Monkey Mama*s Monkey Money Blog

2017 TALLY:

$500 Gift Cards (AmEx Gold, Moi)
$525 Gift Cards (Citi Thank You, MH)
$499 Travel Rewards (Capital One Venture,MH)
$200 Cash (WF Wise, MH)
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$1,724 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*

**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31.

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Today we spent some time redeeming $525 Citi gift card rewards.

Unfortunately, didn't see anything particularly useful as a Thank You gift for MH's parents. Might have to spend some cash on that. Will have to brainstorm a bit this weekend, and double check the AmEx rewards that we have coming due soon.

But MH is going to 90th birthday in Florida next month and thought a Cracker Barrel gift card would be nice for his Grandfather.

There's also some crazy deal out there where you can see unlimited movies for $10/month. ??? Doesn't sound particularly sustainable but MH is probably going to sign up for that, for as long as it lasts I guess. Yeah, he can pretty much see everything for free already, but that is a big time commitment. Anyway, so he mentioned getting a Regal gift card so that I could accompany him to some of those movies. Or the kids can. I think that's a good idea. That said, the Regal movie theater (close to our house) is not his first movie theater choice, so he didn't want any more than a $25 gift card. (For the most part, he wants to see 100 times more movies than anyone else in the household, so $25 would last us a while).

We did get a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card for his dad, like we always do. We can make that part of the Thank You, or hold back for Christmas/Birthday.

I'd otherwise like to fund the next "big" ($300 - $500) electronic purchase with this reward and I know a few ideas had been thrown around. But MH just doesn't have anything identified at the moment. So we decided to just get a $100 Best Buy gift card so that he could buy movies or whatever.

This left us $300 that we redeemed for Target gift cards. We will use for groceries and should leave a $300 budget surplus through the next three or so months. Then if something bigger comes up we should have some extra cash for it.

I updated the tally above because the actual reward ended up being $525.

I also had something like $15 to add to the travel rewards (from trip spending). I was able to apply that $15 to trip spending already.

Received $55 bank interest for the month of August.

Snowflakes to Investments:

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

Redeemed $45 cash back on Citi card.

Other snowflakes:
--$15 (sold old sleeping bag on Craigslist; kids outgrew) ~ I set this money aside to pay for gymnastics (it's cash only)

--Redeemed $11 cash back on Visa dining/fuel card. Since this was mostly trip expenses I just applied this snowflake to our trip.

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash (mid-term savings)
+$ 900 to IRAs

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

+$1,300 to cash
- 600 auto insurance
- 400 kids' birthdays ($200 x 2)
- 305 dentist (cleanings x2 + chipped tooth)
- 120 van repairs

In addition, we pulled the following from mid-term savings:

- 215 Plumbing repairs
- 200 new pots and pans (couldn't cover after all this murphy)
- 150 fix car stereo**

{Note: MH has no wages during summer months}.

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**I'd generally pull this from short-term savings (car repairs) but we've maxed out our repair fund already this year. Which is unusual, but we do have an older vehicle that didn't need *any* work last year. It makes sense from a multi-year view, but is exceeding our annual allotment. This is why we have other savings.

I'd probably cover something like pots and pans from short-term savings, but it's also fairly maxed out at this point. I still have some space remaining for insurance, dentist and property taxes, but the misc. and the car repair portions have been spent. I need to leave enough cash for the more fixed expenses I know of.

As far as Murphy goes around here, this was somewhat muted, but just a lot of little annoying things.

As an aside, I am always bemused when someone talks about keeping their old cars and doing without modern conveniences like blue tooth. Like it's either/or. Seriously?? You can keep OLD cars and update them with modern technology. In another situation I might have replaced the car stereo, but the stereo is not very old and the vehicle is 12 years old. We figured it made the most sense just to replace the face plate on the stereo, which solved all of our problems. If I thought I'd keep this vehicle another 10 years, it might have been worth investing in a new stereo system.

I don't know where we stand on the Murphy front. I've already had more problems with the van upon our return from our trip. *sigh* We've not been home long, but hopefully things settle down a bit.

Technically trip expenses will sort out in October, but I think I will start transferring money and paying off expenses today. Travel rewards card is not due until October, but I have the cash and I just want to get everything paid off and accounted for.

See last post for Europe trip details. (I just realized this post covered that one up).

I had a rough estimate in my head that we would spend about 100 GBP per day, or about $1,500 total incidental spending (with some rounding up and pre-trip purchases). Though I wasn't going into this trip with a super frugal mindset. Kind of a once-in-a-lifetime trip, so if it cost more then it cost more.

I mentioned in my last post that we were never very hungry. We also pre-paid some tours which included food, so between all that we kept food down to $50 per day. (That's $25/each for three meals a day. Though we certainly splurged on some nice meals out, for the most part the food was much less expensive than I imagined. We also pretty much never buy drinks out, but it was reasonable enough and part of the culture that we did buy drinks with most our bigger meals. Lord knows we could have spent a LOT less if we really wanted to).

My accounting is still somewhat rough at this point, but we paid for the airfare and hotel long ago with our regular vacation budget. All of the tours were paid for with credit card rewards and snowflakes. The rest came out to about $1,200: transportation (Tube), Bus, Theater tickets, admissions, tips, and last minute tour change. Not bad considering that we were at about $1,100 before the last minute change.

I was planning to take $1,000 from savings and then throw MH's first paycheck back ($500) towards the trip. In the end I might lean more on his paycheck and would only have to pull $700 from savings? Will see how it pans out. My checkbook is a total mess right now because I am doing like three BIG credit card rewards at once. So I may just have to pull $1,000 anyway to make it all balance. In the meantime I come up with roughly $1,200 cash + credit spending during trip and this seems to be close to my spreadsheet. ($1,200 spending would be for *everything* except the flight and hotel).

Here's the cost breakdown:


$1,929 per person! Our flight was non-stop and the room rates were so good that we didn't even look at anything with less than 5-star reviews. Our hotel was REALLY nice. Nothing we'd ever splurged for before (paying cash). We did pre-pay because the exchange rate was SO LOW when we booked (it was a refundable rate though). In the end this saved us about $50. Exchange rate was 1.25 when we paid (a historical low) and 1.29 during most the trip.

My parents live right by the airport. We garaged our car at the in-laws house (since they were at our house). In-laws handled kids/pet/house so we didn't have any of those type expenses to worry about. I do usually pull from grocery/gas budget when we travel but we had to drive 250 miles or so to/from airport and left a fridge full of food for everyone and so I can't say we saved any money on those fronts. Lord knows what the electric bill will be like. In-laws are super frugal but they aren't used to our heat.

This is what we accomplished on our trip:

Tower of London @ opening. Our hotel was near here the Tower and MH had the last minute idea to just go there at opening. It was not crowded at all so that was our MO for the trip. So this is a lot of how we were able to get some off-peak time in. In contrast, the in-laws had skipped the crown jewels (when they were in London) because the line was too long. There was no line when went.

Some random shop front:


Hop On Hop Off Bus



We were pretty lazy this first day and only got off the bus for Hyde Park. LOVED it and had a lovely lunch there.


Westminster Abbey @opening ~ beat the crowds and had the cutest tour guide.

National (Art) Gallery **FREE

British Museum (we did this over 2 days) **FREE
We did a free foot tour from some unaffiliated group, which was okay and we did pay a tip for that.

Our hotel had a restaurant and had free drinks/free concert one night. It was the night before Paris so we didn't stay long, but it was neat that we could enjoy some of the concert. We frantically did laundry during the concert (had a washer in our room).

One day in Paris: river cruise, lunch @ Eiffel Tower, and 2 hours at the Louvre.



On Day 7 I decided to sleep in and have a nice brunch @ St. James park. MH wanted to fit in all the free museums he could find. I can see this now as I piece together our itinerary. After getting a very late start and enjoying a leisurely lunch... We went to a free art museum (it had some Roman ruins in the basement), Churchill War Rooms (er, not free), Museum of London, etc. At the Museum of London I parked myself in the cafe with food and wifi, while MH looked around.

We did a free walking "ghost" tour that night. I was surprised MH wanted to do that and it was pretty dumb. But we saw some really neat parts of the city so I did tip the guy. Definitely was worth it from that angle. (I would totally like a ghost tour, but just don't think it was the best tour. MH usually just makes fun of me that I would like a ghost tour, so no idea why he thought it was a good idea. ).

I loved St. Bartholomew:


Dover Castle & Canterbury Cathedral (free tour; paid for with rewards). I really loved Dover Castle and we were able to hear the pipe organs in the Cathedral. WOW!

On our last "free" day we went back to British Museum. We went to the Globe to pick up show tickets but unexpectedly their museum was closed. We walked by the Tate and MH didn't want to go in because it cost money. He peeked inside and I guess it was free after all. It worked out kind of perfect because we had time to kill and were pretty tired on this day. (I think we did a million steps at Dover, so yeah. I am remembering why we were so beat this day and not wanting to walk even to the Tube). The Tate had really great views of the city on the top floor. They did ask for donations and I let go of some of my change since I thought the museum and the view was worth something, and we were trying to spend down our cash so we wouldn't have to exchange any. We saw some Picasso, Warhol, Pollock, Salvador Dali, etc. A very unexpected treat!

We saw Much Ado About Nothing that night and it was awesome. Really a neat experience in the old Shakespeare theater. You could pay just 2 GBP (I believe?) to stand in the middle of the theater, but we knew better than that and spent over $100 for some really good seats. (I just knew we wouldn't be up to standing for a few hours!) So that was money well spent.

I mentioned in my last post that we had booked a Stonehenge/Avebury tour, but they canceled it rather last minute. MIL (who is very pushy) was very pushy that we must see Windsor! So when frantically trying to find our way to Stonehenge, I noticed an available (albeit pricey) tour that started at Windsor first thing in morning. I was sure Windsor was lovely but all the reviews were pretty meh re: summer crowds. But we decided if we could do Windor first maybe it wouldn't be so bad. (It wasn't bad, but it didn't do much for me. Maybe expectations too high after MIL went on and on and on about us not going. By then we had seem a million old castles, right?).

Windsor Castle


Stonehenge we knew we'd love it or hate it. It was a really hot/sunny day when we went. I LOVED it. It is just a bunch of rocks, but it was neat to see up close.



We ended that day eating in an old pub. Someone took MH's dinner (mis-ordered or something) and so he waited forever for his food while I waited forever for the bathroom. But they had some of the Harry Potter movie locations in this little town and it was definitely worth a stop. So yeah, we squeezed a lot in that we weren't planning to.



Oh, and we just used wifi so didn't have any phone charges at all. Were able to call and text the kids over wifi. (Mostly hotel wifi, but most of the museums, buses and the Eurostar had free wifi so we had a fair amount of phone access).

We REALLY lucked out with the weather. It was mostly cloudy and never really rained. Very mild. We had a little bit of sun during the second half of the trip.

So glad to be home! We survived our trip to Europe.

I think overall things went as smooth as could be. Phew!

We did have a huge flight delay on our way home. I am starting to think that is our jinx. This seems to happen more often than not to us, that our flights home are canceled or delayed. Anyway, accordingly (since we are so used to canceled flights), and not knowing how up we'd be for the 100-mile drive home, we didn't expect to get home until today anyway. So maybe that part wasn't very "smooth" but we were pretty mellow about it.

The only other trip hiccup was that our tour for Stonehenge/Avebury was canceled. We got this news late one night when we got back to the hotel. Ack! We were relieved that we were easily able to book a last minute Stonehenge tour. Phew! But I am bummed that we had to skip Avebury. Neither of us had any desire whatsoever to drive abroad or to pay for a more private tour, so we just let it go. (Our tour was apparently the only bus tour to Avebury, and they had some "technical difficulties").

That whole thing is going to be a bit of a mess because we paid for it with a reward credit card (with rewards). I didn't do much today but I did spend a few minutes making sure that getting a refund for that tour doesn't mess up our rewards. It looks like it should be okay but I just don't know how they will hash it all out. We will get a cash refund, but they are going to have to realize we never actually paid any cash for that trip which means they will probably refund us in rewards. & then I can just apply to other travel expenses we booked on that card. We are lucky that it will probably work out. For most credit rewards I just book the bare minimum for the reward but in this case we had booked some tours up (spent more than minimum for reward) and we have some new travel spending to offset these rewards. They count the tube expense and the new bus tour as "travel expenses" that we can pay with rewards. So it should all work out, but I just don't know exactly how. First things first, still waiting for our refund. (I actually applied all our rewards for tours because they were non-refundable. So yeah, I never expected any scenario where we would get a refund. I tried to be smart about it, but it is what it is).

I think we kept the entire trip to $2,000 per person, which is incredible! I will do an accounting and share some pictures later. Maybe tomorrow. (In the end I started typing this around 9am yesterday but crashed for the rest of the day. We did get back home about 1am on Wednesday morning. Just woke up and it is early Thursday now).

I am always in awe of other big city public transportation, but London takes the cake. We pretty much just did the Tube but I don't remember ever waiting more than like 1 minute for a train. We were really lucky and seemed to miss all the crowds. & everyone warned me that we would walk so much, but we really didn't. The transport is *everywhere*. For comparison we did DC last year mostly on their subway and that was a LOT of walking. The stations just aren't as close together. The Tube cost about half as much as DC subway did.

I just think it's all relative. The other thing is I really didn't find London to be that expensive, but I am from San Francisco. So, just more relativity. I thought the transport was insane cheap, and the food was much more reasonable than I had expected. & then all the museums are mostly free, so what else is there? Even the hotel was much cheaper than I would have expected for London. Our flights were cheap too, but that is what motivated the entire trip in the first place.

All this to say that we had a very pleasant/frugal-ish holiday.

(We would mostly never travel during summer and I thought we were probably insane, but we somehow seemed to miss a lot of the crowds. For example, when we went to Parliament there was a huge mass going towards Westminster Abbey and so on. Even MH was super annoyed I wanted to walk along the canal first, but NO ONE WAS THERE and we had the entire place to ourselves. Unreal! So we seemed to luck into some off-peak somehow throughout the trip).

On the flip side, there are a lot of reasons I don't particularly care for traveling. But one of the biggest is that I just don't deal with it well physically. On this trip I think I did pretty well with the sleeping, but I absolutely never adjusted to the time change otherwise. I thought we planned bad when we made big dinner reservations on our second full day there. We both just picked at our food and it was just really bad planning. But now 10 days later I can't say I would have done any better on our last day. I LOVE to eat and so I was really bummed that I mostly felt like crap the whole time and couldn't even enjoy any food. I picked at food the *entire* time and I know this is some of why we ended up spending very little on food. We also had a kitchen/apartment which helped to keep our costs down. I suppose this part was harder than usual for me since we expected this to be a bit more of a culinary trip.

I am hoping the adjustment is easier on the US side, since I never really adjusted to the time zone anyway.

I think I could have packed lighter if I put more effort into it, but overall we are super light packers. I noticed this a lot particularly on our Paris trip. We went on a tour because we wanted to see *everything* that we could in one day. That was one day our weirdness really shone through because someone had lost her luggage (on her flight) and everyone was going on and on about that. Yeah, it sounds horrible, but I don't understand why you'd need to check baggage in the first place. I don't know what other people pack. We really keep it to the essentials. (Everyone else had clearly checked bags as they went on and on how they kept some stuff on their carry on and made sure not to check this or that).

I *really* appreciated this when we got home. I swear it took me like 5 minutes to unpack. We did all the laundry when we woke up. I don't know if I've ever packed so light before for such a big trip and so I really noticed what a non-event it was to unpack. (Mostly dumping my suitcase into a laundry basket). I admittedly still have to sort through toiletries but that is about it.

It was on the same trip, Paris, that most the tour group skipped the Louvre in favor of shopping. Seriously!? I do not get people! The Louvre was just amazing. We only had a couple of hours there, which is just sad. (We maybe saw 0.001% of the museum?) But was definitely better than not seeing it at all. So glad we went.

I just can not fathom going to the Louvre to shop. I am sure many can not fathom going to Paris and not shopping. I am well aware that we are the weird ones.

I will post later more about the trip, pictures, and cost breakdown.

Oh, and we toyed with the idea of seeing An American in Paris. We decided not to go. One day when I saw a bunch of advertisements I told MH I wanted to see that one back at home some time. Wouldn't you know it? Went through the mail yesterday a.m. (also very light because we do most things electronically) and it's one of the musicals they will do in our city next spring! The tickets go on sale January and so I told MH that's my birthday/Christmas.

I don't go back to work until Tuesday, thank goodness! Glad I can squeeze in some quiet down time at home. It is long overdue. I was dreading even getting kids to/from school but that just seems silly now. I can take them (since MH is not a morning person) and he can deal with the afternoon insanity like he always does. I guess that's maybe 1/2 hour commitment for a couple of days. I will survive. We may go grocery shopping today, but we had left a ton of food for the kids and in-laws and still have some left. MH starts back work on Tuesday (the end of his summer break). I forget how easy this is when we are both home.

Post from January:

MH ended up buying me a very small computer. He kept seeing sales in the $100 range. This is an incredible deal if you already have all the accessories. But I haven't had a desktop since I've been displaced by kids. So... $500 later. The motivation was not "minimalism" but I am LOVING it from that standpoint. The computer is about the size of the original roku? (Or how I recall the original roku to have been). It just hangs off the back of the monitor. & I told MH several times that I did not need speakers. He did not believe me, so he ended up getting me a monitor with built-in speakers. So it looks like I just have a monitor/keyboard/mouse. We got it set up in our bedroom, for now. Glad it is so compact, because I might want to move downstairs in the summer.

To be clear, we just put the computer in our bedroom. I just used MM's old desk.

In the end, I have surprisingly not needed to move downstairs. I recall that we *never* used the upstairs A/C until we had kids. Now I remember why. All the cool air (and heat in the winter) seems to float up our bedroom. So it's been okay.

I realized that I never showed any pictures of my tiny computer:

This is the computer, just hanging off the back of the monitor:

I think we have made it through the Back to School spending.

Drama Llama (7th Grade)
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$20 new clothing and lunch box
$20 art supplies (donation requested)
$15 lab fees (donation requested)
$15 music books
$120 lunch (Funded the max, for about 1/2 of the year)

Well, I am clearly getting off easy with this one. His PE clothes still fit from last year and should last through next year also.

He also has free use of a school instrument, for band, but we will probably re-evaluate at some point. For now, will give it some time to see if he sticks with it.


Monkey Monkey (9th Grade)
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$40 running shoes
$40 ASB sticker (covers PE clothes)
$90 graphing calculator
$120 lunch (Funded the max, for about 1/2 of the year)

I suppose there will probably be track uniforms. He isn't sure if he will stick with fall track, so will see.

I thought to check the shoes in stock at Kohls because I have been buying men's double wide shoes for myself (online). Anyway, we got him a really good pair of shoes. These are the kind of shoes I'd buy him anyway because he is very athletic. (He has WIDE feet like his mother, but these seem better stocked for men). We've never really found a good place to buy him shoes before. Kohls? Who knew!

We otherwise spent $35 on school supplies (to cover both kids). That's about $14 of MH's super frugal shopping (he got a lot) and $20 of that was a last minute run to Walgreens (after my last post). MM needed a combination lock, which I couldn't find anywhere else (in my sphere of fast/convenient). But Walgreens had much better folders and we also bought several of those.

MM hasn't bought much school lunch in recent years because he never liked the quality of the food at his location for the past couple of years. He did end up buying at the high school on Friday and said it was good and large portions. If the portion sizes are appropriate for him (a BIG eater) then the school lunch is a steal and will encourage him to buy a lot this year. In fact, I was funding their lunches thinking maybe 2-3 days per week buying, when I came up on the maximum I could fund. So anyway, I just did the max that I could. Will see how long that it lasts. You have to pay a fee every time you fund, so I had gotten in the habit of just doing twice per year. I think I have always prepaid ahead, regardless. Makes life more simple.

I came across this beautiful article today:

GIVE ME GRATITUDE OR GIVE ME DEBT

http://momastery.com/blog/2014/08/11/give-liberty-give-debt/

"Recently I posted a picture of myself in my kitchen, and I immediately started receiving generous messages from people wanting to help me “update” it. Along with their messages came pictures of how my kitchen could look, if I’d just put some effort and money into it."

"You guys. I have a REFRIGERATOR.

This thing MAGICALLY MAKES FOOD COLD. I’m pretty sure in the olden days, frontierswomen had to drink warm Diet Coke. Sweet Jesus. Thank you, precious kitchen.

Inside my refrigerator is FOOD. Healthy food that so many parents would give anything to be able to feed their children. Not me. When this food runs out, I’ll just jump in my car to get more. It’s ludicrous, really. It’s like my family hits the lottery every freaking morning."

"Sometimes it seems that our entire economy is based on distracting women from their blessings. Producers of STUFF NEED to find 10,000 ways to make women feel less than about our clothes, kitchens, selves so that we will keep buying more. So maybe freeing ourselves just a little from the Tyranny of Trend is a women’s issue – because we certainly aren’t going to get much world changing done if we spend all of our time and money on wardrobe and kitchen changing."

I will say that gratitude is an important ingredient to living debt-free. I am often bemused by the "sacrifice" people project on to our choices. We are so incredibly blessed, so the bemoaning of our very minor sacrifices always sounds so melodramatic to me. We will survive. We've always been very blessed. We haven't always had the latest and greatest, but we've always had everything we needed and then some.

My kids go back to school today. It's just random that they both start back on the same day.

MM(14) starts high school. He has a full load of AP and Honors classes, and is joining the track team.

This will be the first year that either of my kids attend a regular public school (they've only attended public charter schools), but this school looks to be a great fit for MM.

MM is still doing gymnastics. I am relieved he can keep that with his schedule. He probably would have chosen gymnastics over track, if he had to choose between the two. (Will see how he feels after track practice in the peak of the heat today. He will have about 3 hours to refuel before gymnastics. I do also expect it to cost $$$$$$$$$ to feed him with track practice every day).

DL(12) gets to start diving into art school a bit more. He will have 2 or 3 art periods this year. We still need to sort his schedule out and make some decisions. The year-round elective he got was vocal training. I expect that he will also be learning an instrument this year. & on top of that he gets a semester of visual arts and a semester of drama. The instruments is more extra class/extra time or will be utilizing their very low cost and convenient private after school lessons. That's the part we have to figure out. It may all be too much and he may do nothing, but that might free up his schedule to do the school musical. Regardless, he has MANY opportunities, and a lot more this year than he had last year.

Back to School Spending has been pretty light. The kids are both out of uniforms now but neither seems to need any clothes. I think MM will eventually but I don't think it's the worst to get used to non-uniform school first (before buying more clothes). I don't remember buying DL any clothes since he graduated out of uniforms over a year ago. I maybe spent $20 buying him a few shirts and some shorts, since he was outgrowing some. But mostly seems rich in hand-me-downs still.

This is the first year we have to buy school supplies for MM, but last year was the first year for DL and so we had some things on hand already. Our spending was very small on this front. MH also shopped around sales, like composition books for a quarter each.

I think the regular public high school is going to be more careful about asking for money (since it's not really allowed in our state). But, will see. I know DL's public charter school will "require" $20 here and there for more specialized art supplies and science lab fees. I don't mind that at all. I don't want to shop for specialized art supplies. But once that stuff starts to roll in I will tally it up. I will tally all of the above, but it's just not going to amount to much. (Well, as to school supplies and clothes. I will have some other bigger expenditures. Might even add a band instrument to the list).

Received $50 bank interest for the month of July.

Snowflakes to Bills:

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

Redeemed $53 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $3 cash back on Visa dining/fuel card.

Other snowflakes:
--$10 (sold old skateboard on Craigslist; MM got a new/bigger one for his birthday) ~ I set this money aside to pay for gymnastics (it's cash only)

Savings (From my paycheck):

**skipped $200 to investments**
+$ 300 to cash (mid-term savings)
+$ 900 to IRAs

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

+$1,300 to cash
- 500 Dentist/Medical/New Glasses(DL)

{Note: MH has no wages during summer months}.

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**Interest should bump up to $55 per month. I found a savings account that pays 3%. (This month was only a partial month, so a little less).

**I am always a month behind on savings withdrawals because anything I charged in June will be settle up in July. July was a birthday/Murphy month and also had a $600 insurance bill come due, so that will reflect in next monthly update.

Because it was so expensive this month (which reflects more in August), I decided to skip funding investments this month. It's not something I do lightly. But I seem to be doing this (skipping investments) about once per year. I don't mind cutting ourselves some slack since we generally err on the over-saving.

I redirected our snowflakes to cover bills. (I do usually invest snowflakes).

I've already paid all of the August bills (which were mostly July expenses).

I guess not much else to report. August and September will be spendy months. August will be paying off all this birthday/Murphy spending (which I've already done). September will be paying for August Europe trip.

Life Update:

--Murphy has moved into our home. Something about summer months and trips to the UK. Yeesh! (See my blog July/August 2013. That whole year was some Murphy year from hell but those months were particularly absurd).

I'll have to post more about that later.

--We are knee deep in back-to-school. Since we keep things simple, not too much to do. But MM starts high school and has a lot of orientation type stuff next week.

I don't foresee spending much. The most of it is going to be funding their lunch accounts, which I haven't had to do in a while.

This is the first year we will have a child in regular public school. Our state is pretty strict about not requiring money to be spent to attend public schools. The public charters have been more lax on this and both my kids' schools have at times "required" that donations be made for this or that supplies. I feel like the public high school won't do this, but will see. (So far they have just asked for supplies directly, and not in a "this is required" kind of tone. This is what I expected).

--I am just in chore mode with trying to get caught up at work and getting the house ready for our trip. I guess a lot of the house stuff isn't entirely necessary, but was trying to use it as a motivational deadline since I am behind on all things domestic. I am so behind because the last year has been totally insane, including being off my feet for several months.

My default is to dread a big trip like this, so I am fine with the distraction and busy-ness. (If I thought about the trip too much I'd just stress. Really not much to do but pack, which I will probably do the day we leave).

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Ting (Cell) Update:

Here's my Ting referral code (for $25-off), if this post entices you at all:

https://z181d126bt4.ting.com

So yeah, I saw a discussion about cell phone costs in another forum. Ting is clearly cheaper than any other provider. (Though of course, it depends on your phone usage). I am just saying I saw 100+ other people recommending more expensive cell service than what we pay for Ting.

Someone in that discussion did mention that they had got a Ting credit from Ting customer service for "being awesome". Too funny!

In the end, the kids have been on our Ting for a while and it's been of basically no financial consequence. They've only been on one at a time, so MM is the only one with cell coverage right now. I expect to add back DL any minute now. It's $6/month per line to add each of them. So we are paying $12/month when they both have cell service.

With Ting you pay for what you use. The kids just don't use anything, so we aren't paying anything else to add them to our cell bill. We were absolutely genius in the way we set up our kids with cell phones. We gave them cell phones years ago and set them up with google hangouts. With hangouts, you can call and text anyone over wifi. So this put them in the HABIT of seeking out wifi. They had to if they wanted to use their phones. *This* is why they don't use any data.

I just checked last month's bill and MM used -0- minutes -0- texts and about 12MB of data. (You need to use 500-1000 MB to bump up to a more expensive tier, for reference. An extra 12MB isn't going to cost us anything. Ting even has a grace amount if you go over by just a wee little bit. They don't charge you for that).

This of course does not mean that my 13yo has no friends and never texts anyone. He just did all his texting over wifi.

In contrast, we told him to go crazy when he was in DC/NYC trip with his class. Just, you know, he has cell service and won't get wifi everywhere. To not worry about using what he needs. According to Ting he used no minutes or texts, but used 182MB of data that month. Since we generally pay $20 to use 1000-2000MB of data (for 5 devices), his 182MB did not increase our phone bill that month. (I am not sure how he texted us during that time, since I had tons of texts from him while he was out and about. ???) Not sure what that is about. But Ting barely charges anything for texts so not that it would matter. It's $5 to send 1,000 texts. We all use google hangouts/wifi mostly, so we've never been anywhere close to 1,000+ texts.

EDITED TO ADD: DOH. He was using data to send texts, I just realized, so maybe that part backfired a bit. (The google hangouts calls/texts will go over data if you are not on wifi).

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

The above ties in to my recent posts and an article I saw from MMM:

A Lifetime of Riches – Is it as Simple as a Few Habits?

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/03/19/a-lifetime-of-ric...

"As it turns out, habits are little chunks of auto-pilot behavior that get burned right into your neurology – permanently. Once you develop a habit, you can never truly erase the program, even if you manage to deactivate it.

It gets even crazier than that: when your brain starts running one of its many habit scripts, a good part of your conscious judgement is shut off for the duration. The habit takes over, controls you until you get to the end of the script, and then dumps you out at the end. And this is not just a rare occurence – depending on who you ask, habits are in at least partially in control for between 50 and 90% of our waking hours."

I guess I have been thinking about this a lot lately. As people ask me how we raise kids that don't seem to have any spending habits. It's what we've modeled for them.

I am SO thankful to my parents, who did the same for us. They taught us not to buy things we can't afford; only pay with cash. That buying cars on credit is WEIRD to us. Someone told me a while back that it must have felt so awesome to pay cash for my last car (this was in the forums). The reality is: *Shrugs* That wonder-ment about it presumes that you are in the car debt habit. We've never been in the car debt habit so it all feels very normal and boring to pay cash. It's all we've ever known. Entrenched habits aren't very exciting. (I didn't even know this was "weird" at all until we were well into our 20s).

It's the big and the small things. I've been kind of fascinated by talks about food delivery in recent months. I've absolutely never paid for food delivery? It's not a habit we ever established. Honestly, it just sounds WEIRD to me. I am so entrenched in my habit of not getting food delivery. So it goes the opposite way for me.

What I am really noticing lately is the Starbucks habit. When I was in middle school no one drank coffee. ??? I am sure those were still the "coffee stunts your growth" days. It was when I was in high school and college that the coffee shops really started to take off. My friends tried their hardest to get me on the coffee habit, but I can't stand coffee and had been raised in a house with no coffee.

I've been noticing this since MM's DC trip. They made a big to-do about making stops at Starbucks. (Which honestly just annoys me, because took chunks of time from seeing the sights and so on. My kid had absolutely no interest in taking a Starbucks break). So I was kind of incredulous. The middle schoolers drink coffee? I mentioned to my MIL at some point and she told me of course they drink coffee! That my super frugal SIL stops there with her kids on the way to school. Seriously!? My niece is 12.

We are so removed from that habit, I just had no idea. If you think about it, it's not surprising. There's only so much "Do as I say and not as I do" that's going to fly. If you stop at Starbucks every day (or week, or however often) at some point your kids are going to become part of that equation. Apparently by the time they are 12.

If you want to give your kids a financial leg up, think about the example you are setting. I think the other thing is too if you are making six figures and you are annoyed about these discussions about the latte factor, that's totally cool. But remember that your kids are going to have to start basically from scratch at some point. I am grateful that I didn't have to battle habits like this in my teens and 20s. At 40, if I want to go start buying lattes every day, it's not like it's going to make much financial difference at this point in my life. But it would have made ALL the difference when just starting out.

Today I harvested some tax gains. Is a strategy to keep "taxable" investments tax-free.

In the process, I just converted to admiral shares and way lower expense ratios. In theory, I'd generally just immediately buy back what I sold; selling solely to lock in 0% tax rate on those gains. But in the end I decided to move funds over in the process and to be a little more efficient.

For myself, technically any long-term capital gains are tax-free for Federal. But... That's not entirely true because bumping up our AGI (even just a couple of thousand dollars) wreaks all sorts of havoc on the rest of our taxes. It decreases what we can put in tax-deductible IRAs and reduces our medical expense deduction, etc. But, whatever. It's not like it's going to get better than a 0% tax rate. (I mostly expect our income and taxes to be much higher in the future).

Since we've mostly been able to shelter our investments in retirement funds, this is the first time that I've had a tax-free gain to harvest. At about $3,000 for long-term gains and I figured I could live with that. (I probably wouldn't want to add much more to our tax return. We are already on track to maybe have 10% more wage income than last year).

For the kids, I have been selling off funds frequently to the same end, though I got a bit of a break the past two years. But for today, MM was at a good selling point. $1,000 investment income is tax-free for them. $1,500 is just some very minimal state tax. I might have timed it well enough that they are more in the $1k range and won't owe any state taxes.

Note to self:
$1,000 investment income is the sweet spot for kids. No requirement to file a tax return at this investment income level.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a link that explains:

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Tax_gain_harvesting

I guess this came to front of mind because my dad *finally* sold some mutual funds that he had wanted to sell a few years back. He's waited for tax reasons, and I guess given my tax perspective I have no idea what he has been waiting for. !! I mean, Obamacare was the reason the last two years, but now in 2017 I would have sold January 1. Not sure how long 0% investment tax rate will be around and am glad he finally took advantage.

As for the kids' "college" money, it's conservatively invested (balanced fund) and I have an equal amount in cash (our cash savings/emergency fund). So I feel that I Can shoulder any short-term market fluctuations. It seems way too premature to do anything with that. Kids start college in 4 & 6 years. Keeping in mind that we used our own "college money" for a home down payment instead of college. (College is still super cheap here and housing is only more insane now than it was then). This really could be money that remains untouched for 10+ years. So for now, we have no plans to cash out any college money or to shift to a more conservative allocation. We may set aside more new money in cash, as college becomes more imminent.

Frugalwoods had a GREAT article yesterday. I am sharing in case anyone missed it:

How To Stop Eating Out According To Frugalwoods Readers

http://www.frugalwoods.com/2017/07/17/how-to-stop-eating-out...

"I must highlight that the #1 reason cited for eating out is a failure to plan ahead.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a planned, agreed-upon-in-advance, special dinner out. It’s delightful to plan for it all month, anticipate what you’ll order, and then truly enjoy yourself. But scrambling to order sub-par Thai at 8pm on a Tuesday because you forgot to go grocery shopping? That’s what needs to stop."

"Caroline says it’s about planning ahead and having a low barrier to entry, “Make sure you have enough ready-to-cook-in-a-short-time food at hand, whether at work or home."

"Anna reports it’s actually a time-saver to cook at home, “What has helped me with takeout is realizing how quickly I can make a meal, particularly a quick veggie pasta or white rice with steamed veggies in the rice cooker. Less than 30 minutes start to table, and we never get delivery or back and forth to a restaurant quicker than that.”

"Sarah says, “We have a rule that you can have anything you want, so long as it comes from the grocery store for those times when planning fails or life just gets in the way. Even it it turns out to be something fancy or expensive, it’s always cheaper than takeout/restaurant for 4."

"Carissa wrote, “We NEVER make single portion meals. Everything is big enough to last us both for at least 3-4 meals. We have no problem eating leftovers, and it’s great to just reheat delicious home-cooked food for lunch or dinner."

Anyway, there were a LOT of good suggestions. There was also a large focus on freezing and cooking ahead. That's just not our thing. I copied and pasted more of the things that are our approach. But I think it's important to read through the whole article if you need any inspiration on this front. Everyone's different, and was reflected in the wide variety of ideas.

I'd say our approach is mostly to plan ahead and buy for a few meals every week. From there, we just go with the flow. Allows us just to cook according to our mood during the week. The idea of choosing a set meal for every day of the week would drive me insane. I feel about the same way about cooking and freezing ahead. Then it gets to be too much work or we lose the flexibility that we prefer. Just to share our overall strategy. & after 15 years of 99% home cooking our meals, whatever we cook is far better than any restaurant food. That was another point that someone brought up. But that takes time to get to.

Oh, and one thing that I was surprised that no one mentioned? Recruiting other help in the household. I guess there is no world where I cook for three other perfectly capable human beings 100% of the time. Whether I work or not. NO WAY! I mentioned this in another blog comment I think: MH is thinking ahead to going back to work full-time and also to his parents watching our kids for a couple of weeks while we are in Europe. We have had the kids cover dinners before, but never got to a set schedule that stuck. So we are determined to get the kids in the habit of cooking this summer (one meal per week, each). By the time school starts, we just don't want to have to put any mental energy into it. Want to make it a habit that sticks.

A couple of weeks ago DL(12) wanted to make beenies/weenies. Last week he made saag paneer (Indian spinach/cheese dish) in the crockpot. I guess the kids often lean towards my simple recipes which will probably be good for college years, but they are also used to higher end meals from stay-home father "chef". & so that is how that happens.

& it's been kind of genius because MH lets them choose what they are going to cook every week. DL(12) told me last week that the work was worth the reward. He LOVES being able to choose dinner.

I did ask him what he is going to make this week, and he said sushi. I told him no. WE are not there yet. !! (In the future, maybe).

I share because DL is kind of all over the place. MM's "signature dish" is taco rice salad. He wanted to make crockpot chili last week and chili hot dogs this week.

2017 TALLY:

$500 (AmEx Gold, Moi)
$525 (Citi Thank You, MH)
$499 Travel Rewards Cards (Capital One Venture,MH)
$200 Cash (WF Wise, MH)
-----------
$1,724 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*

**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31.

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

In the end, we are on track for one of our best years: on track for $3,000. I think what put us over the edge is using travel rewards. We usually stick to cash and gift cards. Travel rewards don't do much for us because we mostly avoid flying and can get a free hotel room regardless, so not something I expect to do a lot of in the long run.

I just activated the Citi card. That one is a bit of an experiment. It seems MH should be able to get $500, but we've done that one so much it makes me wary. (Technically you are supposed to wait 24 months in between).

Will see!

Anyway, I logged in online and that credit card is going to close tomorrow (monthly cycle). I was going to pre-pay a couple of months of health insurance, so figured I'd wait a day or two so I don't have to actually pay those for an extra month.

In the meantime, MH got a direct mail offer for American Express Gold. Spend $1,000, get $250. I find those really hard to come by. But I thought I recalled those were a "once in a lifetime" reward. MH got a kindle in 2010? Was from an AmEx Gold reward.

Anyway, since MH *just* applied for three cards, I figured I'd look up the rewards and see if I really want to bother. In the end I found this:

https://www.uscreditcardguide.com/amex-premier-rewards-gold-...

$500 reward if you spend $2,000. I tried a few different browsers and I got the $500 offer to pop up! I really don't recall ever having this card and I did check my blog. I figured they would deny me since I never get these offers. But in the end I was accepted! Woohoo!

I've got three months to do the spend. I usually just charge up these cards when I get them. Very little brain power. But in this case, I am going to pre-pay 2 months of health insurance already. Do I want to pre-pay 4 months, right now? I suppose it probably doesn't really matter. It just complicates life in the interim. Maybe it is easier to just wait 30-45 days before I do that one.

I have to remember to close this card within a year. It has an insane annual fee for the second year. I will make some notes in Quicken and in my calendar so that I do not forget.

Oh, the rewards are still very so-so on this card, but last time we enjoyed them more than I thought we would. So I will stock up on dining out gift cards and some gift cards to give as gifts.

On the Citi, MH was starting to eye the Best Buy gift cards and was thinking of funding some larger purchases. So might be $500 "ridiculous electronics splurging" (which we tend to do with these rewards) and $500 "restaurants and gifts."

I don't know that I see the point of doing any more rewards this year, except my 24-month clock has reset on Citi and I should really take advantage if I can find a $500 reward for that one. MH's was a direct mail offer. It would figure if that one would work right now. I really only do these things "one at a time" generally. Maybe it is just something I will keep an eye out for once the dust settles on these two rewards.

Edited to add: Look what I saw just posted TODAY?

https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/credit-card-details/citi.a...

It's $4,000 spend for $500 reward. We usually spend $3k for these rewards so definitely will pass.

When we asked what our kids wanted for their birthday they both said, "nothing." For Christmas they were both absolutely delighted with their one simple gift. We bought DL(11) a blanket and he made a point last month to tell me how much he loved it and it is the BEST gift. Six months later!

I've been pondering this a bit. This is nothing I expected from my kids. (Much like my last post, where I didn't necessarily expect them to be "super frugal" through their childhood). The best I can guess is that all their needs are WELL met (can't help but think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). & beyond that, they just absorb what they see. We are VERY content. We like our toys and we have our stuff but we aren't constantly shopping/spending.

& let me make it real clear. My kids have computers and cell phones and a virtual reality system. (Which I know many people think would cause kids to go the opposite way). There is no deprivation going on in this house. But they aren't over-saturated. They can appreciate something as simple as a blanket.

In fact, I received a big box with the new pots and pans I bought. My kids (12 and 14!) are having a BLAST with the box. It's cracking me up. I encouraged MH to just leave it be for the cat to play with. The kids seem to have the same wonder and excitement about it as the cat does. It's along the same lines. We haven't over-saturated them so much that they can't appreciate the small things.

Anyway, I saw the most amazing article from Frugalwoods today, that ties into this.

How Making Luxuries Rare Increases Our Happiness

http://www.frugalwoods.com/2017/07/14/how-making-luxuries-ra...

Some highlights:

"Repeated exposure to stimulants deadens our ability to derive pleasure from them. These stimulants range from shopping for stuff we don’t need to sugar to dining out. Anything designed to deliver jolts of dopamine and excitement are best if used sparingly."

"After embarking on our extreme frugality journey, I was suddenly awakened to a slew of behaviors that I performed ritualistically without much consideration for whether: a) they were good for me; b) I needed them; c) I actually derived any true, lasting pleasure from them. I was a consumer automaton, ritualistically buying new clothes every season, automatically getting a latte if I happened to walk past a coffee shop, dumping a ludicrous amount of ersatz sugar into my coffee mug."

"Spending money works in precisely the same way and impacts the same pleasure centers in our brains. We humans have the remarkable ability to acclimate ourselves to almost any level of comfort or deprivation. We can all craft a reality in which we’re deprived or in which we’re surrounded by abundance (with caveats for privilege and the understanding that not everyone enjoys the basic necessities of shelter, food, and safety required for this exercise). Abundance denial is exactly what it sounds like: a failure–or inability–to appreciate our blessings."

"When we sign-up for our culture’s materialistic consumer carousel, we’re signing up for a lifetime of spending money. There is always more to buy, more to crave, and more to convince ourselves we “need.” There is no path to lasting happiness through excessive consumption because you’ll never reach a point of enough. You’ll never look around your home and experience the gratitude of wanting what you already have; rather, you’ll look around your home and constantly identify more things you can buy. Marketing is designed to continually create these false needs for us and to continually convince us that we are lacking and deprived and uncool if we don’t consume at the level that’s advertised to us."

"“But buying things makes me happy!” you might be thinking. And you’re right, it does make you happy, but only for a brief period of time. That’s the key–the adrenaline and pleasure of making a purchase fades quite quickly and leaves you casting about for something else to buy. There’s a deeper, more permanent happiness to be had when you stop this cycle and instead start to focus your energies on people, activities, and experiences that are meaningful to you.

It’s also true that you’ll have more time. I often hear the complaint that frugality takes too much time, but I find it’s quite the opposite: frugality takes far less time and frees up your physical and mental energy for fulfilling pursuits. Imagine for a moment if you didn’t have to run a million errands this week: no dry cleaners, no haircuts, no manicures, no dog groomer, no shopping (other than for groceries)… that’s what my weeks are like. I’ve created time and space for myself by ceasing to participate in the consumer carousel.

When we instead acknowledge that we do, in fact, have enough, we surrender to a default position of gratitude. We look around our house–that very same house–and think “I am so grateful to have a couch for my kids to snuggle on. I am so thankful we have a roof that doesn’t leak.” We no longer notice the stains on the couch and the scuffs on our furniture or our non-trendy-looking appliances. Instead, we see all of these things as benefits in our lives and evidence of how fortunate we are to have running water and electricity and the ability to safely cook inside our home–all things that many people in the world so desperately need."

"Our culture writ large doesn’t encourage temperance or restraint. Frugality is viewed as miserly and boring. But in reality, it’s the golden ticket that delivers us off the hedonic treadmill and out of the “you never have enough” mentality and away from the buy-your-way-to-happiness prompts that we’re all old enough to know are empty, false promises.

Frugality is not about depriving yourself, it’s about reconstructing your worldview so that you need less, want less, and spend less in order to achieve a higher level of happiness. Spending is a vicious cycle of always feeling that happiness is out of your reach whereas frugality engenders a virtuous cycle of knowing that what you have is indeed enough."

Post from 2014:

"The kids get $2/per week/each "allowance", to learn money management. They have had the same allowances since they were 5. We have discussed raising it but they just don't spend their money! So, will leave be for now.

I don't even think it's so much that they don't spend money. It's more that they are extremely frugal. For example, going in on most purchases together and primarily buying used goods, or just being generally creative with their purchases. They just don't seem to have much motivation to spend."

This is still true. It's becoming obvious that we will never raise their allowances. They way we do it in our families is we will turn off allowances once they can more easily earn money. I'd say 14yo is there, but by the same token we expect the kids to work so much that I am not big on pushing it too soon. Not expecting *anything* of him this summer. But in a summer or two he will mostly be on his own.

I had an epiphany the other day. I was wondering if it was harsh to just turn off allowance when he turns 15. I had to laugh at myself when thinking about it a little further. His allowance is a whole whopping $100 per year. Clearly he will survive. Beyond that point, we will turn off the "automatic allowance." I suppose we can make it more discretionary beyond that.

If you told me (5 or 10 years ago) that we'd never raise their allowances, and how much money they'd have save up, I never would have believed it. It's crazy!

This reminds me of a conversation we had with our parents while we were at camp. My dad said something like they had not expected me to get a job so young. That I had been the one to want to get a job. I just got a job the minute I turned 15. ??? You know, I think he is right!? That really shocked me on some level. I didn't remember it that way until I stopped to think about it. By 17 (when I graduated high school) my parents told me they had not saved any college money for me and I was pretty much on my own. I had always given them credit for being honest and preparing me (versus friends who were told when college started or after college started that they could no longer help with college; pulling the rug out from under someone is NOT the same situation I had). I guess they prepared me in their own way. They really did, but it wasn't in such a direct, "get a job and start saving" way that I recalled. I guess I had no inkling at 15/16/17 that I should be saving up for college.

That really blows my mind!

Anyway, back to the kids' money. I'd say for the most part they don't receive much money. BUT, now that MIL is accepting of MM's lack of "wanting stuff," she's been throwing a lot of money at him lately (cash versus material gifts). For example, I don't even see any deposits of any note during the prior year. But in the last 12 months MIL gave him $40 for his New York trip, $70 for his graduation (no one else gave him anything for 8th grade graduation, we all think that is dumb). & then MIL gave him $20 for his birthday. I know she had given him some Christmas cash too ($60) but I guess maybe he spent that money. (He only got $20 for his birthday because he though of a material gift that he wanted; she otherwise would have given him much more).

Anyway, I brought this up in the first place to say that MM(14) has surpassed the $1,000 mark on his savings. Woohoo!

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

Even though the kids had elaborate birthdays (for us) MH had gotten it in his craw that he wanted to take them out for a birthday sushi lunch. Some all-you-can-eat place. So they went out yesterday and spent $50 on lunch.

{He had been planning this before all the birthday spending came up. It's a rare treat}.

I feel very *shrugs* about it because MH also got a $20 Amazon refund that he doesn't think is quite right. He said it was some automatic price match but the algorithm didn't take into account that he hadn't paid the full price in the first place?? I don't know, but there was that and we had some other large refund, so the sushi splurge happened on a good money day.

Birthday spending is done. We still have DL's party this weekend, but will just buy some food/dessert with grocery budget. We already had two cakes (one per kid) so I am thinking birthday ice cream.

In the end I tossed two pans (the ones we used the most, but should have been tossed a long time ago). & I freecycled 8 pans. One of them was actually pretty nice but just too high maintenance for me. The rest were crap though some of the stainless steel maybe could have been cleaned up. Again, just too high maintenance for us.

So that's minus 10 pots and pans? I purchased 7 new ones. So I guess that's a bit of a downsize. Besides replacing frying pans, the rest was more just doubling up on what we use the most. I did not go super high-end because convenience is the bigger factor for us right now. I Want something we can use and abuse and put in the dishwasher every day. (We cook and dishwash pots and pans probably every single day). I was not willing to literally pay 5 times as much for handwash-only pots and pans, in contrast. Doubling up on the frequently used pots will save us a lot of energy; we spend way too much energy co-ordinating cooking and dishes.

I didn't even realize until I typed this out that we ended up with less pots and pans in the end. My husband is a minimalist of sorts (he just has his things, he is also a hoarder so depends on what we are talking about). So he didn't seem to understand why I wanted to double up. But it could also be that only so much fits in the washer. The new pans are so easy to clean, I don't mind volunteering to handwash any excess pans. I suppose he'd rather just use what fits in the dishwasher, but that approach drives me a little crazy.

These are all high enough quality that they should last 10+ years of heavy use. If I had really thought about it, I would have just replaced those pans a long time ago. A whole whopping $20 for a really nice mid-range pan. Lesson learned.

Put this in the "Working smarter" category.

I also had it on my radar to get rid of some old humidifier that we never use (maybe used once?). I saw it in the kids' bathroom cabinet a while ago. I freecycled that yesterday. I had some other odds and ends that I tossed and freecycled.

My next task is a pile of returns. I'd like to get the cash back before our credit cards close for the month. I did okay on swimsuits (nothing perfect, but stuff that will work). & I am not returning any of the pots or pans. Shoes were a bust so I will just give up for now. Mostly I need to just print return stuff and box it up. MH will run it all to the postal place later. There's a business down the street that accepts UPS returns (Zappos free returns). They may mail out my other return for me (I will have to pay postage) or MH can do that at the grocery store where we have some post office services. I have NO IDEA. I just give MH the boxes and he is the post office fairy.

I am waiting for one Kohls order that I expect to partially return. I will do that return in person.

Oh, and I did list a couple of items for sale on local neighborhood website. Not getting bites there for anything (not even the free stuff). So I will move my for-sale items to Craigslist this weekend. Might make some cash??

I have some other clean-up and de-clutter goals for the summer but not expecting to make much progress this week. Too many birthday festivities this weekend. I will be happy to get all returns returned and to attempt some sales for cash. I am usually more of a fall cleaner but I got sidelined about one year ago with a broken foot and then work was *crazy* after that. So I feel some extra motivation now I guess. (Will see if the heat changes my mind. There is a reason that I do "fall cleaning").

Edited to add: I did get kitchen island cabinets all cleaned out and wiped down and hand-washed all new pots/pans before putting them away. That is all I accomplished in the kitchen but it's a start. I could probably do an upgrade/purge with bakeware. It should be less significant (I need maybe a higher quality muffin tin and a couple of higher quality baking sheets). It can wait until the fall (baking season).

We always have a tendency to zig while everyone else zags. It just seems to always be this way. I don't know why!

Anyway, having a very Murphy type month so far. & splurging on kids' birthdays. Last year we spent like nothing on the kids, but this year seems to be the polar opposite. (I don't mind splurging once in a while. Or saving some years so we can do bigger things other years).

LOTS of money being spent.

I planned a chore weekend, somewhat planned around replacing some pots and pans. But I forgot I had a lot of other commitments already. So it will be a bit busy,

This morning I am driving MM to the animal shelter. I have some shopping to do (while waiting for him), which is what I did last time (two weeks ago). Over the long run, I DO NOT plan to shop every other weekend. But for now, during the hot summer months, it works. On my list is a birthday cake mix for younger son and a sympathy card for my sister (lost a fur child last week). {I don't generally do cards, more for environmental reasons than any other, but will make exceptions for illness and death}. Just some stuff like that.

I need to run the kids to their credit union to withdraw their interest. They earn 7% on first $500 but nothing after that. So we take the money out once per year (unfortunately we have to do this in person). & the in-laws gave them some loose change that they can deposit at this CU (no charge). I am guessing something like $5 each.

I bought some new pots and pans because our old ones were ridiculously sad. Should have replaced a while ago, but just had enough last weekend. Probably a function of having some time to actually deal with that.

So my plan is to clean out the entire kitchen. At least, doing a major pots and pan purge. & cleaning out that section of the kitchen. But probably should just go through the whole kitchen.

I have some other things to freecycle and sell, so will at least get a pile going for that.

(We haven't bought pots or pans since we have been primarily home cooking, so this is a really nice upgrade and I have any idea what we actually need/want/use. I think this will make life a LOT easier and will be a very nice upgrade. I am excited to purge the old crap!)

Tomorrow is DL's birthday. I haven't given it much thought. We did buy him a drum set, but it won't arrive for a few more days. In-laws are coming to take the kids out to celebrate both their birthdays. He wants to do a sleepover the following weekend. Which is confusing because that's his brother's birthday. But we had to do brother's party early to accommodate friends' summer vacation plans. Anyway, I guess in-laws mostly have tomorrow covered. I asked DL if there was any food treat he wanted, thinking something $1 or $2 at Target while I am there today. He tells me he wants Drumsticks (ice cream) plus a bag of ruffles and two containers of dip. All for himself. Okay, dude, I just spent $300 on a drum set, so this is all sounding like a lot at this point. But I don't have a gift for him to open so I guess that's what he gets.

I will have to run to the (grocery) store later. Which I have to do anyway. I was going to make ceejay's sauerkraut recipe with dinner tonight. Need to pick up some cabbage. That was the other thing. MH is also having the kids cook two nights a week, trying to get into a more long-term habit with that. DL chose one of my recipes, so I am helping DL to make that tonight. Beanies and weenies. Real fancy stuff, but the sauerkraut would be a nice side dish for that.

Man, as I type all this out I am exhausted. Wonder what the odds are I get anything done in the kitchen today.

On Thursday I took MM(13) and his friends to the water park. Everyone he invited could go!! (Rare for a summer birthday party). Except for a mutual friend (mutual with his brother). Which worked out because DL dropped out at the last minute. Probably for the best because I don't think he'd really want to have been there all day.

The kids had a blast.

There was probably absolutely nothing frugal about this trip. Except I did bring in bottled water. They did allow those and it was a million degrees. I just grabbed a 6-pack on my way home the night before and threw them in the freezer. That worked out perfect.

The kids were very polite about lunch and tried to order frugally. (We served them dinner and cake at home, afterwards).

MM bff's father called me the night before because they had been vague on details. He told me his son had just told him about the party that day and he didn't have a present yet. He mentioned something about bff picking MM's brain during the party. I told him, "Good Luck." The kid doesn't want anything. Anyway, he didn't skip a beat and said maybe they'd take him out some time. I think that sounds perfect! (& it was nice to skip all the hounding about how he's a teenager and he must want SOMETHING). This is a lot of why I chose to just take him to the water park in the first place.

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For the rest, I have to back up. We are from the Bay Area, where housing prices are out of this world. It probably never occurred to me that I could even afford to buy a home (until my husband ran the numbers with me in our early 20s).

In the end, we could not afford a single family home and decided to move to a city with 70% cheaper housing. From our perspective it was dirt cheap. & if making such a big move solely to afford a home, might as well splurge a bit. So we bought a fairly nice home in a high-end neighborhood. I am guessing by most measures our house is pretty average, but probably feels like a mansion to us. We do live in a community with big and expensive homes, and some people with big money live here. I think we forget a lot of the time because we really just don't care about that stuff. If we cared, we would have bought one of those homes. We more bought the modest home in the fancy neighborhood. (Our buying considerations really had nothing to do with the specific neighborhood. Just to underscore how much we could care less).

In the early years I believe we got a lot of raised eyebrows. We were only 24 when we bought this house and we had actually planned to only have a $150k mortgage (should have sold first home for another $80k cash). It was just SO CHEAP to us, so after that fell through that we just stayed the course, even with an additional $80,000 to borrow. But I share just to say that our intent was really for this was not to be any kind of big financial splurge. In the end, our $200k mortgage has been smaller than average most years we have lived here. & it sure as heck beat having a $400k+ mortgage for a house half the size. Anyway, back then it was presumed we had family money or just made bank on Bay Area real estate. Honestly? After like 75% of your income goes to the roof over your head... Even when MH lost his job, this mortgage was never of any concern. *shrugs*

After the housing bust I was in awe of people's short term memories. During that time it was so ubiquitous to be on the verge of foreclosure, everyone would ask us what we were going to do about our housing problems. We'd always say, "We don't have any housing problems?" Some people would realize that we didn't buy during the bubble and would seem to understand. But mostly people would be completely unable to comprehend how this was so. I'd think back to all the crazy assumptions we got just 6 years ago about family money or hitting it rich somehow, but even those excuses seemed to have flown from people's consciousness during that time.

You just never know how people are going to react.

So... MM's friends are all very sweet boys. One of them spent some time in the shade with me (at the water park) and asked a lot of personal questions. I think if it was anyone else, I don't know. But he just seemed very genuine. Most the kids around here lived in some McMansion their parents could not afford. If our mortgage has generally always been $200k or less, keep in mind that our house was worth $650k at the peak. So a lot of people seem to presume we paid that much and/or that is the size of our mortgage. Just for some frame of reference. (It would never occur to anyone that we put any money down, because mostly no one does that).

Anyway, this kid clearly is more lower middle class? He lives in a very modest house. In this city, is not something I've generally seen. Everyone was just over-buying for the most part. Even when they lost their homes, the tendency was to continue living far beyond means. (In addition, so many people move from more expensive cities and buy bigger homes. Most our immediate neighbors are from the Bay Area or LA, so more view this as "cheap" housing). In contrast, this kid lives in a rough neighborhood. Maybe not super rough, but certainly compared to our current neighborhood.

What this kid doesn't know is that all we could afford was an apartment in a rough neighborhood, old city. We thought that would likely be where we raised our kids.

So the kid asks me when we moved into our house and if we own it. The way he asked and how genuine he is, I didn't mind. He asked my about my profession and so on. I think he's genuinely curious and somewhat thinking to his own future. I can't say these were any questions that weighed on my mind as a 13-year-old.

I tried to give him some sense of the above, but he was not comprehending at all.

Anyway, THEN he changed the topic to movies. I told him about the free advanced movie screenings. He was completely incredulous. He asked me two or three times, "You mean you don't have to pay anything!?" I just think he would really and truly appreciate it. I told him that you have to wait in line and it gets crowded, so keep it on the down low. My husband is probably annoyed that I told anyone, but if he was there he would have done the same.

2017 TALLY:

$481 Travel Rewards Cards (Capital One Venture,MH)
$200 Cash (WF Wise, MH)
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$681 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*

**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31.

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There is a 24-month wait to re-dip a Citi Thank You card. I believe I passed 24 months a while ago, but I haven't seen a worthwhile bonus since then.

In the end, MH received a direct offer for a $500 bonus (same card). I read through it carefully and checked some of the credit card reward blogs, and it looks like it's exempt from the 24-month rule. WOW! I told him I kind of hate to use it since we are almost there (he could have applied in a few more months). But I don't know when he will ever get an offer again, either. So will just bite the bullet and try.

If this one works, I will have $500 to add to my tally. In the end, it will be a better credit card bonus year than I would have expected.

We are back from our annual family camp trip. (10th year! Hard to believe. 9th year at this camp).

I hadn't thought too much about it, but was describing to a co-worker. It's basically like summer camp for the whole family. The camp is run by our city. Year 1 we tried San Jose's camp (near Yosemite). But Sacramento's camp (near Tahoe) has nice cabins. It's easier to get to, and we all just love it. So as I described to my co-worker the nice cabins, how all food is provided (dining hall) and they serve beer by the patio. The more I described it the more heavenly it sounded. So that was a couple of days before we left and I really started to look forward to our trip.

I haven't had more than a day off since November? So it all sounded very luxurious the more I thought about it. Otherwise, I just hadn't given much thought to the whole thing.

Last year was really a dud because we could only fit in our DC trip if we left on the last day of school and came back the day before camp. UGH. Anyway, I never planned to stay the whole time, and DL (11) was just not having it. We both ended up leaving camp even earlier than I had planned (last year). The year before my nieces had not come up, and so the last two years were kind of a bummer.

This year my nieces made it up for camp and the kids just had a BLAST with them. I think next year if their cousins can't make it up that we may let them invite friends. It just makes all the difference, for them.

MH had also bought a couple of games right before the trip. It's not like we don't have a million games. But one of them, Codenames, was a HUGE hit. We just had a blast with that one. It's one of those games that is more fun with more people.

Lake Tahoe was filled to capacity. After falling below normal levels due to drought conditions in recent years. I just thought it didn't look like it could be much more full. There was barely any beach left. I looked it up yesterday and it's at its peak. They are releasing water. Extra so since we had a heat wave last week with a lot of snow melt.

Since I had heard the ski resorts would have skiing well into July this year, because of so much snow this winter, I did look it up and we had planned to go up to one of the ski resorts instead of going to the Lake on the Lake day. It would have been $$$$$, but how often can you go sledding the end of June? In the end, the kids changed their mind last minute and wanted to go to the beach. Saved me a lot of money. I was thinking how that $15 game was infinitely more entertaining. I really wouldn't have minded spending the money for a one-time thing (the resort had rock climbing and ropes courses and all sorts of thing my Monkey Monkey would LOVE). But I think it worked out in the spirit of camp to just not spend any money. In the end, it was probably the nicest (camp) trip we have ever had.

Oh, and the theme was Hawaiian or something along those lines. We aren't really much into the themes but I bought a few leis at the party store (a couple of bucks). In the end, MH brought his ukelele. (He got into it more than he would admit). It was a fun theme. Camp was super fancy this year; they had hula dancers!

{This trip is paid for by the in-laws. My dad usually goes with us too}.

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MH had free advanced screening tickets (plus extras) for the Spiderman movie, Wednesday night. He saw some kid running around camp in a spider man costume. So he approached him and offered him tickets. I was surprised because he is generally protective about his secret movie source. But he told me that he just said he got the tickets from a friend.

{In the end, they went and LOVED being able to see the movie early}.

MH kept two tickets just in case, but we all felt up to going to the other movie he had gotten us tickets for: The Big Sick. Patient Saver mentioned in her blog about the cultural diversity in New Jersey. Growing up in California, that's all I know. (The population was something like 3% white where I grew up. Any house on my street growing up would be a look into a different culture and world). Anyway, I bring up because the movie was about the melding of cultures. & it speaks so much of my upbringing and my childhood friends' struggles with their parents. Loosely based on the true story about how comedian Kumail Nanjiani met his wife. In the end she got sick and ended up in a coma after they broke up, and he bonded with her parents during that time. MH had already told me that they ended up married so not too much of a spoiler? It's more a story about all the pressure his parents were putting on him to marry a Pakistani girl, and about her parents warming up to him and working through their own stereotypes. & also some about hospitals and Doctors/nurses. (Sometimes medical stuff is just a little too close to home. Especially when it's written by someone who has been through a big medical ordeal).

Anyway, we took the kids and they liked it more than we expected them to.

Oh, and MH got Spiderman tickets for another day, so all is well in his world.

Received $39 bank interest for the month of June.

Snowflakes to Investments:

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

Redeemed $48 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $5 cash back on Visa dining/fuel card.

Other snowflakes to investments:
--$15 Savings from Target Red Card
--$7 refund from Amazon (some sort of settlement)
--$140 Dividends
--LESS: $70 diverted to Europe Trip

Snowballs to Europe trip:
--$481 credit card reward (travel credits applied)
--$200 credit card reward (cash)
--$200 sale of old TV
--$ 70 Diverted from Snowflakes

Note: $0 cash out-of-pocket needed for Europe spending this month

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash (mid-term savings)
+$ 900 to IRAs

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

+$1,300 to cash
- 425 Misc. Expenses**
- 90 Dentist

{Note: MH has no wages during summer months}.

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**Misc. Expenses: Had some time to do some catch up shopping, and had some little things come up. Bought a (fancy) sleeping bag for MM(13) because he had a field trip coming up and outgrew his old one. I figure he will keep this one for a LONG time. Gave some money to the kids' school to top off our "hours" requirement. We were generous with Mother's Day gifts this year. MM needed some clothing. (These were all May charges, which is when my work let up a bit).

With that, I've pretty much exhausted our short-term savings. The second half of the year will all go to property taxes, insurance, car maintenance, and the dentist. For summer, I will keep pulling form short-term savings and will just figure it out at the end of the year. In Fall, will have to pull from MH's paycheck if anything comes up. (I expect his paycheck to cover kids' clothing, and stuff like that. Since they are growing and we need a bigger clothing budget now that they are getting to be adult sized and I can't just buy everything on clearance for $3). What this means is a very tight summer. We pretty much did all our splurging for the year already, so this is the flip side of the coin.

That said, it is some give and take. We are still at "peak liquidity" and will continue to be as long as no huge expenditures come up. I am probably going to spend a lot on MM's birthday (taking 6 kids to the expensive water park). It's not the kind of thing we do very often, but it seems silly to say "no", given our current means. In the end, the admission is way cheaper than I expected, but I imagine the food in the park is where they get you.

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I am still working on 3% savings account. Having some technical difficulties on that. Will probably have the money moved over around July 5th.

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I decided to just pull from snowflakes this month, to cover the rest of the Europe money. If we can still add $400-ish to investments, then it is all good.

{I still will work on selling a couple of items from around the house. Will just invest the snowflakes like I usually do, or can maybe use for some fun summer money}.

For the first 10 days of summer break, we have absolutely nothing planned. It's a sweet relief after a long/trying school year.

Actually, most of our summer looks like this. We aren't big on filling up our schedule, but the kids' summers are so short and sometimes it fills up very quickly, regardless. So, we are ALL happy to have a very slow summer planned. We will break up the peace and quiet with our annual camping trip and then birthday festivities for the kids.

In addition to just soaking in the peace and quiet, we've also blown all our "fun" money on our trip abroad. So doesn't leave much else. Extra motivation to keep it low key. We have plenty of frugal/FUN things to do, and so I feel very *shrugs* about this part. For example, going to the pool or the beach.

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MH and MM went to a free movie yesterday. We've been having a heat wave and usually they make you line up outside (for free advanced screenings). But in the end, they let them line up inside yesterday. Phew! (MH had gone to another movie on Monday and he had waited outside in the heat. It was another theater).

{The movie they saw last night was "Baby Driver". MH said it was really good and he is telling everyone because the general reaction is that the name of the movie sounds stupid, and no one's heard of it. Even among his movie friends}.

MH did make it into one free movie screening (a few weeks ago) that was really meant for college students. I didn't go because I didn't think we'd get in, and didn't want to waste my time. In the end, the movie was really good and he got tickets for a more normal (all ages) screening next week. So we are all going to see that movie.

Yeah, pretty much MH sees *every* movie before it even comes out. You see why I am not concerned about our lack of "fun money".

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Over the weekend I decided to order some shoes and swim suits.

It's mostly impossible to find shoes that fit my feet, but I found a pair that feel like sneakers and double as casual or work shoes. I bought like 3 pairs of that shoe. So I have probably been good for a while. (That was a few years ago, and I bought a couple of extra pairs that I have yet to wear).

{I was amused when someone at work complimented me this week on my shoes. I've worn them every day for YEARS. I just chuckled to myself how people don't notice these things. Realizing this, goes a long way to saving space and money}.

I am just trying to replace a flat shoe that I have, and I see the same shoe but can't find them in a wide size now. *sigh* I decided that I don't remember ever shopping flats at Zappos so I gave it a try. (Several days later, I've returned them all. A couple fit but just weren't right. One was close and I might try double wide on that brand).

For whatever reason, this reminded me that I really want to replace my swimsuit too. I don't remember when I bought it, but I know I had it 2010 when I went to Hawaii. It's fine, but starting to fray a bit. (I've tried to buy another swimsuit at some point, but have yet to find something).

Anyway, I checked Bealls of Florida and they had some suits on sale in the $10 range. Like really nice swimsuits. So I just bought up a bunch. Something will have to work. & I bought a couple of more expensive ones also. (I only plan to keep one).

So... I told MH that I had just spent $400. He didn't bat an eye. He says, "Yeah, how much are you going to return?"

Well I already returned $260 in shoes; the entire freaking order. He knows me too well.

Edited to add: I am reviewing the June spending today. Apparently I haven't bought anything for myself since the beginning of February. Replacing worn out shoes and swimsuits, I'd probably put under "clothing" versus "personal spending". But regardless, I have spent $0 on clothing this year AND $0 for personal spending (before these purchases).

I think it's been a long time since I have done a mortgage update.

The short version is that our last refi was in 2012, for lower interest rate. Given the high unemployment rate here, we've not felt comfortable with a 15-year mortgage. (Well, between that and our health insurance literally going up by $1,000 per month). But we also did not want to reset the clock all over again for 30 years. So our goals with our current (30 year) mortgage have been to pay more principal than interest, and to also not have a mortgage on this house for more than 30 years total.

To that end, as long as we are well employed, we do throw an extra $3,000 per year at the mortgage. I fund with my overtime. (I think we did a bit more in the beginning to have more "principal than interest." Maybe an extra $1,000 in year 1).

We will want to shave off 10 years, so that we don't have a mortgage on this house for 40 years total.

I do have to say that these lower interest rates are absolutely amazing when it comes to mortgage amortization. Our first mortgage on our first condo was $1,500/month. We paid $1,400/month interest! (Only $100 was going to principal). We really barely paid anything down the first 10 years or so of home ownership. (We had basically the same mortgage amortization when we bought our current home).

In contrast, we've paid $40,000 off of our $200,000 mortgage, since our last refi. We are paying off about $8,000 per year, and that is just accelerating with time. So it feels like we are making some real progress. & to be clear, this is with much smaller mortgage payments. It's just that so much less of the payment goes to interest.

Current status:

We have shaved off 4 years off this loan. So that leaves 6 more years that we want to shave off. Will keep chipping away at it.

{Note: Our last $3,000 payment shaved off 7 months}

We don't have any plans to throw any (additional) extra at the mortgage. We have kids starting college in the near future and so are hoarding up cash and investments to that end. Would rather err on saving up enough for college and not having to take out any new loans.

It's all fairly moot as it is 100% likely that we will sell our house in the next decade (while still in our 40s). I am guessing it is most likely that we will sell before we ever pay off? It seems more prudent to save up the down payment for our next home. (Our plan is to downsize and pay cash for our next home. But I am guessing we will settle in our next home before sell current home. A down payment will give us more options on that front, versus having to wait to sell first).

We sold the TV that we just replaced.

Probably could have gone about it better. MH really thought he could get $400. Which is how these things seem to go. He thinks he is going to get more and then can get kind of stubborn about it. & then he also gets emotionally attached to these things, which makes it harder. So I was skeptical, but in the end, he just wanted to be rid of it. I am relieved. He'd probably be totally fine listing it all year and waiting for the right price. But beyond that, he was more motivated than I expected him to be. (In contrast, if I have anything to sell, I just want it gone the day or week I list it. But I will admit I don't sell many high dollar items).

So... He's been trying to sell for a while at this point. We were surprised how little interest it was getting at $200, which is what we have it down to after several weeks.

This past weekend I listed a few free items on our neighborhood website. My husband is always weird about putting higher end electronics on there (just obvious that we have this type stuff or may be upgrading, and it's not anonymous at all). But for whatever reason he asks if we should just put the TV on there too. Um, YES!!

I wasn't thinking at all that people might feel more comfortable buying TVs in that manner. I saw one guy trying to sell a TV (flat screen) and no one wanted it. So anyway, I just copy and paste MH's Craigslist listing and didn't think too much about it.

Within 15 minutes, two people wanted it. Seriously! & they came right over to get it.

All else being equal, I don't even care. Just glad to be rid of it. But since I am working on coming up with $270 to fund our London trip, I could just kick myself that I didn't ask for $250.

The only other thing of value that I have to sell is an outgrown sleeping bag (of very nice quality). I washed it and was going to list it, but I noticed it had a big rip. So that one is moved to the mending pile, for now. I still plan to sell it.

In the meantime, still looking for $70 in snowflakes. The less of our regular income and savings we use now, the more we will have to spend while we are in London. So trying to keep everything we book ahead within our vacation budget, or paid for with snowballs/snowflakes. (Whatever we spend in Europe will have to come out of savings. Wasn't planning to travel abroad this year).

As to the free stuff I listed, no one wants it. I will put it on Craigslist this weekend probably.

I found the "super secret password" to get MM(13) into the teen (animal shelter) volunteer program. Phew! (Pretty much, you had to follow on Facebook to get the info. I am lucky that I saw it). The plus side is that we (adults) don't have to volunteer alongside. I certainly wouldn't mind, but just don't want the commitment right now. The downside is that it is the farther away shelter. But if I understood correctly, it sounds like parents can drop in to help. I'd rather do that than just sit in the car and wait. I just appreciate the non-commitment way to help.

MM just really wants to help. I think it made an impression when we adopted our cat from the shelter. But in addition, we always give money to the shelters, the kids know we had adopted our prior cat from the shelter, and I've probably talked about all my past volunteering helping animals. I am thinking it's a little bit of all of the above.

Aside from getting that sorted out, we had two BBQs to attend on Saturday.

In between BBQs I got most the kids' school stuff sorted. Washed their backpacks, lunch bags, PE clothes, etc. In the past their school just provides everything. But DL started a new school this past year and we had bought supplies and a PE uniform. In the end, I put everything useable back into his backpack. I figured that was the simplest so we can find everything when school starts back up. MM just has an empty backup, in contrast.

I don't remember what we did Sunday. I feel like I just did a lot of light chores. MH made us watch Whiplash.

A charity is coming by today (the second in just 4 days). I only rounded up school uniforms (which we will no longer ever need - woohoo!) and that's all I got to. But that will work. Out of the house it goes.

MM(13) is off camping at the beach. The 8th graders' last hoorah. Tomorrow is their graduation.

DL(11) finished up school yesterday. Phew!

Today is MM(13)'s last academic day. (It's all fluff next week: overnight field trip to the beach, and then graduation).

Last night I took down all the school calendars off the fridge. Phew!

Next year will be more simplified and efficient, though the reality is our kids will be at separate schools for their high school years. I am guessing that it will all seem like a piece of cake, after this last year. Their schools are only one mile apart from each other. The kids were initially going to get out 15 minutes apart but it seems DL's school might change that to 1/2 hour (which is overall a good change for other reasons). Whatever. We basically told them we have bent over backwards to oblige them for the past 9 years (of grade school), meaning we always pick them up right when school gets out and have never had them in any after school care (or "study hall" at DL's 6-12 school), but in turn they might have to do some "waiting around" next year. It would only make sense to drop them off and pick them up at the same time.

We are definitely going out to celebrate tonight! Taking the kids out to their favorite restaurant.

That reminds me, the teachers put on a very nice dinner for the 8th graders. Last weekend. They got a free? (or at least discounted) banquet room at the hotel down the street. (Mental note for the future: was a very nice venue). They had a DJ and a photo booth, and a catered buffet dinner. For the 8th graders and their parents only. It was very nice.

Next week will be the graduation festivities.

The only other thing of note is that MH took me to a free advanced movie screening last night. It was one we weren't expecting a big turnout for (My Cousin Rachel). BUT, we got there an hour early and barely got in! It's the first time we have ever left the kids for one of those on a weeknight. The thing is you generally have to get there an hour early (though admittedly no commercials or previews, as an offset to that extra time). & they are strict about using phones (which is rough if you want to be reachable to your kids). But the kids were totally fine. I think more often I just don't go because I am tired and not a night person.

MH finished up work last Friday. His summer chore list is VERY long. (Next week he is taking DL to the dentist and the optometrist, and DL will get shots too. The cars both need oil changes. We have a couple of bigger home improvement projects to get through. Not BIG, but we've mostly done nothing but painting and very basic maintenance, so they feel "big").

DL's last day of school is tomorrow. I am so relieved we made it! I haven't blogged much about his moods because he's been back to his old self. He just doesn't do middle ground well. He's either like the "perfect kid" (mature, responsible, and wise beyond his years) or the "falling apart" kid, but there's just not been much in between. Absolutely nothing to report. We've learned that he doesn't handle change well (even 100% happy/good change), particularly with the mix of pre-teen hormones. I am just a little wary about our Europe trip since we leave about 2 weeks in (school year). We wanted to give him time to get settled, but it is around the time when he fell apart last year. He will have 7 new classes and teachers, and they did actually completely change the school schedule. So it will be a lot of change, but maybe being comfortable at the new school and knowing all the kids will be enough. I don't know if he will have some of the same teachers again. That would help. I suppose for drama and art he would. & PE.

{The in-laws will watch the kids at our house, while we are in Europe, so the kids won't miss any school. Is why I worry about DL since it will be a bit of a change-up. In any normal circumstances he would be totally fine. The kids often spend time apart from us.}

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We've mostly got through Phase 2 of Europe trip. Phase 1 was booking hotel/airfare (Purchased because crazy cheap, paid for in cash). Phase 2 is booking tours and paying for those with credit card rewards. I am surprised that I only have to come up with about $275 cash for Phase 2. We booked two long day tours, plus a day trip to Paris. Phase 3 will be food and transport while we are there, and whatever admissions we end up paying. We have 3 full days covered already, plus a few days dedicated to free museums, so I expect the bulk of the (admission type) costs to be covered already.

Total out-of-pocket so far: $2,875

I am guessing we can keep the entire trip down to $2,000 per person. This includes non-stop flights & staying in a luxurious hotel/apartment.

Since I got the cash part down to $270 for Phase 2, that reminds me that we can probably get $200 for old TV. Maybe I will work on selling some other things to come up with that last $70. I don't think we really have much, but was just thinking (the other day) that we can probably sell DL's fancy sleeping bag (outgrown). Will see what else we can come up with. Plus, MH is home, so he can spend some of that time and energy on listing and selling.

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This reminds me, I have a bag for charity. I keep missing the charities that come around, since I had been so busy for work. The bag may have been sitting there for several months. Anyway, a charity is coming by Friday and I will be sure to set out the full bag.

Another charity is coming by Tuesday and I thought maybe I could make it a goal this weekend to come up with something for that. It just hit me today that MM(13) will be done with school uniforms this week. Woohoo! {He has to fit for *two* more days. Boy, it was getting close!} Since this was the last uniform year for either kid, is not a lot. I bought the bare minimum for this school year. & I threw some smaller/backup polo shirts into that charity bag, about a month ago. He had clearly outgrown those. But I will be sure to wash and bag up the rest this weekend. I am sure that my clothes could also use another pass. I am sure I can find something.

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FrugalTexan mentioned Kasasa(?) bank accounts for higher interest rates. I don't know if I heard of them before, but quickly ruled out because too many hoops to jump through (direct deposit and numerous debit card transactions). But I share if you are okay with those hoops and haven't heard of it. (FT can chime in more in the comments!)

This is what I posted end of April:
I had a CD mature this month, so a little less interest income. Since we do want to replace our vehicle, I think I will keep this CD money in our savings account. There is that, and I am also just completely exhausted with work. Maybe in a month or two it will sound appealing at all to jump through hoops to earn more interest. For now, I am over it.

{The "jumping through hoops" I was thinking to was just having to open a new bank account. I didn't have the mental energy for even that. But in addition, I can generally find a very high interest rate for some of my cash; those just come with a bit more hassle}.

Because of FT's comment, she kicked my butt into gear and I looked around a bit. I came across MH's old CU offering 3% interest! (You have to live or work in that region, so I doubt it's anything that anyone else will find very useful. If you are in the Bay Area and want to know about it, just leave a comment). Since we no longer live or work there, we can still join because I knew my in-laws had an account. I had to get their account # to join. They are super peeved that the interest rate is only available to new customers!

As to jumping hoops, they won't let me set up that 3% account online so I will have to call later and see what the deal is. *sigh* {That I can't just do this online, I find super annoying. It's just becoming more of a time suck}.

Then a couple of days ago, My Money Blog did a "Best Interest Rates on Savings" post. There was some in there that I had not seen. I always like it when someone else does the work for me. Which is probably the other reason I had been dragging my feet on this front. Anyway, I share because it is very helpful:

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/best-interest-rates-on-cash-savin...

If I can't get this other 3% account to work, then I guess I will look at some of the bank accounts mentioned in this blog post.

Interesting Article seen today:

Today’s families are prisoners of their own clutter

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2012/07/09/new-study-s...

"That sums up Boston parents’ reaction to new research by UCLA-affiliated social scientists concluding that American families are overwhelmed by clutter, too busy to go in their own backyards, rarely eat dinner together even though they claim family meals as a goal, and can’t park their cars in the garage because they’re crammed with non-vehicular stuff."

"Managing the volume of possessions is such a crushing problem in many homes that it elevates levels of stress hormones for mothers."

"Most families rely heavily on convenience foods even though all those frozen stir-frys and pot stickers saved them only about 11 minutes per meal."

"Let’s let Katy Colthart, a social worker from Watertown, take it from here. Shopping at Target on a recent Sunday afternoon, she said with some remorse that she finds herself popping frozen chicken nuggets into the oven for dinner — even though she knows they don’t save her much time. But with a job and two young children to pick up from day care, things get hectic at the end of the day, and prepared foods give her a much-needed mental break.

“They give me the illusion of saving time and energy,” she said."

I really loved that last part. BINGO! That's how I have always felt about it, the way people act like we must spend a billion hours cooking. I always think, "It would take more time to go out." Or even if it really averages to 11 more minutes per day (to home cook), as quoted, it doesn't warrant the melodrama I get about it. I think people are just defensive about their illusion. But it makes it hard to have a realistic conversation about it. & though I see that it's not a real and true time saver to eat out, I understand the "turn off your brain and just barrel through" aspect of it. I think it's more about mental energy than time. & (mostly) no one knows how to cook, so there is also that. Maybe no idea where to begin.

It's all very correlated to lack of time. People clutter up their time just as much as they do their homes. & they speak to that in the article.

2017 TALLY:

$481 Travel Rewards Cards (Capital One Venture,MH)
$200 Cash (WF Wise, MH)
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$681 TOTAL *ONE-TIME REWARDS*

**In addition, various monthly rewards that I will tally at 12/31.

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Just doing an update to add in the $200 cash back reward.

All of the above is earmarked for travel expenses. I was able to use the Travel reward for a tour that we booked in the UK, so it looks like we can pay for all our tours that way.

I can see using this travel card again (getting one in my name) next time we plan a trip. I expect this to end up being a $500 reward (total), with the spending we plan to do in UK. (Mostly just food and public transport, but that will add up over 10 days).

Received $36 bank interest for the month of May.

(I did lose higher interest CD, but I guess that is offset by parking OT in savings.)

Snowflakes to Investments:

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

Redeemed $26 cash back on Citi card.

Redeemed $7 cash back on Visa dining/fuel card.

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

Savings (From my paycheck):

+$ 200 to investments
+$ 300 to cash (mid-term savings)
+$ 900 to IRAs

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

+$1,300 to cash
-1,000 London Hotel
- 140 passport expenses
- 100 wireless router (issues with old one)

In addition, we pulled $600 from mid-term savings to cover the rest of the hotel.

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We've already tapped out our regular vacation budget. We had no plans whatsoever to fly anywhere for the foreseeable future. I still really think we will revert to our modest vacation budget (future years). Knocking out Europe with $2,600 hotel/airfare was just too good to pass up. We could have paid less, but were willing to splurge on the unexpectedly affordable hotels. We didn't even look at anything with less than 5-star reviews.

Our short-term savings is pretty weak right now. We usually vacation in the fall. & we only prepaid the hotel because of the favorable exchange rate. (I decided to hedge my bets on "most favorable exchange rate in 30 years"). Anyway, usually we build up more before we spend down, but I expect the timing to just work out a little differently this year. It doesn't really matter. It will all even out by the end of the year.

The rest of our London expenses will come from savings, or MH's job. We've allocated about $500 from his job since we will save $500 by not traveling during his work season. Credit card rewards should cover most of our tours.