August End of Month Review
August Goals:
- Spend Time with my Kids, Husband, & Dad
- Update Family/Personal Schedules
- Oil Change & Clean/Wash my Car
- Back-To-School Shopping & School Fees
- Repairs to my Husband’s Truck
- $500 towards Debt
- Cash Staycation/Vacation
- New Vacuum Cleaner
- Work on this Site
I have spent every weekend I have off with my husband, kids, and dad. I will be starting my new job soon and will not have weekends off anymore. I see my husband and dad most on the weekend. We have Sunday dinner at my Dad’s most weekends so I will miss seeing him so much. We have come up with a few options so that we can still see each other.
I updated our family and my personal schedules. We had some major schedule changes including my job change, two of our daughters’ school schedules, chore schedules, zone cleaning schedule, and other appointments/meetings. I have a large day planner I use to keep things straight. We are in good shape through the end of the year.
Michael changed my oil and I ran it through the car wash. I have not had time to properly clean out the inside. I did a quick tidy of the inside but it needs to be vacuumed and the windows need to be done. This may have to wait until after I start the new job and have more time to get caught up on things.
We paid the girls’ school fees and bought their school supplies. We had many of the needed school supplies on hand. We had overbought or had leftovers in the past. Some things we reused if they were in good shape. This helped to keep costs down. I buy Isabella a new backpack every year. Ivy reused hers for a couple years but needed a new one this year. She decided on a large JanSport from Target that she will use this year and next.
We only bought a few clothing items that the kids were in need of instead of a full back-to-school wardrobe. We used to spend $300+ a year per child before school restarted. We are trying to limit the amount we spend and also the amount of stuff we own. We went through their clothing first to see what they really needed. Ivy spent $30 on a pair of shoes and a pack of socks. She wants to get a couple pairs of leggings and a few pairs of jeans sometime this fall but didn’t need them right away. She still has a gift card to Forever 21 that her Grandma gave her for Christmas that she plans to use soon. Isabella needed more stuff because she is still growing. She spent $100 on a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of loafers, three tank tops for layering (2 white, 1 pink), a pair of olive green leggings, silver headband, blue headband, and a floral cat ear headband. Octavia spent $30 on a pair of tennis shoes and a pack of socks. We spent $160 total on clothing for the children this month.
Michael did the repairs to his truck and everything went fine.
We put $500 towards debt. We put it on the next credit card. It had a balance of $2119 before the $500 payment. When we started our debt free journey in January we owed $2303.10 on it. This is credit card #7! We have paid off six credit cards and a loan since January. I’m proud of the progress we have made but we really slowed down over summer. Hopefully, we can really step it up and finish this year strong.
We decided to do a staycation for our vacation this time. It turned out to be loads of fun and we saved a ton of money because we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. We still went out to eat for almost every meal and did some awesome day trips including the zoo, hiking, a park, and visiting family that is just far enough away to make it difficult to visit them often.
I bought my new vacuum cleaner and I love it! I ended up buying a shark that was on sale at Target.
I did a little work on the site but not as much as I wanted.
Unexpected costs: Michael’s work boots sprung a leak and had to be replaced this month. That set us back almost $150. That was an unexpected cost. We tried a cheaper pair last time and they obviously didn’t hold up well.
Are you working on any goals? I would like to hear about them!