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March Financial Accountability Week 1! (3/1-3/7)


Runningmom80
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Tracking non-essential purchases and groceries:

 

 

3/1 $0

3/2 $45 Dh stocked up on various specialty light bulbs at Home Depot.

3/3 $75 groceries, $19 wine

3/4 $0

3/5 $8 groceries

3/6 $0 but...........dh upgraded my phone to an iPhone 4S :party: (free upgrade but monthly fee will be higher due to data) so I will have to go shopping for a good case

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3/1 -- $64 birthday dinner

3/2 -- $232 mostly groceries ($20 was supplies for school, $50ish was household/toiletries)

3/3 -- $59 ear piercing (my 11 yo dd's birthday present), $56 clothes for DH, $15 medicine, $5 coffee/hot chocolate at church, $20 American girl braces (my 7 yo is getting braces next week -- I splurged and purchased the braces stickers/headgear/retainer kit for her doll), $50 waterpik (for aforementioned new braces), $22 picture frames

3/4 -- $38 gas

3/5 -- $0 snowstorm so we're staying home & saving money!

3/6 -- $45 membership to Sam's Club (groupon deal that includes a $20 gift card and almost $20 in food coupons)

 

I hesitated on this membership to Sam's because DH can't go in there for only what is on the list. He comes home with all sorts of things, but cat litter is so much cheaper there. I'll just have to make sure that I go alone.

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Today is going to be ugly - dh has a dental appointment for a broken tooth and some other stuff. We do have dental insurance, but it only pays 80% and based on what he needs done, I fear that even 20% is going to be a pretty big number.

 

 

Oh, I feel for you! My ds broke a tooth about a week after all my kids had just been for dental check-ups. My dental spending that month was shocking! :eek: And we pay it out-of-pocket. :svengo:

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Today was just the look-see at the dentist, who did file down the broken tooth a bit. The actual tooth repair is scheduled for later this month and will cost us around $150. However, while he was in town ($8.00 to get there and back), dh bought new wipers for his car ($13.89) and fast food lunch for us ($13.00). I really appreciated the gesture, but wouldn't have spend the $ on lunch if it had been me.

 

Someone tell me to get my act together and sell all my old homeschool curriculum. I could probably pay for the tooth if I did that!

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3/7 $10 dining out.

 

I have good financial news. I am going to become a co-owner in our acupuncture clinic where I have been working for almost 3 years! This means more work, more responsibility and more money. I don't know how I am going to swing it, but I really pray we can just put the money towards savings. DH and I are going to have a sit down with the boys about what this means for them (that they need to understand that I won't be there ALL the time for them, that they need to be responsible, etc.) It's going to be interesting.

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3/1 -- $64 birthday dinner

3/2 -- $232 mostly groceries ($20 was supplies for school, $50ish was household/toiletries)

3/3 -- $59 ear piercing (my 11 yo dd's birthday present), $56 clothes for DH, $15 medicine, $5 coffee/hot chocolate at church, $20 American girl braces (my 7 yo is getting braces next week -- I splurged and purchased the braces stickers/headgear/retainer kit for her doll), $50 waterpik (for aforementioned new braces), $22 picture frames

3/4 -- $38 gas

3/5 -- $0 snowstorm so we're staying home & saving money!

3/6 -- $45 membership to Sam's Club (groupon deal that includes a $20 gift card and almost $20 in food coupons)

3/7 -- $29 eating out (DH convinced me, not that it took much)

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Does anyone here have current or past experience with the plan outlined in Your Money or Your Life? I read the book probably 8 or 9 years ago and am re-reading it now. I have tracked expenses and income since then, but I haven't done the values questions and chart plotting part. (Well, I do assess values in my head, but not on paper.) I was considering reinstating the values and the wall chart. I feel reluctance mostly because I know, objectively, our expenses overall will be increasing for the next several years. With two teenagers in the house now, costs associated with education, automobiles and college will increase no matter how frugal I am. I fear it will be discouraging. In the book, he continually shows how people who complete the chart trend downward with expenses and upward with income, but the examples are always or mostly single people with no children or grown children. I hate to sound cynical, but clearly, without children I could live very inexpensively.

 

What do you think? Is anybody here doing the plan from that book specifically? Should I just forget about doing the chart and stick with my categorized tabulations per month?

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