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Well, technically I bought a steer after saving up for him for a year.  And he fills up 2/3 of my ginormous garage chest freezer (the biggest on the market), and 1/3 of my mini chest freezer in the house.  The rest of the mini chest freezer has what is left of the last beef we bought, mostly a grocery bag of hamburger, then round steaks, round roasts, bottom round, top round, eye of round, can you tell I don't like round cuts?  I also found some sirloin tip roasts...
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So a little catch up has been a couple weeks or so...I think our tax saga is finally over...a little update on the last 3 phone calls...so I had to amend our taxes so I called them and asked how to do it over the phone and they told me where to put the amounts in...so we did that and sent them in...didn't hear anything for a couple months so I called to find out what was going on as we owed (I paid what we thought we owed them..this is for 2021) and this nice older lady was looking...
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Well, it was fun while it lasted! This month we lost roughly half of the giant net worth gain we had last month. I can't really complain too much since we haven't been putting away for retirement or paying down extra debt principal.
Our financial life feels like it's slowly getting on track; I have two steady clients for my freelance business, though I probably need one or two more to bring in the level of income I'm going to want once my severance runs out in the next few weeks....
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I just started year 18 of teaching! I can’t believe it. I teach in Northern California at a continuation high school, and most days I love it. Year 18 means I get a step raise. It is not a traditional merit based rase, it is purely based on years of service. If I have done my math correctly, it looks like I will be taking home an additional $300 per month.
Most times when I get any sort of raise, we increase the amount I contribute to my 403b, but not this time. As we are...
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Housing
769


Utilities
199


Medical/Health
179


Groceries
96


Clothing
90


Furn/Equip/Décor
89


Fees & Services
85


Eating Out/Takeout
53


Household Supplies
41


Phone
38


Gas
37


Entertainment
31


Laundry
20


Gifts/Charity
6


Car
5


Fares/Parking
2



Grand Total                 1740
Variables           ...
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Income Total: $1353.66


      $1000 Recurring monthly retirement account distribution  


      $300 Swagbucks and My Points earnings (cash out to PayPal)
      $53.66 Credit Card Cash Back Rewards


       


Total Spending: $1282.67
 
Total Savings: $70.99


 Fixed Expenses: Verizon (cable): $104.72
Verizon...
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August has been an expensive month for car repairs! For reference, I drive a 20 year old car that has been “new to me” for about 10 years. It was purchased in cash for somewhere around $7-8000 at that time.  With inflation, an online calculator says 8K would be around $10,400 today (which is crazy!). This has been a very reliable car which now has about 180,000 miles on it. I have not had to put much into the car over the years beyond routine maintenance.
 
This...
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Wow I did not realize I have not posted since April.
Just plugging along paying down debt and saving for retirement.
My car is paid off.  Just had the brakes fixed.  So happy I was able to cover the amount with my car repair/replacement fund.  
Going to have a short stacation in September  It will just be nice to have a few days away from work.
 
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Murphy decided to pay us a visit. UGH!
We are strongly considering moving (I will do a full post on that eventually), and during the course of packing some stuff up, I walked across an area of carpet and it felt a little damp. I thought I was imagining things and I didn’t really think much of it. About 10 minutes later, I walked across the area again and it again felt damp to me. Just slightly damp, but damp. This time, I had my husband come check if it felt damp to him…...
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In February, inspired by another blog I read, I decided to start saving all my $1 for an emergency fund. The blog I was influenced by saves all of her $5 bills, but I don’t feel like we are in a financial position to take so much out of our daily budgets right now, but maybe someday.
As we primarily use cash, a fair amount of $1 bills go through our hands. We take them and put them in a separate envelope marked “emergency”. Each time we get to $100 in singles,...
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Debts
Mortgage -$113,890.54 (-$238.56)Land Loan -$9,353.60 (-$189.99)Hospital Bill -$741.41 (-$75)
Savings
Roth IRAs +$26,908 (-$984)401K +$53,076 (-$1,235)Emergency Fund +$6,498 (+$413)Animal Fund +$772 (+$503)Car Fund +$20 (-$0)HSA +$303 (-$181)
Overall: -$980.45
Overall down from the market. But this was actually a great month for us. Besides adding to the above funds I paid for a $600 medical bill, $800 lodging for a future vacation, have the loan payment for next month...
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Not much to say about the stock market. I hit my high July 31st & it's been down since then. Oh well.
Looks like my cash surplus will be double what it was at the end of last year so I'm starting to think what I should do with it. Fully fund my IRA in January or pad my home down payment? I could do both actually.
I am looking forward to Napa Valley & Lake Tahoe. Flights & hotel have been booked. I booked the rental car yesterday. Now just to reserve the wine train.
For...
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MH is working on a very low budget horror film.  
I have to back up and say that I don't think we saw a low budget movie short (at the festivals) made for less than $50K.  For a 10 minute movie.   For a full length movie with a lot of effects, this movie needs a $50K minimum budget.  This is extremely low budget in the grand scheme of things.  The stretch goal is a $90K budget.  Which would mean bigger actors and more effects.
MH met the...
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Just when I need to conserve cash, here comes the wheel tax. I had to pay it; it's due September 1, and I had forgotten about it. I thought I had paid it when I got the new car in February, but apparently I just transferred the information and didn't pay anything. Well, now it's done. Only $45, thanks to my senior benefit.
Wheel tax is like a resident sticker. It allows me to park on the street without getting ticketed.
That leaves me with only $14 for the rest of the month!...
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Each day, each week, is a bit different than the last...love that! Variety is the spice of life and all that.
Today I totally procrastinated about getting started on my next story assignment.
Earlier this summer, I acquired a pair of old garden urns from my Buy Nothing group.

I imagined I might not get around to rejuvenating them til next spring, but somehow I found some spare time and wound up having a great experience repainting them using some very inexpensive acrylic paint...
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It's been a long time since I’ve written about it, but we use the Dave Ramsey envelope method for budgeting. We don’t follow Dave religiously, but we do like the envelope method for our sinking funds and it seems to work pretty well for us. Twice a month I go to the bank and take out anywhere from $800 - $1500 to fill our envelopes. This works for us and helps us to keep from charging on our credit cards and increasing our debt.
We have several different envelopes,...
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I bought a few groceries, which brought my spendable moolah down to $61. Variables are at 92%.
Today I'm driving an hour away to get a diagnostic test. Doctor's orders, I must do it. Driving to this faraway location was the only way I could get an appointment quickly. I am not sure how well insurance will cover this; I may have some out-of-pocket expense. This won't affect my variables; it will be a "big ticket" item for sure.
It's very, very hot today, and I regret having to...
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Although I've been busy, I really haven't had anything of consequence to actually report. It has been a bit expensive lately. 
We recently went for our dental check ups. DH had a tooth extracted and I had a crown as well as another tooth having a filling replaced. We have no dental insurance so it was all out of pocket expenses. Ouch. But any of the dental insurance available to us isn't really cost effective and we like our dentist and don't want to change.
My laptop was...
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The last couple of years have been very expensive for us and made it difficult to pay down our debt by much. I’m not complaining, just explaining. We didn’t decrease our debt by much and we were able to cashflow a lot of expenses! Going forward, things should change.
We have had two “senior years” in a row. Our son graduated in 2022 and our daughter graduated in 2023. Senior year is expensive. There are all the normal school expenses that everybody has:...
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Received $122 bank interest 
Received $240 I Bond interest 
 
Snowflakes to Investments:
--Redeemed $30 credit card rewards (cash back) from our grocery card 
--Redeemed $75 cash back on Citi card
--Redeemed $7 cash back on dining out/gas card 
 
Other Snowflakes to Investments:
+ $8 Savings from Target Red Card (grocery purchases)
 
TOTAL: $120 Snowflakes to Investments
 
401k Contributions/Match:
+$795
 
Snowball to...
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