February Double challenge update, week 2, part 1

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   Time for another update on Carla's double challenge .It's hard to believe that it's already half of the month! So far this month has been pretty good for us (other than a $300 bigger medical bill). Medical bills are not part of my challenge but it's kind of sad that we'll have to dig into our savings to pay this off.

   Anyway, that is what our week 2 looks like:

Feb 8th-shopped at Walmart, spent $58.88, out of the food budget, bought mostly food for the Birthday party we had on Sunday.

Feb 9th- no spend day

Feb 10th- spent $13.53 at Smiths (food) and ordered a book from fab.com about canning and preserving. I had a $15 credit with them, and I've been thinking of buying the book for a while. So when they had a book sale, I jumped on it.I ended up only paying for shipping,$4.95. And I still have a few dollars left with them. That also came from a misc. budget. If you are interested, this is the book I got. Sounds really cool! I did quite a bit of canning last year but I'm always on a look out for some new recipes, and I plan to can a LOT in summer.

Feb 11th-spent $4.88 at Reams (food) and $4.20 at a Dollar store (misc. budget) 


Feb 12th-spent $6 on parking downtown. We went out with my parents and an old friend of ours (my parents paid the bill, and they wouldn't take No for an answer!!).We only have a small car, so we had to take our 18-year old Saturn. We hardly ever use. The mechanic told us that it only has a few months left in it, and I'm honestly always concerned when Hubby drives it anywhere. But we couldn't all fit in our tiny Corolla, that's why we had to take both cars and pay for two parking spots. We really need a minivan!!

Feb 13th- no spend


Feb14th- no spend

So these are our numbers so far for this month:

Food- $118.94 (have $161.06 left to spend this month)- I actually did a little bit of shopping this morning but it will go towards the new week. I'm really happy with this number but the thing is-my parents got quite a bit of food for all of us while they were staying with us. I didn't really expect that. So the low number is not necessarily our personal achievement.
Misc.- $21.15 (have $98.85 left to spend this month)- this number I'm ecstatic about!! I don't  think we ever had  a month  in our married life when we spent so little on miscellaneous stuff! I hope, we can stay very low for the rest of the month.
Eating out- $10.67 (have $49.33 left to spend this month)-again this number is so low because we didn't pay for our outings ourselves. We went out 3 times last week but one of them was our date(different budget), one time my Father-in-law took us all out, and another time my parents took us out for my Birthday to a Brazilian place. We were thinking of going out with my parents to grab some Chinese but I doubt it's gonna happen before they leave.
Date- $17.77. -still have $12.33 that will roll over to the next month unless we decide to do something else in February.

Also we paid our mortgage and our light bills this week. Our mortgage bill was $7 less than last month and last year, so it's an additional  $7 towards the trampoline. And our light bill was a whooping $17 less than what I budgeted for. More on this tomorrow but it means that we have $95 saved for a trampoline out of our goal of $100. I can't  believe how close we are!! Wohoo!!

 I do have some updates on a de-cluttering part of the challenge but I will post it later tonight( kids demand lunch right now :)  As for a mini-challenge, I wrote a letter to my friend in  Russia. She and her husband are going through a rough patch right now but I really hope and pray that they will be able to overcome all of their challenges and misunderstandings, and stay together. I was going to write this letter anyway and give it to my parents, so the mini-challenge this week was just perfect for me! :)