July Wrap-up & August Goals

Our camping trip has delayed this post significantly, but I was able to have a quick conversation with DH this morning so I could go ahead and post our monthly update.

First July Goal: Groceries under $200. I was at $202.73 for July - that's about as close as I've ever been to the goal so Yahoo for me!

Second July Goal: Finish the Spring Cleaning. I didn't quite manage this, but I am wrapping up now that we're less than a month from the new baby.

Third July Goal: List 5 things on Ebay or Craig's List. I didn't do this . . . again. Seriously I don't know why I keep making it a goal except I have all this junk I want to unload. I did participate in my Aunt's garage sale and got rid of lots of stuff, but not any of the stuff that I keep intended to try to sell on eBay.

Fourth July Goal: Use my dryer less than 5 times. Amazingly I didn't use my dryer even once until the last day of the month. We were getting ready to go camping and I just couldn't wait for three loads to dry on the line (like cloth diapers, DH's work shirts that get 'ironed' in the dryer, and a pile of play clothes for the DDs). Yay for great weather most of the month!

Last July Goal: Post about chickens, clotheslines, and start gifting series. I didn't post about chickens, but I did get the "how to" post done about a clothesline and did start the Resourceful Gifting Series.

Now that DH is back to full-time work we are re-prioritizing our financial goals. We were so blessed not to accumulate any credit card debt during our year of super-tight finances, but we have delayed several things including car maintenance that we are trying to slowly catch up on.

We are big Dave Ramsey fans so we also want to get rid of all our debt, the first goal being to pay off our Timeshare which we were inexperienced enough to buy new instead of on the secondary market. Anyway we were able to pay off 17% of that debt in July and are eager to pay off more in August! I'll keep you posted.

We didn't end up buying Suburban tires in July because when had the oil changed the guys there said we were only in the 'yellow' zone for replacement and not the 'red' zone which means the tires would need to be replaced. We decided to put off the tires until Septemer and instead we got the muffler replaced on the Suburban which was also a need. As it turns out we did need new tires as you'll see in my camping post in a couple of days. I guess the 'red' zone really means "Danger: Get New Tires Yesterday" and the 'yellow' zone means "Get New Tires."

Goals for August include:

• $200 Groceries
• Finish Spring Cleaning or get out of denial that I'm even doing it anymore
• Continue Resourceful Gifting series & post about chickens already
• Pay at least another 15% on the Timeshare debt (hopefully much more!)
• Be diligent in prayer for our new baby and the family's adjustment to a 4th child.

Thanks for reading & caring at all how we're doing!

Katie