It's that time again already. I tell you time fly before you know it, its summer time.
Anyway, the month of March was fantastic. We were able to throw our son's his 4th year birthday party. We rented a Palace Jumping place for $315 (max 26 kids) for toddlers. Some of his classmates from school was able to attend. The rest were friends, relatives, and coworkers. We had about 24 kids attended the party and about 30 adults. We originally budgeted for $700.00 but we were able to spend less than $600.00. My mom paid for the cake and all the preps. We saved just over $100 bucks from everything else which included food. My wife's best friend made her fantastic spaghetti.
We also did some landscaping project for our front yard and side corner of our house. We live in the corner lot so we had bunch of weeds and stuff growing that we wanted to eliminate and clear things out. We put new rocks and new plants. We originally budgeted for $2K but only spent exactly $1K for the entire project. Again, we did our due diligence and invited lots of bidders to come. Thats how we were able to save.
I should also mention. The $10 a day limit for lunches seems to work really well for me. For 3 weeks this month, I brought my lunch from home which saved me about $200 from our budget. I also brewed my coffee each morning. I'd say I saved about $300 just on coffee alone this year and by staying away from Starbucks. That explain Starbucks losing its appeal lately. Huh go figure!
With all those extra expenses for March, we still were able to saved $1015 towards the EF, which met our goal again for third straight months. Again, majority of those savings came from less eating out, brewing my coffee, more cooking at home, and less DEBIT card activities. So far this year, we have increased our EF to $3015.
End of April
March 28th, 2008 at 02:20 am
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We're pretty careful in our spending habit. We have zero debt on credit cards, except mortgage and 1 car loan payment. We pay cash for most of the items that we buy even groceries. More importantly, we don't spend on big items. When we do, we try to budget for it first, if not we pay it off as quickly as possible.
March 29th, 2008 at 03:29 pm 1206804588
$600 seems like a lot to me, but I live in a much lower COLA and w/just one full time income we don't make a lot of money. I just never wanted to set up expectations for my kids that I might not be able to keep up. Sounds like you've got your head wrapped around what is feasible for you in your area and w/your income!
Great job on getting your yard work done at half the cost budgeted!!! AWESOME!!