Unusual Spending for March

I know this post is a little late, but better late than never.  I still like to see our unusual spending in black and white, it makes it much easier to plan for.

March is always an interesting month for us. Most of our dance payments for The Girl are taken care of, we’ve already paid for The Boy’s baseball, but it’s also The Husband’s birthday month, and this year he turns 40! In addition, we have a foreign exchange student coming to live with us for a week and with that we are hosting a potluck at our house welcoming all the kids from Japan. We will be holding family birthday parties at our house this month. Lastly we have two car registrations due for the month of March.

We have a lot going on this month!

The Husband turns 40 this month! I can’t believe it! I want to get him a nice gift, actually two nice gifts. One that he asked for and one that I picked out that I know he will love! I had my brother-in-law help with the gift my husband requested as it is a woodworking tool and I know absolutely nothing about those! The other one is a total secret (and probably won’t be able to get gotten until the summer time… did you follow that?).

Along with his actual birthday, we are hosting family birthday parties at my house. I’m going to go easy for food and get lasagna, salad, and French bread… all pre-made and from Costco. It’s more expensive to buy pre-made, but the convenience is worth it. I’m hoping to pay for most of this out of my grocery budget for March. I planned most of my March meals using food we already had so I don’t need to buy too much this month so I’m hoping to skate by on the budget side of things here.

At the end of this month, we are hosting a foreign exchange student from Japan for just under a week. She has already said she’s excited to try lobster and beef…eek! Holy expensive tastes Batman! We also plan to take her to Simply Fondue for dinner one night and would like to take her to Mexican food as that isn’t really a “thing” in Japan. We also want to take her to a zoo or aquarium while she is here. As part of having a foreign exchange student, we are hosting a potluck for everyone involved at our house. We of course only need to supply one dish, but we will also need plates, cups, napkins, serving utensils, etc. (And our house needs to be super cleaned… but I guess that’s another story for another day.)

We actually have two car registrations due in the month of March. The Husband’s daily driver and mine. We paid The Husband’s out of our annual expenses budget and will be covering mine using the cushion in our checking account. Somehow over the last few months, we have gained a $300+ cushion in our checking account. In one sense, I think that’s awesome, but in another, that money is not working for us; and as we are in debt, we need our money to be working for us. I only discovered the extent of the cushion recently when I was reconciling my bank balance.

March definitely has some expensive things going on, and we haven’t really planned out how to budget for them. But being aware of them is half the battle.

Going forward, I hope to write my unusual spending posts and then create the budget to match; in that way, we will account for all unexpected/unusual spending in our budget.