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Home > Archive: May, 2018

Archive for May, 2018

Soccer, Savings, Snowflakes...

May 15th, 2018 at 06:24 pm

Soccer:
F played in a tournament last weekend; there weren't enough teams entered, so our team had to play three boys teams (and one girls team). Not ideal, but they had fun. We did not eat out at all (brought our own food), but we did have dessert that D brought back from our favorite little cafe up the street (for mother's day and to celebrate the end of the tournament). We are going to another tournament this weekend; this one is out of town. I have the cooler ready to go, and meals planned. We'll eat out once. I just found out that the tournament is on turf rather than grass, and I'm not thrilled about that.

Savings:
We are going to swap petsitting with a woman at the karate dojo. She's watched our pets before. So - no cost!

Snowflakes:
I got a $50 payment from the gym, and I sold the birdcage for another $50. Should see another payment from this gym, and something from the other gym, too. Last month my total gym payments were $152.

Soccer Tournament Weekend

May 12th, 2018 at 05:03 pm

Soccer tournament weekend!

The car is all packed up... I made a spreadsheet for food, partly based on the recommendation of F's coaches on what the kids should eat and when. The games are at slightly weird times so we had to make the schedule. I just reminded her to drink another glass of water! Hydrate!

F is super excited!

I already vacuumed most of the house, cleaned the litterbox.

I also made a list of everything to bring to next week's tournament which is out of town - 5 1/2 hour car ride away!

And I looked at our "red" categories. I don't want to dip into our tax refund to pay those back to ourselves. I am shifting money around from other categories. The big one is the car repair category which is just at $700. This may take a few months to knock down.

Someone was supposed to come before 10 am to buy the birdcage we have for sale... it is 9:59, so I'm not hopeful. We leave at 10:30 for the soccer fields. I have other people who are interested, so I will email them if I have to!

Car Repair

May 9th, 2018 at 08:19 pm

This is the thing about having an older car, right? You know you'll have some repairs. We budget for car service, but it wasn't enough to cover a big service/repair for D's car and then a big service/repair for mine a month later.

We are short $729.41 after all the payments in the auto servicing category. We will pay this down with other categories and then pay it off little by little until it's gone. It makes me sick, but because our finances are in good shape, we can owe this money to ourselves rather than a credit card!!!

Here are the numbers:
- D's car - $1365.86
- D uber to get home from the car place $15.08 (Grrrr)
- My car - $876.77 (service plus rear brakes plus replace broken torque mount)
- My transportation home from the car place $ZERO (It was a beautiful 1.5 mile walk along the river trail most of the way, 26 mins, I'll leave to walk back and pick up my car at 2 pm)

So D has a more expensive car than mine. It was more expensive to buy, but he had the money from an Irish account that was his before we got married to buy it. It's now 11 years old, but it's going strong. What's interesting is how much it costs to OWN compared to my cheapo car (insurance, gas and repairs).

My car is not glamorous (Nissan Versa hatchback) but it will now be in good working order for our trips to AZ and CO for soccer tournaments.

Saving Money on Weekend Plans

May 6th, 2018 at 07:24 pm

Here's how we saved money this weekend:

- Instead of going out to dinner or lunch (which we do have a budget for), we went out for dessert last night! It was a beautiful night and we walked down Canyon Road afterward (like tourists! Ha!). We are saving up money to go out to dinner in Flagstaff when F has her soccer tournament.

- We are having a party for F's grade at school (50 kids and their families); but since I organized it, I decided to do a fun potluck picnic (the school is letting us use the campus) instead of meeting at a restaurant (which other classes have done). This way no one has to pay for meals out for their family (so no one is excluded) and we can play soccer and frisbee, etc. People forget that even though it's a foo-foo private school, not everyone is wealthy, and lots of kids get tuition assistance.

- F and I went to the Farmer's Market yesterday and wandered around looking at everything. We bought a chard plant and a zucchini plant for the garden. I hope they do well! I don't think we'll have another freeze...