Lily made the statement that March was the longest three years of her life. I am going to agree with her. I am hopefully that things are going to settle down into a sort of quiet different way of life. I know that I will be working from home the entire month of April except for possibly one day this week. Matt will also be working from home for most of the month as well. I am going to guess that my salary from Guam will not occur this month as well. I also want to try and decrease our overall spending. Without leaving home on most days we should be able to hit at least 15 No spend days for the month of April.

Goal #1 Grocery Budget of $550- The actual number is $1025! This did include two rather large trips to Costco and some extra purchases in preparation of staying at home. In more positive news, I was able to find and save $250 for a large meat purchase in the near or not so near future. I will also be using a little as possible from this budget to purchase some additional plants for the garden.

Goal #2 – Record and keep up with gas/ auto purchase- We spent $219 As you can probably guess this is the budget item that I was able to save money for the meat purchase with. Unfortunately in the month of April I will not be able to accomplish this. The large crack in the windshield of the van has expanded and must be replaced. The repair is scheduled for April 9th. We will also need to renew the tags on the car which includes paying for an inspection and taxes. I am hopeful that we can keep all of these expenses under $500 for the month.

Goal #3-Use a cash envelope system for everything possible. Success! I am also going to include the number of no spend days under this goal. For the month of March that is 4. Yikes! But I will say that some of this spending was in anticipation of not spending in April.

Goal #4- Blogging- 15 post per month. This is post number 17 for the month! I am going to plan for the same in April! I will definitely say that the Recipe Challenge is going a long way in making this happen.

Goal # 5- Fitness- Goal is to walk 3 times a week. I can say that for the last week I met this goal. I actually think I have close to 7 days of exercise this month! This is a huge improvement from January and February but is also directly related to being at home and the weather.

Goal #6 – Bible study- Goal- 3x a week – A fail. Definitely need to up my game in this area. 

Goal #7-Attempt at least 52 new recipes this year.-  We actually have tried 7 new recipes this month. I will plan to post on the one tonight either tomorrow or Thursday! I am actually thinking that todays may be a repeat.

Earnings_ $145 in gift cards including a $50 that Matt was able to get outside of Swagbucks. I will be honest and say this will be very low in April. We can already tell a difference in Swagbucks in the last week. My goal for this month is to earn $50 in Lowes cards to purchase plants.

We actually did really well in March when you look solo on the numbers. I am hopefully to keep it going in April. We should not have a lot of extra activities so we should be able to focus on yard and garden work with some catching up on rest as well.