Tidbits

In my unusual expenses for March, I talked about needing to buy baseball stuff for The Boy and I’m happy to report, I didn’t have to buy nearly as much as I thought I would. His team is going with grey pants, navy socks, and a navy belt; all things he had from his team last year. I was, and am, so happy! He also needed a new bat as he continues to grow like a week. The Husband redeemed some Amazon gift cards and we only had to pay a little more than $3 out of pocket for his bat. The total price was just over $100. Because of the gift cards, I feel like it was free. I know it wasn’t but, psychologically, it feels like it was. The only thing we had to pay for out of pocket were his baseball cleats. We bought those yesterday at a cost of $59.39 after tax, not too bad. I budgeted money for “kids activities” in our next pay period, so I charged the cleats, but will pay that amount when The Husband’s paycheck comes through on Friday.

I’m also so happy that it looks like we are going to stay within our grocery budget this pay period; we haven’t done that in quite a while. As of right now, we have $6 of grocery money left. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but having anything left means we stayed in budget. Yesterday, we went grocery shopping, after first meal planning, and bought everything we will need for the rest of the week. We bought fruits and vegetables, several boxes of tea, and the ingredients we needed to complete our meals. And I still had $6 left over! I also started buying the food for the family party we are hosting at the end of the month. I bought a bag of meatballs and some parmesan cheese. I still have a lot to buy, but I padded my grocery money this month to compensate, so I should be good!

I took my kids down to Universal Studios this weekend, (we have annual passes and we had a $100 hotel credit). The exciting tidbit here, is that even with driving all the way down to Universal Studios and back, I will also stay within my gas budget for this pay period. I actually charged my gas, but as soon as I got home, I took that amount of money out of my gas envelope and plopped it in a jar with a post-it note to remind me it goes directly towards the credit card. I still have $40 in the gas envelope. I will need to fill up this week as my tank is nearly empty so I won’t carry any gas money over, however, The Husband might. For the foreseeable future, leftover gas money will go into the “car repair” envelope until it’s up to about $1000, then I will reassess and decide if I want to change how I allocate the leftover gas money.

Nothing too earth shattering here, but a few things I wanted to blog about since major victories are made up of minor victories.