With $10 To Spare!

We are trying to save as much money as possible so we can buy a house.  I'm also trying to prove that we can handle higher payments.  My goal for the month is to see if we can put everything I make in savings and only live on my husband's income.

As soon as I made this goal, my car door handle broke, but then I went to a forum that talks about Mazda MPV's and these very helpful guys said it was only $12 to buy the part on Ebay and then it was an easy fix.  I was thinking that I would ruin my door panel trying to get into it, but it really is easy!  Turns out now the part is $8.23 with free shipping.  The part would cost about $75 from the dealership.  I'm looking forward to being able to get out of my van without climbing to the other side or rolling down my window to grab the handle from the outside.

My husband needs new tires for his truck soon, so that is another issue.  He's setting money aside specifically for that issue.  It's a big truck, so it has big everything.  It will be over $1,000 to replace those tires.

Payday is tomorrow and I forced myself not to use any of the money I made at the beginning of this month.  Once rent cleared, that would leave us with $10, which left me feeling extremely on edge all day, wondering if anything else would go through that we forgot about, but we did it!  I remember the days when we could get down to $5 or less in our account as every payday approached.  One time we had 75 cents left.

I'm hoping to find some especially awesome grocery deals this month and am shooting for dinners that cost $10 or less each.  Maybe my kids can help!  They will be happy not to eat quesadillas again tomorrow.

Price Per Unit

Sweet #2 wanted to buy me a treat at the store tonight.  He counted up his change and had a little over $3 and was hoping to buy me a small thing of ice cream.  There were some tiny ones on sale that fit his budget, but there were also bigger ones on sale.  So I showed him how to look at the price per unit on the tags.  The small ones were over $2 per pint.  The larger ice cream on sale was $1 per pint.  I told him I would make up the difference.  I was also very proud of him because when I gave him money for his field trip to eat at Dairy Queen, he only got a burger and a mini blizzard instead of a full meal.  He asked, "Didn't I budget well?"

On Valentine's Day, I gave him a coupon good for a night of doing a puzzle with me and we finally got around to shopping for a puzzle tonight.  Months ago we did a large and confusing 550 piece puzzle that we didn't especially enjoy looking at.  He chose a cute deer one that's 300 pieces.  So we'll watch a movie while we work on it.  During Christmas break, we stayed up until 3am working on a puzzle!  It was crazy.  I don't plan on staying up that late tonight.

We also bought 16 oz. boxes of penne for $1 each, so that was a great deal.  A large container of strawberries was $1.98 and I thought that was for the one pound container.  Although we technically have money right now, I am forcing myself to budget on just my husband's pay and see if we can stick everything I make in savings.