Money Matters
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Monday Accountability Thread
1. How MM was your weekend?
2. Any progress towards your goals?
3. What's for dinner tonight?
Re: Monday Accountability Thread
2. H received a nice holiday bonus so we put $250 towards our washer/dryer purchase and $750 toward his student loan.
3. Leftover baked chicken and Parmesan spaghetti squash.
ETA: We did spend about $600 on various gift cards over the weekend, which puts us at about 80% of the way done with Christmas shopping (we have $1,200 budgeted). Anyone have a final suggestion for my brother - a 30 year old single guy who likes movies and video games? I've already got him $120 in Netflix giftcards but would like to spend $100-$130 more...
- $39 at the farm supply store for a dog leash and collar and a couple of Christmas presents. $190 at the grocery store for our weekly stuff and for some of the food for Christmas dinner (we're hosting.) $29 to fill my gas tank, and $29 for snacks and a bottle of wine to take to my boss' house for a Christmas party.
2. Any progress towards your goals?
- None this week.
3. What's for dinner tonight?
- Not sure, it's not my night. H will get home first tonight, so he's responsible for dinner : )
Thank you, thank you! Loot Crate is perfect. He lives in a rural area and doesn't like to come to the city, so this will be great. He's so hard to shop for - makes plenty of money that he doesn't spend (and not a dime of debt!), doesn't car about cars or clothes, and still lives at home with my mom.
1. Pretty good overall. I returned some stuff I had ordered online to the mall so +$40. I also failed to find anything in my size on that trip to the mall so I didn't spend the money I expected to on new pants. Spent about $45 on a gas fill up, $25 on pizza takeout Friday night and that's it. We didn't grocery shop since we'll be travelling for the holidays and I want to use up everything we have before we leave. It'll be a week of creative meals lol.
2. Once our paychecks post tomorrow I'll deposit $3000 to our house down payment savings account which will put us about 120% over our goal so we're happy about that. Thinking about opening up another investment account or at least a CD with the extra so that we can make a little more on it before hopefully spending on home-related items next year. We'll make more progress next month when we both get our year end bonuses from work and our raises kick in, plus our Christmas shopping sprees will be paid off.
3. Tonight will probably be veggie burgers or leftover pizza for us. Something in the fridge or freezer...
1. How MM was your weekend?
Eh, I can't even remember because I had another long weekend LOL. Whatever we may have bought was paid for in cash, but I don't think we did many errands at all. We have enough to pay for right now!! See below.
I ran a ton of errands and spent $312 total.
H made an 8 hour drive to go pick up a car with his friend. They spent $221 between gas, food, and a hotel.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)

Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
1. How MM was your weekend?
Really good! Friday spent $9 on BK for H and I. We had coupons so it came out cheap. Saturday, spent $3.31 at Walgreens for a drink and power bar while doing my p/t job hotel pic run.
$12.31 for the whole weekend. We spent the rest of Sat. at home and all day Sun.
1.Ours started out great but ended horribly. We have DD's birthday party next Saturday and we did a Costco run for it. While there we found all 10 seasons of the original TMNT on DVD. It was spendy but Amazon couldn't beat the price. So overall, $200 at Costco, $4 dollar store, $4 JC Penny (DD x'mas dress for next year for $2.45!), and some Christmas presents at Kohl's ($25) and Bed Bath and Beyond ($25). I used coupons everywhere but the dollar store and Costco.
2. I only have one credit card left with a balance on it! Last month I paid off the last of my $20,000 in credit card debt and have snowballed that payment into the one for this card. It should be gone by June or July!
3. Chicken wings(hooters copy cat recipe) and fries! At least that is the plan right now, we will see how I feel when we actually get home tonight!
Side note: I work at a non-profit as a DV advocate. We do adopt a family every year. This year an organization adopted 35 families but only brought in gifts for 10 of them. It is so hard not to take on one of the families. I still haven't decided if I will rearrange my budget and make it up next month, or not. This has been weighing heavily on me all day. I got adopted several times as a kid, sometimes they were the only gifts I got too.
Good! $50 at Target. That's it.
2. Any progress towards your goals?
Christmas shopping is almost complete and we're doing really good staying on budget!
3. What's for dinner tonight?
Chicken on spring mix salad greens.
2. Nothing really tangible yet. It wasn't a pay week, so no extra into our e fund. I did work on a new budget for January/February assuming we do sell the house and holy crap is it going to seem like we have a ton of $ all of a sudden. It was leaner than our normal budget because we still want to save extra for our e fund, but I had $1200 extra for us to save in a normal month! (With insurance/taxes/etc the house is costing us about $5-600 a month. Vacant property insurance is expensive!!)
3. Probably left over Mexican food for me, and a salad for dh. Exciting dinner plans
Good. Friday we went to a free play and actually walked to it!
Sat we did volunteer work and played games with friends. I used ingredients in the house to make cookies for the game night.
Sunday was our first dinner out this month. My MOH gave us a gift card for our anniversary to a local craft beer pub that we really like. We had some burgers and a winter beer sampler. After the gift card total was only $17 and we had a really nice evening out.
$28 gas and $15 groceries
When H was at our local Chick-fil-A buying our cow calendar he noticed a flyer for a special today. We will go in for dinner tonight and then take our receipt back in January and get everything on it for free during that visit.