Budget Update

Ok, we made it through our first week of our new budget. I think it will take another week to know if it's working well or not. The biggest pro was that each day we were saving about $2.00 in change from using cash vs debit. The girls loved helping save and they knew they were saving for the zoo. Once we saved enough for a membership we would go. They got excited everytime we gave them our change and I'm hoping that by involving them we can teach them to save and be patient when you want something vs getting everything instantly through credit. Another big pro was that we were forced to cook our meals at home. We ate out once...which we have $20 each week set aside for and then we ate out again with money we had saved. All in all that was a HUGE accomplishment for us. One of the problems we immediately ran into was that I spend money helping others. We initially used our $20 MISC on a neighbor who's children needed dinner after dad was brought to the hospital in an ambulance. I needed to go help with a RS dinner so we ordered them pizza. We were ok sacrificing our MISC money, but then there was another neighbor to help. We then decided that like gas and bills, any money spent to help others wouldn't come from our budget. We then replenished our MISC money. We were able to enjoy ourselves and not feel such a tight squeeze, all while cutting back on the spending.

After our trip to Vegas...that we budgeted out with cash...we had a few hundred left over. David asked me if he could have it so he could surprise me with something. After MUCH hesitation, I agreed. I hate spending money on myself at all but that's a lot! He surprised me a few days ago with a new iPod touch. I live on my iPod, and am actually doing this post from it! I had bought my iPod used from ksl and he wanted me to have a new better version. Awesome! I then sold my old one for pretty cheap for what it was, but I just wanted enough to get the invisashield on my new iPod and buy our zoo pass. I misjudged how much the invisashield cost, but we got all but $11 of our zoo pass. At the end of the week, we had enough for the difference for our zoo pass, enough for a trip to McDonalds after the zoo, a punch pass for the train/carousel at the zoo, and two $4 prizes from the zoo gift shop. We still put some money back in the jar and are saving toward a few camping trips.

This next week will be the real test because it's hard for us to avoid eating out, especially on days when David is at school until the evening. This week he has class EVERY night and it's even later than usual. Needless to say, I bet our MISC money AND our shopping money might be going toward take out. :)