Financial Updates

Big R's Birthday Spending

I don't know what happened to my post about Big R's birthday plans but we had a whole day planned of fun adventures for her.  Here's what I planned to spend vs. what I actually spent:

Dinner: Marco's pizza, salad, cake and ice cream: Planned $18, Spent $15
Hair Cut: Planned $7.99, Spent $15 with tip (I thought they had a $7.99 sale but apparently they didn't)
Jewelry Making: Planned $10, Spent $18 (Big R has some expensive tastes in beads.  She picked out some that were over a dollar that I told her she couldn't use.  Still a lot of the beads were over $.50 each.  I did talk her in to using some $.05 beads to help offset the more expensive ones.)
Mani Pedi: Planned $35 + tip, Spent $30 including tip.  I was charged a lot less because Big R didn't like the massaging or trimming cuticles and didn't want that done.

Planned $81, Spent $78

Grocery Shopping

I put off going to the grocery store for about 4 days longer than I planned to.  When I finally went I spent $204.  Not all of it was on groceries though.  We needed a new scale and Aldi had some for $10 plus a few other things we needed.  So we have $20 left in the food budget to last us a little over a week.  Our freezer, refrigerator and cupboards are stuffed so that should be plenty.  I'm going to try to not spend the $20 but we'll see.

Other Expenses

• Life Insurance Bill: $864, I had only saved $850 so I had to use some of our extra money towards this bill
• School Supplies Shopping for Big R: So far I spent about $10 at the dollar store and we have about half of the supplies she needs.
• Online Class: $119, I had $125 out of last pay check to add to savings, but I'm going to use it for this class instead and the extra $6 will just go towards Big R's school supplies.
• Cord Blood Registry Bill: $125. We banked the girls' cord blood when they were born.  On each of their birthdays we are charged an $125 annual storage fee.  I always set the money aside out of our tax return for this so I'm ready for it when it's charged.
• Electric Bill: Our bill kept getting higher and higher so I took us off of Budget for AEP Energy, but we are still on budget for the part of the bill from AEP Ohio.  Our last month we had budget for both, it was $244.  This month without it, the bill was only $170.  I'm going to start budgeting $200 a month and whatever is left after paying the bill will go to savings for our winter bills.