I was very excited to be able to spend the day at Daytona Beach with my parents on Monday, August 17th. It was a great mini trip, which was followed by the next two days in Gainesville, where I finally got to hang out with Sharanya again! But I’ll get to that a smidge later.
After 14 weeks on the Thousand Dollar Weightloss Challenge with Alex, which we did recently end earlier than planned (it was supposed to go until the end of this month with October 1stas the final weigh in), I went from 136.8 pounds on May 10thto 115.8 on August 17th. That’s a 21 pound loss and a $300 win!!! In June and July I lost the required 5+ pounds, but Alex did not reach it, so she had to pay me $150 each time. Those were the rules she made up and I agreed to. Surprisingly, I think I look thinner in these recent pictures than from when I was 112 pounds for the Daytona Beach trip back in September 2018, probably because of doing frequent exercises and a lot of stepping this time. For a few days I got to even got to 25,000 steps! And I was at home all day!!
While in Daytona, my parents and I also had another great long talk about retirement, pension plans and social security (my current favorite thing to talk to my dad about- he helped me open a Roth IRA account in June), then we ran errands and had dinner at Olive Garden with a very nice waiter who was generous with the Alfredo and marinara sauces and the most chocolate mints I have seen in my life!! On Tuesday morning we had to be out of the room by 10am
My Sunday weight the other day was 115.0 and I’m still hoping to lose some more, with a goal of 107 by Christmas- or earlier if healthily possibly. **** Thank you to Michael for his amazing dad skills and generous husband skills, which make these mini vacations possible for me.
But I am also currently obsessed with talking about “The $500 Budget” that Michael and I started on August 28th. We started that day instead of waiting until September 1stsince it seemed easier to start on a payday. On average, according to my math, we will each get $300 in the middle of the month and $200 at the end of the month, but since we started at the end, we get $200 first. I call the amount we get our Personal Pay. This is of course what is left over from our paychecks after all the bills have been paid. Well not officially paid, but I over estimate how much they will cost. Like our last power bill was $308 (yiiiikes!But also normal for our house in the summer since we had to cut our 4 trees down and then our robot baby came home from the NICU two summers ago and she has to be plugged in all day). So for this next paycheck I over estimated it at $320 just in case.
For the Personal Pay we get that amount is to cover all of our own groceries (Michael and I eat very differently), any stuff we want for ourselves that we don’t need (extra clothes, scrapbook supplies, Star Wars items), plus toiletries –Michael likes the expensive Charmin toilet paper, while I have been getting mine from Dollar Tree for several years – and any bath supplies, as well as budgeting for birthdays and Christmas presents. This is easier for Michael because he doesn’t have any birthdays to budget for now, while I have to budget for my dad’s (September), Michael’s (October) and my mom’s (November). But I already have all of that planned out nicely thru the end of the year! I estimated a total of $350 for Christmas presents this year. I sure hope that is more than enough!!
I love talking about my budget because saving my own personal money and prioritizing it really well makes me feel so mature, and responsible, and proud. Plus the extra money we put into retirement (Roth IRA) and back into our regular savings account that we really need to build back up, hence starting a budget again. For the budget, I have Savings and Retirement listed as part of our bills. That’s the way to do it!!
I have been enjoying the YouTube videos by “Tara Budgets”. I don’t know what she looks like because the videos are only of her hands, money and iPad that she documents her numbers on, but it is soooo therapeutic watching and listening to her count all her money. She is a waitress so she handles almost all of her money in cash. We are not doing that though. We tried it in the past with grocery money, but then Michael wouldn’t remember to carry his cash or he would spend more than he had at the time (with the rest at home) and both reasons made him end up using the credit or debit card anyway. This time since we don’t have a “date fund” in the budget, we will use the cash back rewards we get from using the credit card. I’m not sure how much it will actually accrue. I was hoping for $40 or $50, but so far it’s only at $7. Haha, guess it will be a Wendy’s date! We’ll see where it is on September 30th.
I haven’t used the credit card yet for my groceries because I have a dumb rule on my debit account that says if I don’t swipe my card 8 times a month, I get charged a fee!! Laaaaame. And I checked, buying stuff online or paying my monthly amount for orphan sponsorship does not count as part of the 8 since I not physically swiping or inserting the chip for those times. But in the past 12 days I have only spent $35 on groceries anyway. Good for me! The other day I wanted to know how much of my Personal Pay I could save between now and the end of the year. I make money sheets ALL. THE. TIME. Or any other type of sheets or documents. It keeps me busy. I estimated more than I thought I would spend on groceries each paycheck, factored in what I would need to hold on to each month for presents, minus the $80 per month to sponsor Mikaella in the Philippines and Jose in Guatemala through Unbound. And I was still left with $450 by the end of the year to put into my own savings, or to use it to buy things I don’t need, which is actually not appealing to me right now. I have a couple cash envelopes like Tara, but definitely not as many since I am leaving most of my money in the bank. But it does make me feel rich getting back a crisp $10 or $20 bill every now and then to hoard away. Even if I get it all out over the next few months, put it in my three colorful envelopes, save it up, and then deposit it back into the bank later to pay with the credit card to get the cash back rewards. It may seem like a weird system, but that’s how I like to do it. My three envelopes are labeled:
1. Personal- new clothes or scrapbook supplies, books I most likely won’t read *eye roll* (I want to be the kind of person who reads books, especially non-fiction, but I’m more comfortably a watch-TV-all-day kind of person), favorite wet ink pens from Dollar Tree, etc.
2. Emma- for buying her cute rainbow or kitty shirts that she definitely doesn’t needmore of, we just need to do her laundry more often! Same with me not needing to buy new clothes.
3. Toiletries- which is more like fancy bath stuff/ relaxing face masks or pretty scented body scrubs. I should be good on toilet paper and tooth paste for a while. But I get a lot of that stuff for a buck anyway!
Anyway, the answer is $450. That is how much money I will be able to put into these envelopes or my personal savings. At a minimum. I over estimated on what I might spend on groceries, so if I stick to $50 or less per paycheck, then I could actually save $600 by the end of the year!! That money, which I have been saving since last summer, is so I can visit my best friend, Mia, in Denver next year, as well as for two future cruises: One that is unofficially planned for February 2022 with Mia, Lindsey, Tonia, and Sharanya. (Oh, never mind, Lindsey says she is terrified of being stuck on a boat and doesn’t want to be away from her kids, so she’s out!) And the second one being a Disney cruise with my mom and Lou. Aka, the robot baby/toddler! She definitely needs to be “battery powered” (off her ventilator full time) before then though, but that one is scheduled for at least 4 years away (November 2024, for my mom’s birthday).
When I was in Gainesville after the beach day, I went to lunch with my mom at Harvest Thyme and we talked about finances and she helped me create The $500 Budget. I was wanting to put twice as much money into retirement, but my mom said I need to calm down about that and how $400/month is a good amount. And without her advice, I would have been trying to make our personal budgets too tight again. We tried The $300 Budget before (with the cash as I mentioned above), but that didn’t last long. Hopefully this one is sustainable!! We really should have been sticking to a budget since Emma came home from the hospital and Michael was no longer able to work full time, as of July 2018, after my maternity leave was up. We used to make an extra $1,000 per month. Oh well. We have Lou now.
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