Monday, January 27, 2014

No Spend Feb!

Hey Friends!


So even though I didn't come up with the concept of a no spend month and I'm honestly worried we'll even make it, I had so many of you ask what exactly we were doing so I thought I'd blog it. Besides I think it'll be fun to look back on after the end of the month...


No spend February is exactly as it sounds. Mike and I will not be spending any money outside of our regular bills. We're even taking it as far as not grocery shopping except for milk, eggs, and fresh veggies & fruits.


Since February has a few events that I just couldn't pass up I just planned accordingly. Bought my baby shower gift, my yoga rave ticket and extra wine to take to a V-day party. Hey I think just making it a month without buying a decoration for the house will be a big improvement!


The main reason we're doing this is because coming out of the holidays and buying a house was expensive! Although we've been planning for the move and paid for basically everything in cash, we killed our savings and with Mike's job we can't risk not having 3 month of bills saved up.


Besides home décor and the occasional eating out, our major money over spending comes from groceries. I love to cook and find stuff on pintrest that I just have to make that night so next comes a grocery trip even if I had food for dinner already! So I meal planned for a whole month!


Since I had to do the monthly meal plan for both our home and Mike in the trailer, our grocery budget is higher than if we were living together. I did the crock pot freezer meals again to stock up the trailer.


Here's the tried and approved freezer meals I've used before HERE!


Our goals:


- build savings back up
- pay off the little bit of credit card we used
- pay off home depot credit card (we got an extra 10% off our carpet for opening this)
- figure out a solid grocery budget & stick to it during upcoming months


There ya have it! Not that exciting but it'll be worth it to get a jump start back into our financial peace plan...

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Back.

We're Alive I swear. We're all happier and busier than ever!


Last blog... November?! eeek. Sorry friends life literally got away from me.


I have a million pictures to post and updates to add but as exciting as our holidays were I'll just sum it up as:


  • family filled
  • soooo much food
  • lots of Mike time! (he's been on basically 3 days on, 4 days off)
  • Thanksgiving with the McBride fam, I successfully baked my 1st homemade pie with homemade crust!
  • I learned to use my sewing machine and made pillows, haha.
  • We took Wesson down to the Lighting Ceremony. He loved the jeeps!
  • I went a pj party with my favorites from my yoga studio.
  • We found, bought and moved into our new house.
  • Wesson was hilarious on Christmas morning, too much fun.
  • I let some things break into my hard work of not letting things affect me as much, as a result I left my NSUJL position. I still 110% support NSUJL but its best for me and our family if I'm not in the middle of it. Being a part of a non profit is A TON of work filled with people who want to take it down. It was too much but I applaud my sisters for sticking it out. For now I needed to focus on building our little family up.
  • We went to bed at 10 on New Years.
  • I officially became a bandwagon Seahawks fan. As a result I almost had my first football heart attack...
  • Wesson is growing, growing, growing and is officially in the potty training process. eek!
  • Mike is in the middle of switching jobs, again.
  • I went to yoga and wine night.
  • Our child thinks he's a dog.
  • I deleted and got a new fb. fresh start.


So much else has been happening. From big things to small things we're taking each day at a time and smiling a long the ways.


Sorry for being MIA but I'm back and the chaos of moving has settled down.


We have big things coming up for 2014 but we'll be focusing on keeping life simple.


Love you all <3