less on our Disney trip than I had originally planned! This is HUGE! We have been planning and paying on this trip since February and our final payment is due mid-month.

2  I was able to sell 2 toys today and that gave me $50 to put in the budget this month.

3. We are experiencing a “rainy season” We have received rain every day for the past week and are predicted to receive an additional 4-12 inches of rain over the weekend. My plans include staying inside and long hot baths. The temperature is also a bit cool for North Carolina in October.

4. We currently are on week 4 without heating or cooling out house!  This should help reduce our electric bill to under $200 for the month of October and hopefully November!

5. We made several huge grocery store trips yesterday and have already spent all but $16 of our grocery budget for the month. I am so disappointed in this but am already facing the fact that I seriously need to increase the budget to a more achievable amount.  I need to do some research and figure out what a reasonable amount would be, any suggestions on where to find this information?

5 Things Friday

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1. I am staying in a hotel room tonight, as I attended a continuing education class from 8-5:30 today and will be in class again from 8 till 1:30 tommorow as well. This is the first time since I think Zach was born that I have been away from the kids an entire night.  We are very fortunate to have FaceTime so they are not so far away.

2. I was so very excited to be able to fund all our budget catogeries this month. We are focusing on keeping our expenses low and making any extra payment we can toward our Disney trip.

3. I am going to have another yard sale next Saturday, I am hoping to sell $100 worth of stuff and that money will also go into the Disney fund.

4. Yesterday online I found an awesome coupon for $25 off a $50 purchase at Advance Auto. We decide to go ahead and purchase some items to complete some maintence on Matt’s van. None of the items were emergencies but the goal is to keep his van in the best shape so we can drive for the next 5 years.

5. Zach is having a really good year so far at school with his behavior being some of the best in the class! Kendall also had a great day today with achieve “Gold” status after getting in trouble on Wednesday. I am praying this is the postive up swing she needs!

September Goals

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This summer has been full of fun! I really enjoyed some nice long days at the pool in addition to our week of vacation at the beach. However, I have not been as on top of budgeting as I like to be. Our Disney trip is less than 3 months away, so my goal is to tight up the budget and get up ready to enjoy Disney. Keeping that in mind, I have decided to make September  a “low spend/ no spend.” month. I really want to make September, October and November all low spend/no spend months but I am going to focus on one month at a time! I know that I can make a goal but if I don’t include some action steps in addition to adding accountability then I am going to fails. I am going to list my plans/goals for September, with weekly or biweekly updates as I can.

1. Reduce Grocery spending to $300 for the month. I am going to purchase 80 pounds of chicken from Zaycon and pull out $150 in cash to put in the grocery envelope. Cash for me is harder to over spend so this should keep me on track.

2. When I looked at my September budget, I have 4 categories that are not completely funded for the month so the remaining $400 of the normal grocery budget will be used to completely fund the budget.

3  Plan to purchase both Lily and Amanda birthday cards. This will allow me to direct our gift money for October, November and December to Christmas. I have already decided that Christmas will be smaller than normal after our trip so I am estimating I need $400 to cover gifts for the kids.

4. Pay at least $375 toward our Disney trip to maximize Disney points prior to November. My goal is to pay for the Bibbidi, Bobbidi Boutique with Disney points only. I have already earned enough to cover one of the girls so well on the way. We are expecting Matt to bring in around $350 in new income from his web business, so I only need to find $25 more.

5. Maintain Gas budget at or below $400. Matt has identified several “maintenance/ repairs” that need to be completed on his van. My goal is to wait till the end of the month to complete to make sure we stay I budget.

6. Reduce/Eliminate Eating out for the month of September. Zach’s birthday is Tuesday September 1st so he has already chosen to eat at a local pizza buffet. Other than this meal, no eating out! I will have to be very deliberate with especially Sunday lunches but we have been spending over $300 a month on eating out and that is a huge amount.

I am hoping to have a yard sale of some form or fashion at the end of the month as well. This may help boost our Disney Payments.

August In Review

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I am posting this a day early but hey at least it is posted.

Blogging:  Goal: 14 per month This is actually post 20! I may or may not post tomorrow but I am very pleased with the way I am starting to keep up with posting on a regular basis.  Goal MET!

Weight: Goal:  Met and maintain weight of 175. This goal will be considered met each month that weight loss is achieved and once this weight is achieved, each month maintained is considered achieved.  Struggling still.. I have in the last week added back in regular exercise so I hope that will make a difference.

Spiritual-  Goal. I want to spend time reading and or studying the Bible at least 5 days a week for the year.  I am going to consider this Goal MET! I have been struggling over the summer to find time to read but with school back in session, it appears to be getting easier and I am trying to make a priority otherwise.

Financial Goals-
1.  Full Fund the budget each month.   I am excited to post GOAL MET! Our savings both emergency and yearly is starting to look regular.

2. Emergency Fund to $2000.  Met. Added $100!  Goal met 3 months in a row!

. 3. Groceries: Spend $700 a month .Total Fail.  Again I am struggling in this area. I am currently $185.72 over for the month. We actually spent less this month than the several month but still we are way over again.

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month .  Fail again. I am actually only over by less than $50 this month so I have made some improvement but still not enough. September is without need for tags or title or insurance and with gas prices continuing to decease I am hoping to stay in budget!

5. Eating out- tracking purposes only $381. Again a decrease from previous months.

Disney- Failed!  But I have plans to change this!

August was not a total fail or a total success for anything. I do have plans for at least September to help adjust our budgets. I will post more later on the “goal” and the rationale as to why I think September should demonstrate good progress with all my goals.