I think every single month, I am tempted to start with mentioning how fast the month went by. I guess that is just part of life at this point.
Anyways, here in the Bee house, we’re saying another goodbye after a quick visit from my mama! Thank goodness for cheap airfare from our hometown to our duty station. Luckily, my parents visit every other month or so, which is amazing. When we lived in Hawaii, Eric didn’t go home for 3 years! (I am rather spoiled, and went home about every 6 months, but I know that is definitely not always the norm with military families, especially once the costs of plane tickets for children get added in.)
So our goals for April were:
- Reduce our grocery spending for the month.
- Keep positive on the house-hunting front.
- Save $1600 for retirement, or more if possible.
Let’s see how it went!
Winners
- We contributed a little less this month to our retirement accounts, but still met our goal! This month’s contributions totaled $1653.22, down from $1759.72 last month. That is okay! I had backpay last month, and this month was super normal for us and still awesome contribution wise.
- We spent under $2oo on gas for the month! Coming in a $194.64, it was nice to actually meet our goal.
- Groceries came in at $439.97. This isn’t perfect, but it’s almost $170 less than March. Paired with that, our total restaurant spending was under $300. That means we spent less than $800 on food for the month, which hasn’t happened since December when I was in the hospital for 8 days and my mom did all the grocery shopping for us.
Losers
- My fun money will always be in this category. I consistently spend all of my fun money and all of my “savings.” I am really hoping to work on this for the future. I need to return some things, and stop shopping!
- We spent a bit too much in our “date night” category. If you saw the Facebook post, Saturday was the Submarine Birthday Ball in our area to celebrate the 117th birthday of the United States Submarine Force. Tickets, drinks, and Ubers were rather expensive, but it was definitely a great time!
Overall, it was a pretty good month! We may have spent a little more in some places than we wanted to, but I am still feeling like our trajectory is upwards. And with the little end of month market rally, our retirement accounts increased $2,569 this month (and we only put in $1653 of that, so over $900 in market gains for a month).
Our goals for May:
- Save over $1700 toward retirement accounts. This should be easy; Eric gets submarine pay back this month!
- Be excited about buying a house! It will be good!
- Try a few new recipes, and make the easy ones often. Don’t give yourself a reason to go out to eat.
