For the first time in a long time, it seems like July passed at a normal pace. In fact, it seemed like it was a slower month than usual.
Anyways, financially, it wasn’t a horrible month for us. It wasn’t spectacular. We spent a lot of money trying to make this house a home, and we’re not even close to done yet. We just began a deck renovation and we’ve knocked a hole in our dining room ceiling in an attempt to find a leak… and we still can’t find it.
We’re learning a lot of skills as new homeowners and plan to try to do things ourselves as much as possible, but a lot of our projects are just outside of our skillset. So far we have paid for quite a bit of serious electrical work (upgrading a panel and running electricity to new places), a full central air install (I mean… we might have been able to do this maybe, but it was so worth paying a professional), and hardwood floor refinishing. I know a lot of people DIY hardwood floors, but they were done at a totally fair price (about $3 per sq. ft.) and they look absolutely amazing, and we had a portion of the floor replaced from water damage caused by aforementioned mystery leak.
Anyways… Our budget recap.
As usual: we spent about a bajillion dollars more on restaurants than we should have. In real numbers, we literally spent over $850 on restaurants in July. What. The. Eff. I ate $850. And it wasn’t even that delicious!
We had a pretty big hit getting a lot of things fixed unexpectedly on Eric’s truck. We obviously save for it, but it still isn’t a fun expense. But I still ate more at restaurants than I spent on fixing his truck… so…
And we even went over on groceries by about $100! What?! We didn’t even eat at home!?
So this brings us to:
Uber Frugal August
As inspired by Frugalwoods, we’re having an uber frugal month. Any restaurant spending must be covered by our fun money (which always covers my Panera habit, but I am eating breakfasts at home), and we’re attempting to eat all of our meals at home, embracing the leftover and using our Keurig to its fullest potential (with those reusable K-Cups because why not be even more frugal).
Of course, this meant Eric called me to go to lunch today at B-Dubs with his coworkers, so he paid out of his fun money, but we made a huge pot of jambalaya for dinner and I am looking forward to sticking to this. The weekends will bring the biggest challenge, but I look forward to seeing how much our budget can benefit. I don’t necessarily think I can be as frugal and never go out to eat (or even go out only 3x a year), but I would love to see us reduce our habit down to even 2-4x per month.
And here, I love this blog. I get to have an entire internet to be accountable to (and myself when I inevitably re-read my posts and cringe in a few months). So I will be keeping updates on the Facebook page. I am hoping we can get back into the great habit of eating our meals at home. I am also hoping to get back into the habit of actually writing blog posts!
Here’s to a great summer!
Edit on August 2nd. I cannot believe I didn’t even mention how much we saved. I was so caught up in being upset with how much we spent, I completely forgot to recognize how much we saved.
In July, we contributed $1829.90 to our retirement savings accounts. Feeling pretty awesome about this. I remember when contributing $1600 a month was a milestone for us. Every little bit counts! August should be great for this too, as Eric is re-enlisting and receives a moderate bonus for doing so, and I have TSP contributions from his bonus set to 25%. Can’t wait!
