Tuesday, June 2, 2015

pain in your budget

i have been working on the nursery.
we have a few things hung on the walls,
but i have more to go.
i need to go buy baskets for the changing table,
add the decals and buy a few more
odds and ins.
once that is done, i promise to share pictures.
we actually turned in some of our credit card points
and got a $350 visa gift card, which means we have
spent $0 out of pocket so far.
that is a budget i can get behind.
 
speaking of budget,
 and without getting too much into money,
i'm trying the old "buy everything with cash" idea.
over the last several years we put e v e r y t h i n g
on a credit card and then pay it off monthly.
its a nice way to rack up points and float your money.
hello, we paid for one of our vacations with credit card points.
score.
but with all the projects we've done on the house,
i wanted to make sure we were still building our savings
and not getting lost in our new house and new baby.
its too easy to overspend.
since we've lived here (february)
we haven't saved anything.
and that kills me.
ronnie and i look around and wonder,
where did it all go?!?
as a stay-at-home mom + part time worker,
i don't want to feel like i need to go back to full time.
especially with another baby on the way. 
a full-time career is at least another year or two away.
and right now, we throw all our extra money into projects,
but i was sure we could do both work on the house and save.
so i made us a budget, took out the cash and tried my
hardest to make sure ronnie stuck to it.
(he overshot his beer fund by a mile and we're renegotiating
some of our numbers for this month.)
but guess what...
month one, we paid off last months credit card bill and
we saved almost $1400.
we were still able to work on the house 
projects we wanted and make a trip to illinois.
i call that success.
its kind of a pain to budget and really think about what
you're spending, but it does make me happy to know
that i can stay home with my babies without stressing out
over every dollar.
 
i'll leave that to ronnie.
 
 
 
anyone have any more useful tips on how
to save extra funds?  the cash idea seems to be working,
but i'm interested in what others do.
i know my bff cut off her cable to save $$$,
but that just ain't my bag, baby.


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