One birthday down. Two to go.

It's funny because I felt like we relaxed and splurged but in the end we spent less than usual on birthday. I think we got off easy because LM's birthday was on a Saturday and so we killed two birds with one stone. Usually we take the kids out for dinner on their birthday and then do a party on a different day. But LM has a favorite sandwich place so that is just what we did for his party. Also, though we invited several kids, only 2 were able to make it. Probably typical for a summer birthday.

I've been waiting to see how many people plan to come to BM's party before we decide what to do, but I think it will probably be similar. A couple of hours of video game time, food and cake, and then a couple of hours at the pool.

We spent $38 on lunch, which included food for BM, dh and I. So really maybe only $20-ish of that was for the party. I did "splurge" on an ice cream cake. It was labeled $26? at the grocery store and even more expensive at Baskin Robbins. But the grocery store was full price $17.99, on sale, plus a birthday coupon, so only paid $13. That was a nice surprise. (If I realized maybe I'd buy more often. In the past I have always made our own cakes; we have an ice cream cake recipe).

{So... About $33 for dinner and cake?}

We bought LM a ridiculously expensive gift a few months ago. It was an Amazon Echo, on sale. Dh had bought one for his mom for Christmas. I think just making her a guinea pig. I thought it just sounded stupid. But the kids LOVE it (& so does MIL). Is basically a smart phone in the form of a speaker. So you can ask it all sorts of questions and have it play music. & it will play some games, like Simon Says or Trivia.

I had been thinking of taking BM indoor skydiving (where you just float over a giant fan) and MIL wanted to take that gift. I was more than happy to let her take the pricey gift in exchange for not buying crap (I hope). So we told the kids the Echo was kind of more for LM and the other was more for BM, but these are all shared gifts.

Yesterday dh's parents, aunt and Grandma came over to celebrate the kids' birthdays and to take them to the indoor skydiving place. GREAT birthday gift! I never expected LM to want to go, but he did and that is why that ended up being a shared gift. I don't know who had more fun... The kids? Or the old people? So I think that really ended up being appropriate that it was a gift from the old people. (They just had the most fun. I am sure dh and I enjoyed it on some level, but didn't seem to be eating it up quite as much as everyone else).

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In other news, I did give blood this week. I haven't been a consistent donate-r, but I guess they were having a blood shortage, locally. I will try to get back on a regular schedule.

This month is the month of birthday. We will be hosting three birthday parties this month (the third party is for MIL's 70th).

Yeah, I had forgotten about MIL's birthday, but we are going in with SIL and she seems to be in super cheap mode.

We are just winging it when it comes to our kids. Very "go with the flow". We sent out invites for LM's party next weekend but are keeping it pretty loose. Will see who can make it and make decisions from there. Was thinking of splurging on an ice cream cake but I can just pick that up during the party. We don't do party favors - I hate all that junk and clutter. So yeah, I am really not planning to do much to prepare.

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With dh working, I am not feeling like we need to pinch pennies quite as much as last year (with all the big splurges).

We are planning a mid-week trip to San Francisco in July. We were going to do a weekday trip to Monterey in August but I am not sure if we can get that to work out. Maybe that would be something to do in October. The kids don't have the same break but I think they at least had one weekday off together in October.

In addition, dh and I have a couple of weekends away planned. That is more motivated by MIL having tons of timeshare points to use up. Is not anything we plan to spend money on. These trips will be later - our anniversary and my 40th birthday.

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So... Everyone in my house has been jumping into some new skills and classes.

I went a little back and forth on this. I was feeling inspired. But I also do feel like I have plenty on my plate as is. In the end I am glad I decided to take on a new skill myself. I took all that inspiration to finally learn how to knit. I am glad I just bit the bullet because it is really something that can be done during otherwise down time. In the end I don't feel like this has taken away from anything else.

Though I am sure you can mostly learn this skill online for free, I ended up picking up a book with 50 squares to knit. IT didn't even have any reviews and I picked it up on a gut feel. But I am LOVING it. Have mostly been told that knitting a blanket or something like that would be too tedious at this point and to keep it small. So this has been kind of perfect to practice and to build up skills.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely learned online from Youtube. Since I got my needles and yarn first (Michael's) I kind of started with that. Then I have to look up all the stitches online because yeah, it's hard to learn from a book. But between the two, I am happy with this method of learning.

Honestly, I feel kind of silly for not doing this sooner. One of those things I had been putting off for a very long time.

Edited to add: Saw some tote bags to knit, which seems the easiest/most practical so far. Making a note to self since I'm not quite ready for that yet.

Received $40 bank interest for the month of June.

Snowflakes to Investments:

Redeemed $25 credit card rewards (cash back) from our gas/grocery card.

Redeemed $182 cash back on Citi card. (Lots of travel expenses this month)

Redeemed $20 cash back on Visa/dining card. (More travel expenses)

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$6 Savings from Target Red Card

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash
+$ 900 to IRAs

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):

+$1,300 to cash
-$2,000 Airfare (Entire vacation budget)
- 725 Dentist (3)
- 20 Vet (shots)

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More spending than saving this month. Pulled the following amounts from long-term savings:

-$1,300 MRI
-$2,700 8th Grade Trip
-$3,000 Family DC Trip

It probably won't get much better. In July we will work on some big home improvements.

I suppose for this month it should be called "June Spending".

I think I got it all figured out.

$2k airfare is already paid for + will pay off $3k of the trip today (with mid-June paycheck).

Not sure on the last $373. I have $125 left in grocery budget this month. (Not sure why I don't have more left, since we were gone two full weeks, but it is what it is. It was a good month to go over).

So... Subtracting $125 extra leaves about $250 to come up with. I was thinking of funding the rest with credit card rewards (should be a LOT this month). But with the stock market down I think I will stay the course and invest credit card rewards this month.

I may change my mind once I pay the July bills. I have not done so yet but will do so today. I usually leave a little float to work with and as long as I have the cash, I will just leave the investments as usual and use up some float.

In addition to the above, we did spend $65 on gas. Since gas was significantly cheaper back east I will just absorb that with our monthly gas budget. (Monthly gas usage was very average).

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We did end up going to family camp the day after we got back from DC. It was too much. I'd say that the sleep I got Sunday night was on par with sleeping in the airport. I was planning to come home after dinner on Monday but quickly changed my mind to leave after lunch. Really ready just to go HOME.

LM had a little freak out himself. I think he was just overly exhausted and feeling under the weather. I wish he got more sleep last night, but we've really got nothing planned the next several weeks and so he will relax and get better in his own time. (I just brought him home with me). Mental note: Never plan a big vacation right before camp again. I'd say we had no choice this year, but are looking into changing our camp week to later in summer.

I was going to do some work from home today, but feel kind of *F* it, now that I am home. & also because I have a kid with me, though he can mostly take care of himself. I do go back tomorrow.

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I did have a good breakthrough with my MIL this weekend, and some financial relief. We had bought LM a substantial birthday present ($150-ish?) before things got suddenly spendy and expensive here. We were going to offer BM, who wants *nothing*, an experience like indoor skydiving. When I brought it up though, LM chimed in that he wanted to go too. Seriously?? (Never would have guessed that in a million years).

Anyway, MIL was nagging dh about gift lists yesterday and he's trying to get her to chill out and give us some time to regroup. He won't even be home until tomorrow. But we did mention the indoor skydiving thing for whatever reason and she said she wants to pay for it. Awesome!! (Usually she is so set on piles of "stuff". So it never occurred to me that she would be open to that. I had told her that there was nothing "stuff"-wise that he wants, but I am sure I've already told her this many times before).

Phew!

We do still have to figure out something for BM. Dh and I will have to figure that out later. His birthday is in 2 weeks, so we have some time. I suppose everything else I have in mind isn't any cheaper. But we will figure something out.

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This also reminds me that MIL gave the kids $30/each to buy souvenirs in DC. In typical BM fashion, he spent $0 of that money. (We will have to transfer to his savings account). That's just kind of how he is, so I didn't think much of it.

LM on the other hand, is a bit of a shopper. But everything he liked was just too expensive. I kept telling him it was Grandma's money and to enjoy. But instead he would rant about how ridiculously expensive souvenirs are. I told dh one day, "What did we do to our kids?" He did spend $11 on a couple of things. In fact, I was delighted to see a magnet he was interested in was only $2. He was pleased with that purchase.

I guess if MIL is doing the experience thing, then no one is probably buying him the "stuff" that he wants for his birthday. So his $19 leftover can go towards whatever video game MIL usually buys him. Or maybe that will be a gift from GMIL.

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Edited to add: I did pay all the July bills and I did seem to have enough float. So I won't sweat coming up with the last $250. (I'll probably just put the $250 back into checking once dh gets his next paycheck in September).

I will also say that we are still at peak liquidity, even after paying for two big vacations. Phew!

We got back from our DC trip this morning. Phew!

Was having trouble finding flights when we switched from October to June. I picked a flight from our home airport (right by our house) because it was the cheapest AND the most convenient, but I can't tell you how close I was to canceling that flight because we only had a 45 minute layover on the way back. That said, we were flying back Friday and knew we'd have the weekend to get back if need be. Dh and I discussed splitting up to get home, if need be. (& we can usually get home quickly in these cases because we could divert to SFO or San Jose and maybe even get a ride from family, which we have done in the past when a flight was canceled). I was more pushing for the direct flight from SFO, but dh talked me into keeping the "short layover" tickets and not having to deal with all that driving. We did leave on the last day of school and it would have been a lot.

In the end, the short layover was not the problem. Most California airports have curfews and the problem was more that our flight was the "last flight of the night". Our flight got delayed and we missed our connection (but it was a couple of hour delay so we'd miss no matter what, like pretty much everyone on our plane). So we spent the night in the airport (too late to bother leaving and coming back) and got the first flight out. Since I kind of expected the worst all along I guess it was better than I thought it would be. (At least we all got on the same flight, to our home city).

We flew American Airlines, which I don't think I ever have as an adult. Usually United is cheapest from our airports. I will probably avoid AA in the future. I can't tell you how many flights they had delayed or canceled due to missing crew. ???

Oh... & it took us 3 hours to get to the airport in Baltimore. 45 mile drive. We had such a late flight we just planned to get there several hours early. Thankfully security had no line. (Probably because everyone was stuck in traffic). But yeah, it was quite an ordeal to get home.

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The kids were good sports. LM is maturing considerably, so, phew! I have a picture of him scowling in front of the first Wright brothers plane. (Day 2, he was not in a good mood). But apparently nothing else was quite as boring as the air and space museum.

{It helped that we bought that small laptop. & that day he was so bored he came up with a novel he wanted to write, so we packed the laptop for all our long drives and I think that went a long way to appease him. We had 4 days in the middle of mostly driving. He's 10 and his writing is incredible. As long as he has an outlet, I guess he is good}.

We were able to hit 23 or so museums and landmarks.

I hadn't been to DC since 1999. One of the tours we got was for the Library of Congress. Which is a newer thing that they are giving tours (they moved all the people working there to another building and so had more room for tourists and so on). So we just went with it because it was one of our congressional tours. On the first day actually, but was a highlight of our trip. The building is just magnificent. & we did also get to see Thomas Jefferson's library (which was the start of the government's library. Was told there he sold to them at a discount out of the kindness of his heart, and to start a government library, but learned at Monticello he sold to pay debts. Never found out why he was in debt up to his eyeballs. I am inspired to do a lot of American history reading now).

Actually, we did good on the first and last day. We checked our of our hotel Friday and went to the secondary air and space museum (a huge airplane hangar about 45 miles out, opened more recently also) and we only had about 2 hours but that was pretty incredible.

We did go to Philly and the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall was a first for me too. (LM LOVED the Benjamin Franklin museum. I think it was like $4 admission and was really well done. Another trip highlight, as were all the things we hadn't really planned too much ahead).

We did have time to go to Hershey. Spent way too much money there but I think the rest of us (other than dh) needed some more goofy time. (We had gone back and forth a few times if we would bother, but we ended up having time).

We did also make it out to Colonial Williamsburg. Which happened to be the day that it poured rain in DC, so we were very charmed on the weather front. (I was dreading the heat and humidity, but we lucked out. Some of it was good luck. I think otherwise Florida scarred me and that's like my idea of heat and humidity. Which is 10 times worse than any weather we experienced on this trip. & to be clear, I've only been to Florida in October. I could not even begin to imagine what a Florida summer is like).

Other highlights were getting to see some original works of art from DaVinci, Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. Saw some famous pieces of art. Of course, it was fun to explore and find other gems. They also had an incredible photograph gallery. They really encouraged taking pictures at most the museums and the white house, etc. (Though could not take any pictures inside any historic homes). So I will definitely share some pictures later.

We barely made a dent in the art museums. They were just so ginormous.

Of course, our Capitol tour was during the sit-in. The line for the House gallery was hours long and my husband stood in line for hours just to get in after they took a break. Ugh! I didn't want to waste my last day in D.C. in line and BM is going back in the spring. So we left it at that. Of course, dh had wanted to go join the protestors the day before but no one was there (we split for a while). While he was in line seeing nothing, while we are the Capitol the following day, we went outside where all the action was. So dh got the short end of the stick there. Everyone had left by the time he came outside. He never saw any protestors though he was at the Capitol both days. (The big crowds seemed to swell later at night, looking at the news later).

Which reminds me, we got to our Congressperson's office early enough, for Capitol tour, that we were chatting with the staff for a while. Dh is just beside himself about this sit-in and was asking what we could do. (Since he seemed to be missing the protests). They re-iterated to call your congresspeople and to make your voice heard. Said they had never gotten so many calls (this young staff person said this, speaking to his time there) and they take phone calls very seriously. So passing that along as a FYI. Last time we went to DC we did meet with our congressperson. This time we really didn't bother (we've met her several times in our city) and she was at the sit-in anyway so it would have been canceled I presume. But it was still an experience all the same. It was good for the kids to see.

----------------------------------------------------

I added up our total Friday a.m. and I think our spending was getting close to $3,500 for our trip (everything but flights). So grand total around $5,500. By far our most expensive family vacation. Though most the tours and museums we did do were free, we did have to pay for a hotel room, which we usually do not. (In the end, in-laws timeshare had nothing near D.C. They were trying to tell us that most people just stay 1 hour away!? No thanks!?)

Since I also paid for BM's DC trip for next year, I guess this year's vacation spending is going to be in line with last year's "year of splurge." Really and truly though, not planning any more family vacations after this. SO HAPPY to be done with flying for the foreseeable future.

I would like to throw $3k from our savings to pay off our expenses this month. (Will do this next week, cash flowing from my paycheck the money that would have gone to savings). I am hoping to cash flow the last $500 or so with credit card rewards and grocery savings on the home front (not buying groceries for 10 days or so). Will see how close to $3,000 I can get.

I think as to the trip, everything but flight home went as well as it could have. I really dislike traveling, but I have a really hard time with jet lag and so on. I am very scheduled and in tune with my body, so I just can never really get over the travel and get lag to actually enjoy. Probably why I enjoy smaller trips. I really thought I was insane to agree to a red eye flight out and was really dreading that part. For whatever reason, I seem to handle these things better with age. Seems counter-intuitive I guess. Maybe once you have a newborn, a one night with no sleep is no biggie. & since that went 10 times better than I ever though it would, I was pretty mellow about being stuck in the airport last night. I'll get a good sleep tonight and my body will slowly adjust back to normalcy. I am sure I will feel miserable for a few days, but I think it's just relative.

----------------------------------------------------

As I look forward to being done with flights and crazy expensive vacations (from our frame of reference), my MIL wants to plan a big trip next year. By itself it is a very generous offer. But it's my MIL and it's a whole thing. Will see...

Dh will probably also go to Florida for his Grandfather's 90th, but we've known that for a while and are just expecting to pay for one cheap-ish airline ticket. Florida in fall has been historically cheap and he will be going with his parents. We know they have time-shares there since we have used them multiple times.

My dream vacation at this point is some National Park road trips with dh. Yellowstone and Grand Canyon are the biggies that we want to do. Maybe 3 or 4 trips I can think of that we want to start doing without the kids. I think this will keep us busy for a while.

-----------------------------------------------------

Getting back to reality...

Kids' birthdays are right around the corner and no plans have been made. They both have bigger groups of friends this year and are asking for proper parties. (Usually we have the energy to let them invite one friend over). We will probably oblige. So probably two busy weekends ahead.

Dh should have another MRI soon. I don't expect any news. It will be another years or so before I expect any news. His Doctor is eager to see any potential progress though. He agreed to limit to 2x per year since we have a high deductible plan. Doesn't really matter since MRIs would be free after first two (after deductible maxed) but they do the contrast dye thing and dh doesn't really want any more MRIs than necessary. We always joke how the dye is worse than the brain tumor itself. Seriously, lord knows what that stuff does to your body and they are injecting a lot into his system. But anyway, I expect we will collectively hold our breath a bit until that is done. Always worrying about bad news. (Bad news would be more surgery).

Reminds me, I was shocked to learn that (George) Gershwin died of a brain tumor at age 38. Had no idea. That one kind of knocked me for a loop. They had a Gershwin exhibit at the Library of Congress. (I had no idea he had a brain tumor or that he passed so young).

----------------------------------------------------

I'll try to share some pictures tomorrow a.m. Any costs breakdown will have to wait for a few more days.

Dh is officially off work for the summer. His work is always very vague on seasonal schedule (I guess it just depends how things are going). So he mentioned the kids get off school in a couple of weeks and they said that was fine. That his last day could be their last day. Then a few days later Corporate came down and said all the seasonal employees were off work as of last Friday. (If he hadn't of asked ahead of time, I don't know that we would know that was unusual. It seemed they expected to keep seasonal employees until late June; our kids still have a couple of weeks of school).

I am sure dh will enjoy the extra time off!

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This month I am paying off crazy big bills. I paid off the credit cards on the 1st. $5k to one card. Included airfare for our trip, plus some reimbursed professional expenses.

Since I can't go into vacation with a $5k+ credit card balance. Just... can't... do it... I expect to pull $4k from savings this week to pay off the school trip and MRI bill. (I had charged in June to give me some flexibility to pay off. But it's just going to drive me crazy in the interim).

When I get back from vacation I will receive a $3k paycheck that is entirely earmarked for savings. I am guessing I will also just throw that at the credit card to offset our own trip expenses. So maybe three big payments this month. (I would otherwise pay off on the first, so it just means paying down a few days early).

I have not added up trip expenses at all and I don't want to. I expect we will spend more than $3k. I just don't even want to know. I want to enjoy our time. We initially expected to travel in a more off time and to have more flexibility for cheaper airfare. We also initially expected a free hotel room. So our super frugal trip has ended up going in the opposite direction. But we have the money so it just is what it is. Kind of a last hoorah since we aren't planning any more big travel with the kids. I don't remember the last time I paid for a hotel more than a night or two. Probably not since I have been married. & I don't know when I will ever fly my kids (with us) anywhere again. So is a lot of why I am just letting it go.

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I will have two weeks of vacation this month. Our DC trip was literally the only time we could mesh our schedules all year. *sigh* (Which is a huge reason we are done traveling with kids). So we leave on the last day of school and get back the day before our annual family camp trip.

All else being equal, I'd probably just go to camp. It's VERY relaxing and I imagine our DC trip is the kind of vacation that I will need a vacation from. But... I don't want to board my cat extra days and I don't want to leave him home alone 3 nights after boarding him for like 10 days. Plus, I would really like to preserve some vacation for other things. (The last time I took two weeks off was... Never? Maybe my honeymoon? Particularly with kids, I like to be free to take days off here and there as things come up). We've left it that I might just drive up for two days. Would give me two whole days. I am happy with that, as long as I can drive back while it's still light.

-------------------------------------------------

So I got word back that we are confirmed for a white house tour and the Capitol Building tour. Woohoo! (We applied right around the 3 month mark deadline and wasn't sure we'd get in with our last minute trip changes).

Reminds about one cool thing about BM's class trip. One of his classmates parents works at the Capitol and she had arranged a "behind the scenes" type tour this year and will do the same next year. So that's some extra perk that he will get on this other trip.

The tide has definitely turned. The quiet tide where we barely spent any money this year.

I don't even know where to begin.

**BM seems pretty certain he wants to go on the school DC trip. Since we don't want to do payments, it turns out we probably have to pay for that around June 1. (Okay, my planning was REALLY bad on that. Never occurred to me that we'd have to pay that a full year ahead of time).

**Last week I got dh's MRI bill (from January). Of course!

{The MRI bill and school trip stuff is $4,000 total. Plan is to charge up in June so that I don't have to pay until July}.

**I did buy our own Washington D.C. airfare this month.

**Dh got that phone deal he couldn't resist. Which is chump change compared to all this.

**We picked up an extravagant birthday gift for LM because it was on sale. I think it was around $160. Will save for July birthday. (This was before any of the above).

**Both dh and BM are taking classes this month for some unique passions. Will have to touch more on that later. Kind of curious to see how both pan out a bit more before I blog about them. Dh spent $125 and BM spent $40, this month.

**This week I saw that one of dh's favorite bands is playing regionally. First show in 7 years. It's not until October but tix go on sale this week.

**I did see a groupon for the local water park and was tempted, but decided we had spent more than enough money this month. (Thinking for BM's birthday, but other deals will come around).

To this point it's been fine. But if anything else comes up...

MRI aside, it's all fun stuff at least.

Edited to add: Decided to nix the concert. It was really expensive. Which I probably wouldn't have thought twice about before all the big surprise bills this week. Dh just happened to bring up last night (since I had told him not to spend more money this month?) and I Said, "Well... I do think the tickets are kind of ridiculously expensive." We just hadn't seen each other all week to discuss and kind of assumed the other *really* wanted to go. But we discussed it and decided we didn't want to pay for a ridiculously expensive concert. Just a reminder how extra money gets blown when things are hectic and assumptions are made. {Without BM's trip we would have gotten the tickets and enjoyed. But it was just re-discussing after $4k in bills fell out of the sky. It quickly fell down the priority scale}.

All of that said, we are still at "peak liquidity". & probably will still be there after all this sorts out. I can live with that.

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As a frugal win, I did cut LM's hair. He doesn't have much hair and dh was complaining that his last haircut took like 5 minutes, if that. I didn't care because I get him a $10 haircut once every 12 months or so and lord knows BM and I always get our money's worth (tons of hair, takes a long time to cut). I told dh, "Trust me, it evens out." But in the end I decided to give it a whirl. Worst case is I muck it up and pay someone to fix it. It turned out way better than I ever thought it would. I had cut their hair when they were preschool age but was nothing I would subject them to once they hit school age. I think it was pretty obvious I cut their hair and wasn't that great at it. But I guess LM has super easy hair for the moment. So I am glad I gave it a try.

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In other spending, dh did also buy a laptop this weekend. He thinks it will help with his writing. After watching computer reviews and sales for a while, he was able to pick up a small laptop for $200.

I'm personally happy to have a much smaller laptop to take on our upcoming vacation. I am glad he found a deal before our trip.

I think mostly dh wants to take his writing with him everywhere so that he can take more advantage of down time. I don't think upcoming "down time galore" was his motivation but I expect he will be getting a lot of use from the laptop.

Received $42 bank interest for the month of May.

Snowflakes to Investments:

Redeemed $50 credit card rewards (cash back) from our gas/grocery card.

Redeemed $70 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $5 cash back on Visa/dining card.

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$8 Savings from Target Red Card

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash
+$ 900 to IRAs

Also, redeemed $208 Barclay card one-time bonus.

Savings (From dh's paycheck):
+$ 230 to Investments

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):

+$1,300 to cash
-$400 Drama Camp (summer)

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As to dh's paycheck, I turned off the 401k mid-month. I think because we had so many bills coming up. (I don't remember exactly why I turned it off when I did). So we put 50% to 401k first half of the month, and that's it. I used his check to cash flow some of the May/June craziness. Turns out he will only get one paycheck in June so I am so glad I did that. I'll turn the 401k back up to 50% as necessary for tax purposes. Taxes were the only reason we put so much into his 401k, but in the meantime my OT was not as much as usual and his work has been slow, so don't need to put so much in the 401k. (Is not a financial priority at all, to fund his 401k, since we have more than enough saved for long-term retirement). So I will see where we are at in the Fall and what is more efficient. If we can use his fall paychecks to pay for some of BM's class trip, that would be great. At some point I know I will have to put 50% into his 401k again(maybe October - December, or something like that. He has the summer off).

The savings drain will be pretty big for the next two months. Will pay for BM's class trip and our vacation. Oh, and I got dh's MRI bill too. That's $8k+ right there. Fun Fun!

Yesterday I had a day out with the kids. 2 weekends in a row. We got 3 free tickets to an advanced screening of Angry Birds. Dh decided to sit it out since both the kids wanted to go.

We took some books to entertain us and got there about an hour early, but it seems like we probably could have gotten there much closer to the screening time. It wasn't as packed as the last one I had gone to. There were some empty seats. Though if we went too much later it might have been harder to sit together. The other nice thing is that there is no commercials or previews, so it's not an apples to apples comparison as to paying for a movie. You'd still want to get there a little early or at least have to sit through a lot of stuff before the movie started.

After the movie I took the kids out for Mongolian BBQ, since there is one right next to the theater. I thought the place might be crowded after the movie, since it got out at 12:30. But it really wasn't. I at some point had a light bulb moment that "free movie" types probably don't go out to "$10 per person lunch" afterwards. Lord knows 99% of the time we wouldn't, and there's definitely some eccentric people at these screenings. I am sure a lot of very cash limited and frugal types.

BM had wanted to go to Monglolian BBQ on Mother's Day, since we had been right by one, but I didn't want to eat out on such a busy day. So I just thought it would be a nice treat for the kids.

From there we ran to Target because they kids were out of toothpaste. BM also wanted to pick up a bigger re-usable water bottle for school.

While at Target, I spotted some plastic tumblers that I really liked. I've been buying some online and wasn't really happy with the first ones I got (too small) so I had bought some more. Which were fine. But, maybe too large? As we had never put them away inside the cabinets. So... I saw the "just right" ones at Target. I took a picture of them to order them online later.

& then I treated the kids to white cherry icees, because I was feeling generous. (I can't believe they still have those! I just remember getting those when I was pregnant, or in that time frame somewhere. Then I started doing most my shopping online and completely forget about them. But my memory was jogged recently and I couldn't believe they still have the white cherry icees. My fave!)

I did drag the kids to the grocery store on the way home to get some items for dinner. I picked up a bouquet of flowers while I Was there. I always peruse them but nothing much has struck me this year. But yesterday I found some. (They are generally fairly cheap and very fresh).

When I got home I couldn't find the same tumblers online. Well, I found them for $40 though they had been more priced $20 (for 8) in the store. ??? So I asked dh if he would go back with me later. After dinner we went back and he did some grocery shopping and I was able to pick up 8 of the pretty tumblers for $20. (I LOVE them! Way more my style then the others I had bought). I put the 8 "too big" ones in my donation pile and made sure we had cabinet space for the new ones. I am so used to the ease of shopping online, but sometimes it's easier to shop in person. This was a much better in-person type purchase.

Oh, and we feasted for dinner last night. I have this family porcupine meatball recipe that dh and the kids don't care for. So I just make it for myself sometimes. That was my plan, but dh made Zuppa Toscana (Olive Garden knockoff) for dinner, which I definitely had some of. & I roasted some cabbage.

Reminds me, I tried a new salmon patty recipe a couple of weekends ago (made with fresh salmon) and it was a huge hit with the kids. My parents are coming up in a couple of weekends and I will have to make for them. Or maybe that's just evil. We have this canned salmon patty family recipe, but I don't know if I can go back now. Oh whatever, my parents can afford fresh salmon.

In other news, dh activated that phone and it actually worked! It was some deal he got about 18 months ago where it was $60 for a Moto G. The catch was that it was a Boost mobile phone but it was supposed to work with Ting after a year, or something like that. It sounded a little iffy. But, hey, it worked! He has agreed to get rid of our first 2 smart phones, which are out-dated. For now it's just talk, so I will have to lean on him a bit. I somehow don't think he has a plan of what to do with these phones. He's just agreed to purge them. Where and when, I don't know.

I wanted to do a reality check on our spending for this year. I just had to spend a minute or two running reports in Quicken to gleam the following.

2016 Stats through April 30th:

--Spending is $15,580 for 1/3 of the year.

This is $3,132 less spending than same time frame last year.

Major difference is that we paid $3k for Japan trip in spring 2015.

I'd say we are pretty consistent. The Japan trip was clearly a one-off.

One thing I was concerned about is if we were justifying more spending with dh working. I'd say the answer is no.

In fact...

--Gross Income is up a mere $326. Versus the same time period last year.

Factoring taxes, I'd say our net income is lower.

Is dh working for the money? Clearly no.

{I made less OT money and didn't chase as many credit card type rewards}.

Other Stats:

--Net Worth is up $20,000, from January 1.

--If we paid off our mortgage today we'd have $125,000 left in savings/investments.

I think we have crossed the line to feasible. This would leave our Traditional IRAs and kids' college money (gifted) intact.

Is not something we will consider until we can do so without raiding our ROTHS. But, we are getting there... It's starting to snowball down the hill. We went from $0 to $125k in just 3 years, and that should just continue to accelerate.

My dh has a phone obsession (no idea why; I don't think he really even uses his phone much). But, anyway. Bought some phone "for BM some day maybe", which is ridiculous since I've lost track of how many phones we have. & they will all probably be obsolete before BM ever needs a phone.

All is well that ends well. I just grumbled at dh initially. But I told him today that I wanted to take a phone inventory and to get rid of some of the older phones. He agreed and I think in the end we don't have any more phones than we need. & most were bought as incredible deals, so maybe it's not all bad.

Our plan hinges on one phone that LM is using at current. We are supposed to be able to use it with Ting, but it's a little iffy. So we might test it out this weekend just to see if we should keep it (for the kids). If that phone works okay, dh has agreed to get rid of our first two smart phones. Then this phone would be our backup phone. Which we have already promised to his aunt when she is in the States this summer. & lord knows every once in a while we need to activate an extra phone. Like when I have to air out my phone for several days. I am fine with the *one* backup phone. (& we could always activate short-term if the kids need cell service, so it certainly gets used).

This new phone will be dh's "insurance" phone and maybe the kids could use it some day. I think that's fine and reasonable if we only have *one* future phone. A full-on replacement if we have a phone die prematurely, something like that. (Which we would never use because we'd just buy a phone that we actually want. But, whatever dh. If it makes you sleep better at night).

Dh has another recent hand-me-down from his mom that he doesn't need after all (new "future" phone will take care of what he wanted this other phone for). So... We suddenly have a phone available for LM. The timing kind of works because I recall it was 6th grade when a lot of the kids got phones. So though he's been using a more cheapie phone for games, this will be a nice step up. IT's not Ting-compatible, but once he wants to start calling and texting his friends we will just set him up with google voice number.

BM's phone is not Ting compatible either, but getting cell service doesn't seem to be on his radar. I expect we will be good for a while. If not, we have "backup" phone and "future" phone. If we suddenly feel like the kids need cell phone service. I haven't ruled it out for next year since it will be different and chaotic. Until then...

---------------------------------------------------

In other news, I am questioning my planning skills. I guess I am just in denial that my baby is getting older!

We've been discussing the whole 8th grade big trip for a while, but it never occurred to me I'd have to pay for that trip this year. I had some kind of a mental block about that. Well, technically the payment is due around January 1, for a March 2017 trip. Duh!

Dh has already given me fair warning on this issue. As it turns out, his parents planned a big trip to D.C. the summer before his 8th grade. So of course they were not interested in paying a bajillion dollars to send him again with all of his classmates. I think it probably didn't help that he went to a small private school, so probably felt a little more left out than I imagine our own kids would.

{I don't know that my 8th grade class even had a big trip. So none of this means anything to me. Lord knows my parents would never pay for a trip like that, when I Was a child}.

So, dh tells me about how upset he is about this and how he wouldn't do the same for his kids. So... He plans a big trip to D.C. *during* 8th grade. Don't ask me!

Since both our parents gave us large cash gifts last year, I basically told him, "Whatever." I honestly don't care. *I* am not paying for it.

I think if the trip was *just* D.C., we'd have to admit that this is pretty redundant. Dh may have his personal feelings on the subject, but he's also a really cheap guy. So I don't even know if he would be pushing for this.

But... They are also going to NYC. They had me at Broadway!

BM hasn't decided yet if he wants to go. But we got the information this week. Cost is $2,500-ish. We told him we had the means, and it's just up to him if he wants to go.

The way I am compartmentalizing this in my brain is mostly, "The grandparents have this covered." Whether they know it or not. Without their generosity, I don't know that I would feel so blase about this expenditure.

But, that said. It seems we have been throwing around the idea of a lot of big expenses, and this did throw me off a wee bit.

I don't know how much of it is "13 years of unemployment" thing or just that dh and I have never spent his income. I mean, we might save it for later and spend it down. But 100% of his income has always gone to savings of some form. At some point it hit me that we have dh's income to cover this. It just took me a long time to get there. & now I'd like to kind of forget that I ever thought about it. But yeah, that does makes this trip "no big deal" from a financial standpoint. I think I will continue my thinking as always. All of dh's income will go to savings. In turn, your assets get bigger and you more seriously consider splurges like this. I guess was kind of where we were, but I wasn't fully realizing how quickly we should be able to replenish this savings.

Dh and I did also discuss that we would not offer this trip to BM unless we felt we could offer the same to LM. OF course, LM could currently care less. Which is why BM tend to be so spoiled on the travel front. He's the only one in our house that cares about this stuff at all. Is not personally how I would spend my own money. But, I can appreciate the ying and the yang of it. I would bet money that LM will never ask us to send him on the 8th grade trip. Will see...

**BM told me that his school uniform shirts were getting too small. I just happened to luck out with a sale at Hanes. I bought him 5 uniform shirts and 4 casual shirts for $40. Thankfully everything fit well. They changed the material on the uniform shirts and he said it is way more comfortable. Should only be one more year of uniforms for him. Hopefully one of my last uniform purchases?

**Went to Robot Wars a few weekends ago and spent way too much money. But we had a blast as we always do.

**We finally got a Dungeons & Dragons game started for LM and his friends. I think the stars just kind of aligned on this. Dh was able to get like 30 electronic books and a starter game set for like $30? (I mentioned in Feb). Plus LM has just been kind of finding his people.

We decided to kick start things to have a game every Friday after school, but I am sure we will eventually dial it back. Maybe every other week. We've been serving dinner with the Friday games but thankfully LM's friends don't seem terribly picky. We started with pizza and are just kind of working our way down to our more frugal potluck type dishes.

As an aside, this reminds me that dh ended up making chili for his potluck game night group, recently. He's been going for a year or two and they told him they all thought he had been a vegetarian. LOL. So they were surprised when he brought chili with meat. We have this rice and bean dish that is so cheap and everyone loves so much, so that is our main go-to potluck dish. They mistook frugality for vegetarianism. I do recall also he has made homemade hummus and salsa for that group. Don't remember what else he has taken. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he's taken a veggie tray to counter all the junk food most people bring. Which probably plays into the impression that everyone had.

----------------------------------------------------

Since Mother's Day is always my first long weekend (or time off) for the year, it's always when I realize how disgusting my house is and I always seem to end up cleaning. (Tomorrow will be my first week day off this year, so making a 3-day weekend of it).

Plus we have a tradition that I take the kids over to the play place. Since it's only open for free play (on the weekends) rarely or on Holidays.

So I always joke that I do all the motherly things I don't generally do. That is definitely how today is shaping up. At the play place I take a book, buy some junk food from the vending machine, and generally enjoy a little extra bonding with my kids after busy season. This year I am not quite so deprived on quiet reading time or child bonding time, but will enjoy regardless.

I was surprised the kids even still wanted to go. They will outgrow this place any day now.

I probably won't be telling anyone else that I took the kids out by myself and cleaned the house on Mother's Day. They wouldn't get it.

I guess this month is shaping up to be a bit of a chore month on the home front.

3 of us do have dental appointments and will have to get our cat his shots so that we can board him while we vacation. Just stuff like that.

We did have someone come out and clean out the gutters and power wash the house.

On the flip side, things have been pretty quiet. We are so ahead financially on everything that all through tax season I felt like I was forgetting something. But I think we've just gotten so efficient. I don't have anything in particular to tend to or clean up on the paperwork side of things and don't feel like I have done much this year. Since we are always pretty organized, it could just be that life has been *really* quiet. I do think that is some of it. But I am also really appreciating things like pre-paying the property taxes so that I have one less thing to worry about during tax season.

----------------------------------------------------

In other news, we had a meeting with the high school that went really well. They seem infinitely more interested in "proper math placement" than BM's current school. I think they just have different red tape and motivations.

Will see, but so far both schools and the district seem to have no problem with things. If you missed my prior post on this topic, BM's current (middle) school doesn't offer higher math than algebra. He's already been held back more than he should have. We were never promised anything, but our first choice would be that he take math at the high school next year. It's our preference that he take an actual math class with peers. We have the resources to get him a (free) private math tutor if need be, but we kind of figure that is our last resort. We also have some other options that are not very ideal. So this is Plan A. (Plan A seems to be everyone's preference).

I wasn't sure what to expect from the meeting. But I think the bottom line is that they want our kid to attend their low performing school. I do also think our principal framed it with this expectation so that they would work with us. Honestly, this high school is very strongly in the running (they have some great programs for the higher achieving kids). But we haven't made any decisions yet. While there to discuss math (which we did all of a couple of minutes), we did tour the school and talked about the engineering program. Up to this point we've just been thinking of this as a means to get BM the proper math class. We chose this high school 99% because of the close proximity to the middle school, but also because our principal has a very close relationship with the school. But I now realize it is a really nice edge to attend the school for one year and get a feel for the campus. I will say I already have a far more favorable impression of this school administration versus the other high school. But I also think attending the school for an hour per day will give us more information to decide than any first (or second or third) impressions ever will.

I still will believe when I see it. I am sure there is red tape to sort out, even if we haven't been presented with any red tape yet. Schedules have to mesh, etc., etc.

Received $36 bank interest for the month of April.

Snowflakes to Investments:

Redeemed $25 credit card rewards (cash back) from our gas/grocery card.

Redeemed $42 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $5 cash back on Visa/dining card.

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$7 Savings from Target Red Card

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash
+$ 900 to IRAs

+$3,000 OT to savings (will fund my mortgage goal)

Savings (From dh's paycheck):
+$ 840 to Savings/Investments

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):

+$1,300 to cash
- 500 life insurance

{That's $6,155 total saved this month!}

-----------------------------------------------------

Grandma slipped me $300 for doing her taxes. I'd say we spent about $200 of that for Robot Wars and related expenses. So I just left this money in the checking account to cover expenses. Will consider all that a treat from her.

Mortgage goal is funded, thanks to OT. (I really didn't work a lot of OT this year, so was glad I made just enough for our annual mortgage goal). But as usual, I am just setting it aside for now and seeing how everything else shakes out. I will apply the $3,000 to the mortgage some time between now and 12/31.

I mentioned in my last post that we are going to spend down some of our liquidity. It's a long story. But I wanted to be clear that it's not a "spend money to spend money" kind of thing. The next step for us is hitting our mortgage hard (our only debt). The short version is that it seems to be more sensible to take care of home improvements before we start throwing large sums at the mortgage. If I have $8k to throw at the mortgage, maybe I'd rather complete some long put off home improvements with that money. On the flip side, we want to have *all* of our ducks in a row before we start throwing bigger dollars at the mortgage. I believe this is our last duck. (& if we had no ducks to tend to, then we'd be throwing some of this money at the mortgage. So I guess either way we will be spending it down).

I know it seemed about 99.99% certain, but I couldn't take it for granted until we got official word.

LM got into the art school! Woohoo!

We never had any grand plan, and it would have been impossible to have a grand plan since we bought our house before we had kids. In the end they both seem to be on track for very fitting schools for their individual needs (public school).

LM is a weird one because I think he'd be just as happy in a STEM program. But he's also so artistic. He is interested in pretty much every aspect of the arts. He will now get to dabble in a little bit of everything for middle school. I guess I feel like the STEM side of things we can more easily and cheaply provide. He is so blessed to get into this school, and I expect it will save me a bajillion dollars in extra-curricular type costs.

The kids' schedules next year will be CRAZY. Crazy by our standards anyway. Though their campus has often been in multiple locations, they have always had the same school/schedules. Since the main location (K-4) was walking distance from our house, we've never had to drive all over tarnation. We've just had one school to drive to.

I don't fully know what we have gotten ourselves into. I have to print out the calendars and schedules. It's just one year and then we will figure out the high school situation for BM. I think next year will be the worst of it.

Oh, and no more uniforms! We are going to arrange some kind of uniform burning celebration. Even if it's just done symbolically and we donate the uniforms, is probably more what we will do.

This school is Grades 6-12. If he likes it, he should be set until college.

Dh dropped off his acceptance yesterday but I will call today to get verbal confirmation that he is all set. Once I feel more warm and fuzzy about it we will contact his current school so they can give his spot to someone on their wait list. (Though they haven't even asked yet and may just wait for them to ask. I would think they would want to do that soon). It feels weird on some level to let it go, though aside from the convenience factor next year I don't think it really matters. There is a school just a couple of blocks away that I do not think has a waitlist. Seems to be the best option anyway if LM hates the art school. I don't know if he has a lot of other options since most the middle schools are charter schools with long wait lists. The one plain public middle school I guess, but I don't even know where the heck that is. Anyway, it feels weird to give up a spot at current school, but probably 100 times easier to do since we already have a middle schooler there. I am pretty sure LM would not like that middle school and he won't be missing much. So on some level it feels weird, but not in a "will we regret giving up an option?" kind of way. Just weird in that once he leaves he can't go back. A door closes.

------------------------------------------------------

We found out the following day that it is official that BM will be taking math at the high school next year.

Okay, so that sounds too good to be true. But they seem to be done fighting us on this. Phew!

{Because of common core and curriculum changes, they dropped geometry completely from the middle school program. Though we have tons of math teachers in the family, several willing to tutor BM for free, school (with peers) is the best option and particularly for a class like geometry. I am not sure if he is taking geometry or the new common core math. Our hope was to get him into geometry so he could just get ahead of the changeover}.

So... Phew!! (Though... I will believe it when I see it?)

So now I guess we have to keep track of *three* school schedules!? Ugh. Thankfully dh is good with that stuff. Since both their schools are charter schools, they all have completely different calendars, even if all in the same school district.

As crazy as next year sounds, the one piece of the pie that sounds *perfect* is dh's job. We haven't discussed it in depth but we've discussed how he should probably keep this job next school year if we end up with a 3-school situation. They are very flexible and family friendly. (Beyond this super crazy schedule, I think he's ready to move on up to something more interesting and the opportunities seem to be there. But I think this will be a good holding spot for one more year). Everything seems to just be falling into place I guess.

I could not live my life like this, but sometimes you just have to do what you gotta do. For the short run I can do "crazy".

Kids had two weeks off for spring break.

Almost 3 weeks. Before spring break they had a week of short days for the end of trimester and conferences. I took the gas sipper and picked them up every day on my lunch break.

First week of spring break we sent them off with our parents. Dh's parents had come up for St. Patty's day dinner. So we sent the kids home with them. We picked them up on Easter. Their summer is so short and everyone's always made other plans by then anyway. It's been good to have some forced time with grandparents and cousins. My dad took BM camping for a few days.

I barely saw dh. (Though we did have one nice date night). He just had his own things. After we made arrangements for kids, like the Friday before break, his work said he could/should take time off to be with his kids. I am sure if they were younger he could have just taken the time off. Plus it was really slow. As is, dh told them that he didn't have the kids and he did go to work. I think that week they just told him to take Friday off and he might have left early one day for a free movie. But the following week was really slow (though it was supposed to be busy?) It worked out since the kids were home. Monday through Wednesday I just drove home at lunch time to break up their day a bit and check on things. The kids can mostly take care of themselves. Thursday dh left work super early and I just happened to be having a crazy day at work and so I told him I'd just work through lunch. Then they were invited to a sleepover near my work so their friend dropped them off with me around noon on Friday and I drove them home. Dh was already home from work that day, by noon. They probably should have just told him to stay home another Friday.

It was nice the kids had the sleepover to break up the long week. We've never left them home quite that much before but it worked out to not being as much as we planned. OF course they were totally fine. It was good easing us parents into it. I don't even think we would ask our parents for help next time they have a week off. (Then again, mostly that is MIL begging to take them, since we don't need enough babysitting for her tastes. So she gets her wish for a bit).

One of the kids asked me what we were going to do for summer. They forgot dh has the summer off.

------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of summer. I was technologically challenged and accidentally deleted my last post.

I think the jist of that post was that we were unable to get a free stay in D.C. this summer. Since this is the last family trip we are planning for the foreseeable future and I also don't remember the last time we paid for a hotel, we will just go with the flow.

Other than the big D.C. vacation, we are going for a very low key summer. BM had been taking summer programs at the college, but it's somewhat pricey and has always sounded way better on paper than the reality. I think he couldn't take any classes the year before last because of his Europe trip, but last year we tried again and it was pretty "meh". We did leave it that we would review the course catalog (for both kids) when it comes out, but unless something really *perfect* is offered we will just skip it.

I personally think summer should just be time to be a kid. Maybe especially because we expect our kids to be working in a couple of more years. & if we try to plan anything their short summer fill up pretty fast. So I am very happy for them to have a slow summer this year. It's something we have not achieved at all in recent years. Too many opportunities to take advantage of, usually. The year is young, so will see...

LM did love his drama camp and does want to do that again. $400 for early bird sign up. I expect extra-curricular expenses like this to dry up (or shift) as he will most likely be accepted to art/drama school. It will be interesting to see if he even wants to do drama camp next year. Hoping he can scratch more of that itch while at school anyway.

So those are summer plans.

I expect in the future summers we will try to work in some lower key vacations. Since summer will be the only time we can all co-ordinate. It would be a good time to do a Northwest road trip. & one thing I want to do is just rent a beach house or a house by Tahoe for the week. Something like that that I would rather do anyway but has been pushed aside by bigger plans. That's probably more fun to do anyway now that the kids are getting old enough to bring a friend along.

Dh and I want to do some road trips and hit the National Parks on our own. We will continue our fall break tradition without the kids. I am starting to consider the possibility that maybe we can even do some of this during this calendar year. Will see how the year shakes out. Right now it sounds pretty excessive with D.C. being way more expensive than we planned. But... I am very open to it if things go well financially this year. I can't imagine that a drive to the Grand Canyon costs that much, so I guess is why I am open to it. It just depends if we want to put it off one more year so we can do the whole big trip that we had planned to do initially. Or if I just want to get to the Grand Canyon once before I turn 40. (We had a big National Park trip planned in Fall 2013 but it got canceled with the government shutdown. Yosemite is the only National Park that I have been to).

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One more crazy thing about this summer. My eldest turns 13! I have been so future focused, thinking more about 16 or 18... It kind of took me by surprise to realize. 13!

What's crazy is that my MIL turns 70 the day after BM turns 13. It's going to take some time for me to wrap my brain around all that. I think this kind of freaks out dh and I because we both lost a grandparents around age 69. Just another reminder that our parents are getting to that age. The rest of our parents are a few years younger, but not by a lot.

Oh, that also reminds me. I really thought SIL would really want to go all out for the in-law's 40th anniversary, which is more the tradition in dh's family. We spent some years prepping financially for that and trying do plan ahead for our perceived income/taste inequality. In the end, SIL bought a $1.5 mil house just before the in-law's anniversary and couldn't be bothered to contribute one penny to that. Went the complete opposite way that I expected!! They've been pretty much "dirt broke" since. I felt kind of silly after all that. Well anyway, SIL did bring up (recently) wanting to do something big for MIL's 70th. Which I do not believe is a tradition in dh's family and threw me off. But... I also feel like that we will probably be more on the same financial page and so won't worry about it. I do think it's a good idea. Something we should probably think about more and plan more for as parents and kids get older. Probably more party throwing in our future.

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Edited to add: Kind of exhausted from the last few weeks. Probably especially since we spent all day driving and doing Easter festivities last Sunday. So not a single day off at home since the prior Sunday.

I so looked forward to a quiet day at home, but woke up with so much energy after having a really good night's rest and nothing on my plate for the day. So I asked dh to give me *5 minutes* to go through his clothes in our closet. It's mostly his professional stuff that he hasn't worn in 13 years. (& his wish is to never have to wear a tie again). But he also has piles of clothes from his mom that I know he will never wear. I don't remember what his excuse was, 10 years ago, for keeping all of it. But today he let it go very easily. He had no idea he had it or where it came from. Which is why I Wanted to be rid of it. Though the clothes were brand new and much nicer than the stuff I Remember him buying from the thrift shop 16 years ago... None of the gifted clothing were his style and clearly he never wore it. I am glad to let it go. We left it that since we have the space and he barely has any clothes otherwise, that we can just keep all of his professional clothing. But I said, "I am not keeping that if we move." He said, "Fair enough." (I suppose I should try to get him to purge some ties though, if he hates them so much).

Purged (all new with tags):

3 casual shirts (long sleeved, BM's size. But neither kid will wear long sleeves). I'd keep them for myself but I have enough clothes.

2 ties

3 work/button up shirts

6 pairs pants

Plus an old jacket. Dh made a comment a few weeks ago he didn't know he had that jacket, which is why I Wanted to go through his stuff.

P.S. We have since discussed the ties. He has maybe 6-8 ties hanging from one tie hanger. We decided to just leave it be until we are financially independent. (He'd maybe have to take a job with a nicer dress code if something happened to me, that kind of thing).

Received $38 bank interest for the month of March.

Snowflakes to Investments:

Redeemed $50 credit card rewards (cash back) from our gas/grocery card.

Redeemed $40 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $2 cash back on Visa/dining card.

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$5 Savings from Target Red Card

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$200 to investments
+$300 to cash
+$900 to IRAs

Savings (From dh's paycheck):
+$1,400 to Savings/Investments

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):

+$1,300 to cash

{That's $4,235 total saved this month?}

----------------------------------------------------

It's been rather weird and quiet on the financial front. Eventually we will get hit with some bigger bills. I have no idea why I have not gotten dh's MRI bill yet.

Of course, we saved so much by virtue of February being a short month I guess. I don't feel like it was a spectacular month on the low spend front, but these numbers say otherwise (since we pay off all February bills in March, then any March savings reflects last month's spending).

April should be a bigger savings month since I expect to receive one check for 4 months of overtime. I feel like March was a pretty lax month on the spending side of things. Probably justified a few too many treats because it was busy. But that said, all the splurging was food related. There was no retail spending this month.

Work has been really slow for dh, which I think has worked well with my busy work season. We only saved so much because it was a 3-paycheck month. I believe he had at least 3 Fridays off in March. I much rather put more of his paychecks to the mortgage or taxable investments and will re-think that since we don't seem to be on track to make as much money as we thought we would this year. I think I will leave it as is but might back his 401k down to 6% from 50% (for match) come fall when maybe he should be working more. I just have to run some tax projections and is why I figure I will let it be for now.

The school listed their lottery results and so I compared the two program lists and counted *50* kids that were accepted to two different programs at the same school. (All the siblings and kids already at said school, who get the top priority). It looks pretty darn good for LM!! He just needs 13 of those 50 to choose the other program. (& realistically, some may choose an entirely different school).

So I am feeling more optimistic about that and much less in limbo. That said, will believe it when I see it! I will be extremely humbled by our luck if that comes to pass. We moved soley for cost of living, but the education we have been able to provide our kids here has been unreal.

I wrote more to this blog post but then I lost it. Doh!

Will have to leave it at that for now. I was talking about summer and trip plans. But I suppose I might have more clarity on that later today.

I dropped my phone in the cat water Thursday night. It was bound to happen eventually. Surprised it took so long! I store it in a side pocket of my purse, right above the cat water. So I've said a million times this will happen some day. I (thought I) was sliding it into the pocket in the dark and... *splash*

We did take it immediately out and powered it down. Can't take out the battery. It seemed amazingly fine and so I had a good feeling about it. I later read that my phone is water resistant. Since we live in a dry climate the best thing to do is to just let it air out. I was going to give it 3 whole days but on a whim yesterday I powered it on. It started out a little iffy but it seemed fine after that. I am going to leave it off today and try to put it back in use Monday morning. Just being extra cautious but I don't plan to leave the house today.

At the end of the day, I mostly use it when out and about. I am not overall a very connected person, so it's not been a big deal. I believe I had -0- texts and -0- calls in two days, which is what I would have expected.

That said, the reason I carry a cell phone is primarily for emergency. So dh activated my old phone on Ting. I asked him to activate a phone for me so that I could air out my phone for several days. It's $6 to activate a phone on Ting for a month or partial month. I figured $6 was a good investment in saving my phone. This way I could call or text if need be.

I am glad I was able to save my phone. It's only 2 years old and I have been pretty set on keeping it for 4+ years.

It was probably also good to boot up the old phone and make sure it works. We will activate it and lend it to dh's aunt when she is in the country this year.

LM did not make it into the performing arts school on his audition. (I was surprised since it is supposed to be based on enthusiasm more than anything. Weeding out the kids who don't really want to be there). So that was a big blow. I didn't really know what to expect so didn't think it was 100% in the bag. But still disappointed all the same.

That said, LM did okay in the lottery. He is waitlist #13 or so (they haven't listed it out yet but dh counted it out and it was early on). I am so relieved dh could follow at all. It's really hard with his lack of hearing. (Or hopefully no surprise when they post the list! I suppose maybe he could have misheard).

Since he didn't get in I don't know how fast they want enrollment intent. None of the schools seem to say, but I dug out LM's Kinder application and his current school gave them 2.5 weeks to enroll. So I expect it will be something along those lines.

In this case there are two middle school programs at the same school. The accepted list for the other school was already posted a couple of days ago and the list is largely the same kids that got accepted in this other program. Pretty much any 5th graders already at said school, plus siblings of any older students, just applied at both schools to cover their bases. I imagine they will probably want people to be deciding in the next few weeks. Both lists are pure crap in the meantime. The plus side is I know they will be able to weed through their lists quickly. Some of the other schools, lord knows. It was quite chaotic when BM started 6th grade. Kids not showing up on the first week of school and then lots of shuffling around as they went down the waitlists. For every spot that opens up it is just a domino effect through the rest of the schools. But at least the people deciding between these two schools will have to make their decisions. The school will know if someone tries to claim a spot in both programs. So I expect these two programs to sort out more quickly than some of the others. Also, the other program at this school has wider appeal, as evidenced by their much longer waitlist. That might bode well for LM.

This is probably why on the way out of the lottery our neighbor (with kids the same age) said her older child had been waitlist #13 and he got in no problem. Like they didn't even have to wait until school started to find out.

For now we are cautiously optimistic. There are some different dynamics this year, but I admit it sounds pretty promising.

In the meantime, definitely still in limbo...

{If LM does not get in, he will stay at his current K-8 school. I suppose next year we do this all over again for high school for BM. BUT... For whatever reason all the middle schools are charter schools and why it is so chaotic. For high school I think BM Can easily get into any high school he wants to. We are considering between the two public high schools in our district}.

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Our plan was to do one last big family vacation this fall with the kids. Our schedules will never mesh after that. This other school sometimes has the same fall break but we found out last week they have no fall break for 2016. Ugh! So between that and a promising spot on the waitlist... We are scrapping the October vacation.

There is only one other week in the year that works for all of us, and it's at the end of June. So we are scrambling to see if that is enough time to plan a trip to D.C. I am wary of the last minute nature of the trip. But this is really dh's baby and I will leave it up to him. We are just going to start with seeing if we can get a free timeshare stay this weekend. It's not that we wouldn't go if we couldn't get a free room, but if everything is already booked up we will be wary. We will just have to discuss it from there. If there is a room we will just go with it. Dh was going to come up with a plan of what he wants to do, how many days it will take, and where we want to stay. We were going to see his parents this weekend and we can inquire about timeshares when we see them. I suppose we probably won't be buying airfare before April.

Edited to Add: Feeling less in limbo the next day. I remember thinking 50 kids or so were on both lists (basically all the kids already in their 5th grade program or that have older siblings at the school) but that was probably an exaggeration. The list came out, dh heard correctly (yay) and I counted *50* kids accepted to both programs at the same school. Exactly 50. We only need 13 of those kids to pick the other program. Wow!

Today is payday and will all go to savings. Dh gets paid tomorrow, all to savings. No one in my house has bought anything aside from groceries this month. Murphy has been extraordinarily quiet. I could get used to this. But is not realistic for the long run. Bills will come up. OF note, I am waiting for dh's MRI bill from January. ??? We may also buy airfare this week if we sort out LM's school schedule for next year. Can't plan our vacation until that is sorted but might have to scramble if June is the only time our schedule meshes.

Today is the school lottery for the school LM really wants to get into. Fingers crossed! I have no idea what to expect and will feel better when we at least know how he fared in both the audition and the lottery. Our life has been in limbo in the meantime.

We will scramble to make summer plans and vacation plans if we have more clarity today. If he gets a promising spot on the waitlist then it could be more limbo I guess...

As to tracking spending, I petered out in the end. I found I spent way too much time online last month tracking all the minutiae. I don't mind doing it once in a while, but maybe next time I should not do this during tax season.

& of course, we always track every penny we spend but it's usually just more automated and doesn't put me into the giant time suck of the internet.

I do think it's good to share the minutiae once in a while. The last time I tracked daily expenses was April 2012. I'd say things were pretty similar except gas was way pricey in 2012 and we probably spent a lot less on groceries.

Which reminds me, my 12yo grew 3 inches in the last 7 months. !! We usually measure every 6 months, but we were a month late this time. This might explain why our grocery budget has increased from $500 to $650 monthly, in the past year or so. & I mean usually if the cost of something goes up we can compensate by changing shopping habits, but we have failed miserably the past 12-18 months. I feel better knowing we are in the thick of it.

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**I did pay the bills for the month and paid off all the February credit card charges on the 1st. Out of sight out of mind for another month.

**I went to my first free advanced movie screening on Monday. I was initially a little cranky with having to get there so early. But in the end it was so fun! We all went to see Zootopia. Since it was an animated movie I don't know if it just brought out the "children at heart" people or what, but it was a really fun crowd. We got decent seats and were able to all 4 sit together. We weren't counting on that part, so that was just a bonus. Dh did get there a little earlier to save up a place in line. The movie was good.

**I did also get tickets for Robot Wars. It's the highlight of our year. Except that we could not go the last two years! So I am super excited about that. Is the weekend before April 15th.

I bought tickets this week because they were on sale. I got 4 tickets for $100. In the past I have gotten 5 tickets for $100. But my dad probably doesn't want to go, so it's all the same in the end for us. (In the past the family deal was 5 tickets and we'd just treat my dad).

**In super exciting kind of news, tomorrow LM has an audition for a performing arts school in our school district.

Supposedly he gets some preference if he does well in the audition. Otherwise we are just stuck with the luck of the lottery. I am only feeling optimistic because he can get some edge on the lottery.

LM needs all the luck and positive vibes he can get!

Received $36 bank interest for the month of February.

Snowflakes to Investments:

Redeemed $25 credit card rewards (cash back) from our gas/grocery card.

Redeemed $37 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $3 cash back on Visa/dining card.

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$40 Citi Price Rewind
--$ 5 Savings from Target Red Card

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$200 to investments
+$300 to cash
+$900 to IRAs

Savings (From dh's paycheck):
+$355 to Investments

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):

+$1,300 to cash
+367 Insurance rebate
-$250 Auto Insurance

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March is a 3 paycheck month for dh and we already have the cash to pay all the bills (February spending) and so I expect we will be able to save $1,500 (his entire paycheck) + the $2,700 I usually save.

This is how I Was expecting to hoard up $10,000 (for car replacement) by May. I am also expecting a $4k overtime check for this tax season, in addition to the above. I will get a lump sum in April. Dh will probably match that with his job, first 5 months of the year. Then he will have summer off and I won't be working OT. So this is peak earning season for us. Taking advantage.

How has it been him working during crazy busy time? Dh working = *shrugs*. It's been really slow and he has had a lot of time off. March and April might be a different story, but it will just fly by. I can't believe it is the end of February already!

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For February, dh's check was so small that I just threw it into investments. I believe it was $160 net. The rest of it went into 401k.

I expect his net to be closer to $700 for March (after 401k), and so will just add his paychecks to savings. I will probably keep throwing that into savings until summer. We have some big expenses coming up.

February 25:
$38 Game purchase for LM
Dinner: Masala Baked Indian Tofu with Turmeric Rice

I also got some more free tangerines from work.

So I guess LM is being a little spoiled this month!

The kids always buy computer games off of Humble Bundle:

https://www.humblebundle.com

In the book bundle this week they had some role playing game and LM is way into that. For $25 you'd get the game (which is what it sells for on Amazon) but you also get like 20 books that go with the game. Holy Cow! I was asking LM about it because I didn't even really see dh all week (he was at the movies). But though I was initially horrified by the amount of books when I saw them on the website, LM told me they were digital. Phew!

Yeah, I totally see why dh bought that for LM. He's been wanting to set up a D&D game night for his friends and this will give him some tools to get that started. It was an opportunity purchase.

Humble Bundle is a resource we use to save tons of money. Usually it's a $5 or so purchase for whatever they want. This larger purchase was unusual. Oh, and we usually just by electronic content. The catch on this was that the game was $25 but the shipping cost $13. In this case it was worth it. Most the time the kids spend $5 here and there with their own money.

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February 26:
-0- Spending
Dinner: Spinach-Basil Lasagna

All our credit cards have closed for the month and I have March income and bills laid out accordingly (the bulk of our March spending is to pay off February charges). I am glad we got haircuts out of the way. This maybe the most non-Murphy month I ever remember having! So even with a little splurging, it's probably the lowest spend month we have had in a long time.

Accordingly, I thought it would be fine for us to all go to the movies this weekend, but dh remembered that LM's party coincided with the Sunday matinee. & I work Saturday. So we will just push that off one more week. (It's a movie that is only playing at another theater, and it's way too expensive for us all four to pay full price for).

I do know that we have grocery spending planned for this weekend. Not sure that we have any other spending planned. Since it's a new fiscal month for us I am open to whatever.

Edited to add: Dh told me plans were coming together with friends. He will be driving 100 miles round trip tomorrow. Closer friend offered to host a BBQ (which is unusual, so will see. I had presumed they would go out). He was asked to bring beer or produce. When discussing grocery plan for the week he said he was good for 4 dinners and thought he would just get a few groceries mid-week. I'd like to get some stuff for the work week but am not prepared for the last minute change up as I head out the door for a full work day. Maybe tonight he will know what he is to bring and I can make a short grocery list, and we can just run to the store together for a few things. Other friend is broke so dh just wanted to see what he wanted to bring and he will cover the rest. He'd just bring everything (both beer and produce) but you know, doesn't want to offend his friend. We leave a fair amount of "cooking for others" in our grocery budget. So we don't blink at this kind of stuff. Usually it's more that we cook for other people in our home.

February 22:
$2 Burger King
$10 gift card (gift)
Dinner: Tortellini

February 23:
-0- Spending
Dinner: Spaghetti Pie

February 24:
-0- Spending
Dinner: Southwest Vegetarian Bake

Monday was a bad food planning day. I had a bit of an upset tummy and all we had was spicy food in the fridge. So when perusing food to grab on the way to work none of it sounded very good. I just grabbed a quick lunch at Burger King.

Out of laziness, I did order a Target gift card online. I don't know if we will get it in time for the weekend. But when trying to talk LM into a more creative cash idea he told me he just wanted to roll up a $10 bill and tie it with a ribbon. So I suppose either way will save a trip to Target. We can just use the gift card for groceries next month, if we don't gift it.

Tuesday and Wednesday were no-spend days.

Dh got 4 free movie offers this week. Advanced Screenings. Two were on the same night, so he could only see 3. We also already have two movie nights lined up for next week. We are all going to one of the movies.

Since nothing came up last week, I think he kind of feels like he should just see them all and figure out the system. So far he has been able to get into everything by getting there one hour early. Even the more marketed and crowded ones. (Which pretty much means waiting outside 1/2 hour, sitting inside 1/2 hour, but not having any adverts or previews. We pretty much always go an hour early when we go to cheap movie nights, because they do get crowded. So it's not a big change from that except maybe standing outside a little longer than inside, with these free movie screenings). Whatever he went to yesterday was no line and wasn't crowded. For all we know there could be a dry week or two after that. So trying to get he hang of it. I am sure for the long run he will be more discerning. Plus pretty much all of these have been in our zip code, so what the heck. Nothing really lost if he showed up and the line was too long.

February 21:
$89 Groceries/Household
$14 Fuel for gas sipper ($1.84/gallon)
$17 Movies for 2 (LM's request)
$15 Girl Scout cookies ("gift" for niece)
$15 Birthday Gift for LM's bestie
Dinner: Salmon & Rice Pilaf

Salmon was on sale again this week so I made salmon last night for dinner. I looked up a new rice recipe. The kids could use the calories and they love fried rice or garlic butter rice (just rice with lots of butter and garlic!) But I know they ate junk all week (donuts, ice cream, eating out, etc.) and so made it more low key yesterday. I chose a rice pilaf recipe since I had all the ingredients on hand.

I did also make more pumpkin bread with leftover pumpkin. The pumpkin was a little iffy, so hopefully it turns out okay. (I Was going to make it last weekend but never got around to it).

I just consulted on birthday gifts with LM and he wanted to be a little silly. So we basically spent $15 on more of a gag gift. Will probably also pick up a $10 Target gift card to round out the gift. It is his best friend. (We just bought gift online, Amazon. Took about 5 minutes out of our day).

Edited to add: Gift already arrived, 9am this morning!

I did also just order a Target gift card online. We have free shipping with our Red Card. Will see if we get before next weekend. Would love to save a trip to Target this week. I was just thinking how nice it was to buy gifts online and how I could probably just get a gift card online too.

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It's appropriate to do a monthly summary at this point. We've never made big adjustments to our budget (try not to spend more money over time) and so kind of just subconsciously know our limits. I don't know that it's anything we overly think about. As things come up we know if we have the money for it.

But... Around the last week of the month I do sit down to pay bills and review. The reason is I have some bills due around the first of the month. & though the first is pay day for me, I don't have direct deposit. So I tend to just pay those bills with float and then pay the larger things when I actually get my check deposited. & with my bank's online bill pay I have to set these to pay a few days before they are due.

So, yesterday I set up to pay those bills. What I do is go through and enter all anticipated income and expenses in Quicken for the following month. & then I set up all the bills to be paid (which is just about $200 due on the first of the month). I won't pay off the credit cards until the month is over and I know the balance of this month's spending.

How I came out in Quicken was having -0- left for the rest of the month. (March 31 Quicken balance is -$0- once all February credit card charges are paid off). But that's not entirely accurate since our credit cards generally close on the 28th. Is more of a 28th-28th cycle and I just go with that. The calendar month tracking in my blog is not lining up with that completely. Pretty much my dining out card closes tomorrow and the gas/groceries and everything else card will close on Friday. So I pretty much have $0 until Friday. (They are closing earlier with the short month). But I also have enough float that I won't sweat it if anything comes up. Which is how we run it so tight and I say we never would have money left over at the end of the month. I have float to cover whatever random thing might come up before our credit card closes. I may have missed something, but for the moment it is literally breakeven/$0. It's just random that is where we are at.

& also, if we did have money left over at this point I'd probably make sure to take care of anything we had been putting off. If we had a little extra money left at the end of the month. Which is all the more reason we never have a surplus. There is always something.

Anyway, it's a pretty simple method to put everything into Quicken and see how much cash you have left once you pay off current credit card balances and all of next month's bills. I also put our monthly savings transfers into Quicken (pay ourselves first).

Since our credit card cycle will close in a few days, it looks like I will probably just be able to cover medical co-pay and birthday lunch with our monthly variable budget. I believe this is only the case because we had a REALLY easy month, and I am glad we got some spending out of the way in such an easy month (like haircuts and some extra trips to the movies, plus birthday lunch for Grandma). We did not have to feed our kids all week ($$$$ saved) and I don't remember the last time we spent so little on gas. ??? Never, since moving to our current city? Our gas spending included two out of town trips?!

Our monthly variable spending is $900 and our calendar month spending is $885 so far. On a calendar month basis we seem a little behind since we do have one more grocery run planned. But again, we have some float to cover that, so even if our credit cards were on a calendar month cycle I would just get groceries next weekend and not worry about it. I'd probably in that case pull $130 from short-term savings for medical co-pay and birthday lunch. We put aside extra money every month for bigger random expenses.

$900 monthly budget is generally $650 for groceries and $250 for everything else.

$885 spending 2/1 - 2/21:

$486 groceries
$ 76 fuel
$101 Eating out (includes birthday lunch)
$ 69 dh purchases
$ 12 moi purchases
$141 Other**

**Other is movies, haircuts, ebook, birthday gift, medical co-pay.

February 19:
-0- Spending
Dinner: leftovers

Friday night I turned off work and everything and just had a quiet night at home.

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February 20:
$46 Lunch out for Grandma's Birthday
$14 Fuel for gas sipper ($1.69/gallon)
Dinner: Free dinner out

Saturday I completely blew off work, since we had plans to pick up the kids and celebrate GMIL's 91st birthday. (I will pay later...)

Taking Grandma out was priceless. We just went to a diner and she had a 20% off coupon. So we got off pretty easy. $46 for lunch. GMIL was over the moon to get us to herself.

We spent the rest of the day with dh's parents. They were pretty demanding, which is probably why we never give GMIL any time with just us and why she was so over the moon. I didn't mind going over to in-laws' house and thanking them for taking care of the kids, but they do live a bit out of the way. We ended up getting there later than expected and then dh got sucked into all their TV problems. (Lord forbid your TV is not set up right!) So we ended up staying pretty late. But we did get a free dinner out of it. Ordered some take out food.

We did see my parents for a bit too, since they had the kids and we initially picked them up from their house.

We did get gas on the way out. I forgot how little dh was driving without taking kids to school. So why he did not need gas any sooner though he did a lot of driving on Monday. We filled up the tank yesterday since we expected to drive 250 miles.

When we were at the gas station yesterday dh mentioned that we should have used up one of the 10-cent gas coupons we had piling up since he didn't have an empty tank. Our coupons have been piling up because some gas station down the street (that no one seems to know about) has been super competitive lately. We already pay "cheaper than Costco" prices at our grocery store, and so this gas station is even cheaper than that. Well, sometimes. Not this week. But when it is, our grocery coupons just pile up unused.

Anyway, I think it's good we used a "25-cent off per gallon" coupon yesterday because those are piling up too, and we did get 8 gallons. But I mentioned to dh today it would be nice if he got gas while he was at the grocery store. He can use a 10-cent off coupon and then we shouldn't need gas again until next month. We aren't really much into getting gas more often than we have to (we run the tanks to empty), BUT it is also kind of a PITA to get gas in the middle of the week any more, with him working. Thankfully he agreed. I spoke his language because he wants to use up some 10 cent coupons.

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SUNDAY

Dh will do the gas and grocery run for the week. If he wasn't working he would just wait a few days because we have enough food for the next few days. I realize we probably don't have the flexibility to save more money this month (because it's a short month, I mean). If he wasn't working he'd get groceries around Wednesday and we wouldn't need any more groceries until March. & is how we usually take advantage of a short month. Just realizing we don't really have that flexibility. Which is fine, because maybe don't need the flexibility so much with the extra income. IF we "needed" it we could certainly get groceries in the middle of the week. Just prefer not to.

As to other spending today...

LM decided he felt left out since he did not see the new Star Wars movie. (This was the peer pressure with spending the week with cousins, I guess). He was certainly invited before, on opening night, and he did not want to go then. Dh had already seen it a second time because he wanted to analyze it some more and try to see what everyone else was seeing in it. He didn't like it. But he is also obsessed with analyzing movies (& is also watching them in terms of pacing for his own movies and so on, so not just from an entertainment standpoint). I am sure he wouldn't mind picking it apart some more in terms of general film making. Or maybe he will choose to just sit back and just enjoy it. I nominated dh to take him. I said in a recent post that the kids buy their own crap and in general don't ask for much. So if the kid wants to see a movie we will take him. Especially since dh loves the movies so much and wants to get him to enjoy going to the movies. Is why he will drop everything to take him to the movies. I have not seen Star Wars but I already blew off all my chores this week and have a lot of catching up to do next week at work. & dh already dragged me to the movies this week. Just seems like a crazy time suck to me. If it was a slower time of year and I hadn't already spent hours watching movies/TV with dh already this week I'd probably just take him.

After movies and grocery spending I will see where we are at for the rest of the month. Dh wanted to take us all to some other movie today and I had already told him next week would be much better for me. I suppose financially I will see where we are at too. We can push that off another week if need be.

February 17:
$11 Haircut (Dh)
$ 6 Pizza
Dinner: Smoky Chicken Enchilada Skillet

I've been craving pizza for a while so I caved Wednesday night. Personal Round Table Pizza. Dh does not really care for pizza. He was already making dinner when I discussed with him but I assured him I would appreciate leftovers for lunch. When I got home we did talk about the rest of the week and he told me he didn't want to eat out. So I think we don't plan to spend any money today or tomorrow (except maybe gas) but admittedly I have not asked dh what his plans are.

I have never been big on denying things I want. It's just much more reasonable to get a pizza when it's just me and I don't have to share with the kids. So I figured I would give in to the pizza lust. If the kids were here I might have just gotten pizza for lunch on a work day.

Dh got a haircut also. He needed one and had some extra time since he didn't have to rush to pick up kids after work. & he saw the new haircut place by grocery store had a sale.

We were planning to try to hit a free movie screening this week but the offers dried up. I guess the last few weeks there were just a lot. That said, we did both receive offers to a movie where they wanted parents to bring their teens. My 12yo could certainly pass for 13 (or 15), but of course we get one of those offers when we don't have kids to take along. We were more hoping for a free date night. Especially since we are more reluctant to take advantage of these when we do have the kids. Going to the movies is one thing, but you have to go wait in line early for these and don't really want to ditch the kids all evening.

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February 18:
-0- Spending
Dinner: leftovers

We didn't spend any money Thursday but I committed to buy some girl scout cookies from my niece.

The problem these days is grandparents. When you have newborns and your husband loses his job you just go with it. We've been asked to never buy anything for any of our nieces and nephews. We didn't have any money anyway, so sounded fine with us, early on. I know my in-laws are over the top, but my parents respond by pretty much doing nothing for my kids. (To-date it's absolutely never been brought up by my kids. I honestly think their impression is just that their other grandparents are over the top. They understand that is not normal, but they maybe don't realize that it's not normal that no one else feels like they can buy them anything). So, this is my family. BUT... All the nieces and nephews have two sets of grandparents who spoil them like crazy. In turn, we've been asked never to buy anything for them. I am appreciating over time how it's only one-sided for us. Thankfully my kids aren't getting two mountains of gifts for every occasion.

So when my niece asked us to buy some girl scout cookies, I was super excited to help out in some way.

Oh, and LM's best friend is having a birthday party next weekend. So we will buying a gift before then.

As is the overall weather trend in recent years, the more cold it is everywhere else the hotter it is here. This past long weekend we had beautiful spring type weather. So now the trees think that it is spring. I noticed one lone tree blooming a couple of days ago, but today I noticed the blooms everywhere.

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Today was a great day for money snowflakes! Technically tomorrow was the big snowflake day but our credit union gives us all direct deposits at 5am the day before. Okay then!

Snowflakes:

Redeemed a $40 Citi Price Rewind. Which is just a price match. I didn't think of it when we got our car speakers, which we did google briefly and saw we were paying less than retail. But Citi reminded me I could do a Price Rewind (since it was a big purchase) and a couple of clicks on the computer will net me $40. Woohoo! Just had to let them watch internet pricing for 60 days. So that 60 day period just expired.

I'll throw those in our investments with the rest of our credit card rewards at the end of the month. I still have to get approved and don't expect to get the $40 until next week. I just submitted my claim today.

I did also receive an insurance rebate. It was $400, or about 50% of what I paid for life and disability insurance with my professional association during 2015. I did also score an extra $25 simply because I let them deposit the money directly into my bank account. (Do you really have to pay people to get them to get their money faster??). In the past I have snowflaked this sum. But this year I am just going to deposit this into my short-term savings to offset my insurance costs for 2016. I figured if I did that I could maybe get away with not increasing my monthly contributions to short-term savings this year. It was just one of those years where everything seemed to be going up. But I will hang on here for as long as I can.

Of course, since it was a "direct deposit" then I got it a day early too.

Dh also got paid for a pretty pathetic couple of work weeks. I believe he took off one day for medical stuff and 2-3 days because work was just so slow. His net check was $160 and I already threw that at our investments. (He did also add $195 to his 401k).

February 15:
$11 Groceries (Target)
$ 7 Groceries (valentines candy clearance)
$16 Lunch out (w/co-workers)
$11 Ebook purchase
Dinner: Cashew Chicken

I'd probably put the ebook purchase as an allowance item for dh. (& I don't even remember the last time he paid for an ebook. ???). But he told me it was for the kids. They are way into some series that just had a new release yesterday. This is why I usually put this stuff in the allowance pile. I don't understand *at all*. So you can't just wait until it is at the library?? Ugh! I do know that the kids are enjoying this series so will just put under the "kid" category. We rarely buy them anything. They save up to buy most things with their own money.

Dh used up our Target gift card. Since he had the day off work and needed some cashews for his recipe he went and did a $31 grocery run. $11 after gift card. I had asked him to check out the reeses valentine candy on clearance. But he told me it was only 30% off and it had already been picked over.

Which is fine since I ran by the grocery store and got a couple of bags of candy, 50% off, on the way to work. I thought maybe I didn't get a discount on one bag but it turns out the Reeses hearts are just crazy expensive. Dh was going to price them at Target for me, just out of curiosity, but nothing good was left when he went to Target after lunch.

Dh did drive the kids half way to drop them off with his parents and I think his dad treated dh and the kids to lunch.

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February 16:
$29 Fuel for gas guzzler ($1.73 per gallon)
$ 7 Movie Theater
Dinner: Citrus Chicken

With the kids gone we decided to take advantage and have a date night. We used the last of our movie theater gift card. We went last night because it was $5 movie night at our local theater.

I don't know that we expect to spend any money during the rest of the work week. Except dh may need to refuel at some point since he drove so many miles on Monday. There are loose talks of going out to dinner one night with the kids gone, but I am kind of over all the eating out. We plan to be out all day Saturday also. Dh has not eaten out half as much as me this month so I will just leave it up to him. Whatever he wants.

The kids are having a blast with their cousins and grandparents. (Cousins just happened to have the same week off of school). Monday it was so crazy warm that they went swimming. There is a storm rolling in today and so my dad made sure to take them on a hike yesterday while the weather was still nice. I don't know what else they have planned this week.

I don't know that we usually eat such varied dinners, but it seems that we have been finding a lot of good recipes lately. The Korean Beef Bowl that I made earlier in the month is a recipe that I found recently that takes about 10 minutes to make. So it's a nice addition to my "quick meal" repertoire. Citrus chicken is an old favorite that doesn't make any leftovers when the kids are here. So it was a nice one to make for just the two of us. We did try a couple of new recipes this month. I find it hard to believe that we will repeat anything we have already made, this month (except tofu which I left out/ruined and dh wanted to make again).