Fiance and I looked at some expenses we will have this year that are not monthly, just one time/once a year expenses. This is what we have

Surgery: $4,500.00
Recovery time from work: $5,500.00
College Books - Spring term: $100.00
Dress Shopping: $300.00
Cousins baby shower gift: $20.00
Sisters baby shower: $400.00
Sisters baby shower gift: $200.00
Retreat for marriage prep: $360.00
Roof: $1,500.00
Trip out of town for cousins bachelorette party: $200.00
Daughters birthday: $200.00
Fiance's vehicle registration: $200.00
Wedding gift to friends: $50.00
Lincoln trip for cousins wedding: $300.00
Wedding gift to cousin: $50.00
Sons birthday party: $250.00
Vacation: $500.00
My vehicle registration: $200.00
Christmas: $500.00
My Roth IRA: $5,500.00
Fiance's Roth IRA: $5,500.00

WOW! That's $26,330.00!! So much stuff going on this year! And I guess we decided to wait on gutters until we do siding, which will hopefully be next year!

I said I wanted to purchase my college books for this semester last weekend, but I will do it today. Hopefully it comes in under that $100.00!

2014 Goals

Monthly savings = $500.00/month: $6,000.00
Cash flow fiance’s shoulder surgery: $4,500.00
Cash flow fiance’s time off for surgery: $5,500.00
New roof: $2,000.00
Gutters: $1,500.00
Sons college savings: $715.00
Daughters college savings: $1,815.00
Sons personal savings: $315.66
Encourage daughter to do 2 chores every day she is with us
Have my three youngest siblings over for 1 chore/week
Get married!
Read a book to my son every other day
Read book to daughter every day we have her
Max out retirements
Graduate with my Associate's Degree!

2013 Review

Fully funded the emergency fund: $12,000.00
Got engaged on 3/30/13
Paid cash for fiancé to buy a pick up: $3,000.00
Started spend/save/give with daughter
Had our healthy baby boy!
Cash flowed my maternity leave: $1,500.00
Fully funded my Roth IRA: $5,500.00
Savings balance: $1,776.91 ($100.00 minimum balance)
Paid my car off!
Daughter’s savings: $40.00 (this is just a guess)
Son’s savings: $115.00
College for daughter: $1,515.00
College for son: $415.00
Got through two more college classes

Our son started sitting this last Saturday, he got his first tooth on the 17th, and has been saying “Dadda” since the 21st. They grow so fast and are so fun!

We got our daughter for Christmas on Friday, so we opened gifts with them on Saturday. Had Christmas with fiance’s family on Sunday. We also had our first marriage prep class last night. We are Catholic and have to take classes before we can get married in the Catholic Church.

This morning, my sister had her ultrasound to find out if it was a boy or girl. It’s a BOY!!!! Eeeek! I’m soooo excited to be an aunt and for my son to have a little cousin. 

What our family received for Christmas:
Me – $100.00 from soon to be mother-in-law, $200.00 from soon to be father-in-law, gift certificate to tan and a gift certificate to dye my hair from my parents, a cute new pair of black boots, and some bath and body works stuff.

Fiance - $100.00 from his mom, $200.00 from his dad, minutes for his phone from my parents (he uses Straighttalk), and meat injector for cooking his meat.

Daughter – $50.00 and 2 silver coins from her grandparents, and lots of toys from everybody else.

Son – $50.00 and 4 silver coins from his grandparents, a bunch of toys from everybody else, and $100.00 from his great aunt (my aunt) to his college fund through his GradSave account for his first Christmas.

This is the amount my son has received for his first 6 months:
His savings account = $115.66
His GradSave account = $265.00
Plus the 4 silver dollars
I think he’s had a good year!

I won’t know my status on my goals until tomorrow after payday.

We hope that everyone had a wonderful and blessed Christmas! This was our sons first Christmas and he got spoiled! One more Christmas on Sunday.

Have a great rest of the year everybody!

Me: Saw in our local paper yesterday that I graduated from Central Community College on December 5th. I was definitely not not aware of this! I called and I graduated with my diploma, but not with my actual degree. I guess that's something!


The kids: I looked at GradSave accounts today and my mom and step-dad contributed $100 to each child today!

Total contributed to daughter through GradSave: $115
Total contributed to son through GradSave: $165

My brothers are 5 and 7. We are going to get together tonight and make spend/save/give jars and a chore chart. I figured this would be okay since our son is little yet and we only have daughter every other weekend.

They are expected to clean a room and help at home without pay. So to introduce them to money, they will be able to come to my house a couple days a week and do chores.

We will see how it goes! :-)

I usually spend cash for as many things as I can. I save all of the change to pay daughter for her chores and then anything above that I put into my 6 month-old sons piggy bank(s). Well, his bank(s) were full so I deposited into my savings account that I don't really use and it earns a little bit of interest. The balance on that account is $65.66!

And then I splurged a little bit. I knew that Dave Ramsey was coming out with a new book that he and his daughter wrote, it comes out April, 2014. I saw on their facebook page that they were letting people pre-purchase it and then you get the Financial Peace Junior now and the book "Smart Money Smart Kids" in April. That was $35.00. So I'm waiting for Financial Peace Junior that we will use with our daughter. I probably didn't get much of a deal, but I was going back and forth on whether or not to purchase Financial Peace Junior because I really want it. So, I got it!

I have had a bit of a spending problem lately. Ugh! I think it's because it's end of the year/Christmas and I'm stressing out over getting my college classes done.

I would like to thank everyone for their input on my last post!

Gave son two tablets and after a little swaying, he is asleep and I got some homework done!!!! I have 24 days to turn in my homework and like 52 assignments left to do/turn in.. Ouch!

In regards to my college and graduating next semester, my advisor emailed me today and said "I'm sure we can find a way to work this out". She said that she'll talk to her supervisor and to give her a few days! I will follow up with her in a week or so if I don't hear anything before then.

Our son has been awfully grumpy in the evenings lately. He normally goes to sleep pretty easy at night, but the last two nights have been a different story.. It's making it very difficult to get any homework done (I have a lot to do before the semester is over, which is December 13th). Guess I will be getting up at 5:00 a.m.

My college advisor told me that after this semester I have three classes to take and that one of those classes is offered every semester and the other two will only be offered Spring of 2014. I went to sign up for those classes when it came time to register and they are not being offered next semester. I am mad!! That would put graduation off a year (those classes are only offered Spring semester when they are offered). I'm trying to be nice because it is not my intention to get my advisor in trouble, but I do expect them to do whatever they can to help me graduate next Spring. UGH!!!!!

Anyway, the weekend was pretty productive. Fiance and I both got some laundry done (even some folding and putting away!), he cleaned the kitchen, and made supper Saturday, I made lunch Saturday and supper Sunday, got some shopping done, went to Church, went to his Grandma's place to have lunch with her on Sunday, watched our Huskers lose, and watched some football on Sunday also.. AND I got a little homework done.

While shopping this weekend, we had daughter look at some toys and show us things she would want for Christmas. While looking, she found a cheap book ($3.00) that she really wanted. Fiance asked me if we should just get it for her for that night. I told him no, and that we really need to quit just buying her things and have her purchase extra items that she wants with the money that she earns and gets to put in her "Spend" jar. We did that and she was pretty excited that she got to take her own money and purchase something. I think she felt like a big girl. When she got home and put the change back in her money jar I think she realized that there wasn't much there now, but she sure is proud of that book! We'll see what happens when she wants to purchase a more expensive item and has to take some time to earn and save up money.

Fiance is working overtime Monday - Thursday I guess to come up with his portion of the Christmas budget. Yuck! I guess if he can do that then I should definitely make an effort to get up early to get my homework done.

On my way home tonight I decided to stop and get a drink ($1.92) which I knew I really shouldn't spend money on anyway and was really second guessing it by the time I got to the window to pay. A boy that looked to be 3 or so years younger than me came up and said (with a smile) "I've got it, just pull up to the second window". I'm not sure if he was doing something nice or what, but I got my drink for free!!

Well, it's back to bed for me for a few hours! Hope everyone has a great Tuesday!

Fiance got a raise of $0.52, plus a $200.00-something bonus last week!!

And sons gradsave account has been set up for less than a month and now has $50.00 from Grandma! He just turned 4 months old yesterday. It has already been very exciting watching him grow.. smiling, laughing, cooing, rolling over, eating some rice cereal.. I just love him!! :-)

We had a great weekend! We got our daughter started on doing chores and she LOVED it! We figure it's a good time to start them on chores now when they enjoy it and maybe they'll just be used to it as they get older. She made $1.50 between Saturday and today. We also got a leak under the sink fixed and we all pitched in and got the house picked up - still have laundry to do!

And I sat our son in the highchair on Saturday while the rest of us were cleaning and set his toy on his tray for something to look at and he actually grabbed it all on his own!

We had a wonderful weekend and hope everyone else did as well! Have a productive week, everyone!

I have been a change saver since I was a waitress. Now when I spend cash for items, I round the total to the nearest dollar and just save the change. While I was pregnant I saved up my change to put towards my sons college fund every month. I wasn’t able to save the full $150.00 (save $25.00/month), but did save about $100.00 of it. Was able to fund the last $50.00 by selling my old prom dress!

For the last two months I have just been putting most of it in my son’s piggy bank. Now that we are going to be letting my fiancé’s daughter earn a little money, the first $3.00 that I save every two weeks will be put aside for her when she completes a “chore” and then I will probably just throw the rest in my son’s piggy bank.

All pennies go into a cute monkey jar that my sister made for him. I have saved several dollars in change for my son the past two months, which has been put into a Humpty Dumpty piggy bank…that I can’t open! For his baptism, he got a Cross piggy bank with $13.00 in quarters in it and then a $20.00 bill from his grandparents. I have been putting the change/money in the piggy bank that I can actually open ever since he got it. So he already has $33+.

When we were getting ready to start the spend, save, give system with my fiancé’s daughter, I counted the money in her piggy bank just to see how much was there. There was about $28.00 in change and $6.00 in cash – more than I expected there to be. I took $6.00 out in change and split it up throughout the three jars. I did that just to help her get the concept as to what is going into the jars. Maybe I should take that out and put it back in her piggy bank so that she can be the first one to deposit money in those jars? Hmm..

So this is what we have…
the monkey jar – holds all of the pennies (I don’t get excited about pennies, but we will cash them in at the bank when it is full)
son’s Cross piggy bank – has about $33.00 in it
son’s Humpty Dumpty piggy bank – has a lot of quarters, but not sure how much ($5.00 give or take)
daughter has a big pink piggy bank – has $28.00 in it ($34.00 if I put that money back in it)
daughter has a small blue see through piggy bank – it’s pretty empty

What would you guys do with the piggy banks? They each have two. If I want to teach them to work for their money and do the save, spend, give system, I’m not sure that I should just put change in there and one day say “Here’s $200.00 for you!”

These are the options I have come up with so far:

1. Just throwing extra change in one piggy bank for each of them and see how much is in there someday when they become interested or request to go cash it in.
2. Use one piggy bank for extra money towards college and one towards their cars someday.

That’s really all I’ve come up with so far. I know you all probably think that I’m thinking into this a little much – I mean, it is just cents, but I have always been able to save a LOT of change. I LOVE change!

I feel like we are saving too little for their college, which is probably where the money should go. We are using a 529 to help fund their college and only contribute $25.00/month/child, but we don’t want to save too much. My fiance’s family has always been good about going to college and getting a degree – although he did not. He had a scholarship for academics to a University, but messed around too much. Most of my family on the other hand has not gotten college degrees – I would say 30% of us have not. I will completely encourage college, but also realize that college isn’t for everyone. Therefore, we will get taxed if we end up not using that money for college and taking it out, so we don’t want to save too much in case they end up not using it/needing it. They will also have to maintain a certain GPA if we are going to help pay for it.