August 1st State of the Frugal Union

So where have I been the last month? Everywhere it seems. I traveled for work for our annual user’s conference and while it’s lots of fun, there’s a lot of prep work that goes into it and this year it was 2000 miles across the country. I had a great time, but I’m really really glad that it’s done.

As far as saving money (or not) as the case may be, it was not a great month and we’re headed into some very very expensive months ahead- Sept.1 our annual car insurance bill is due. Yes, we could split it up, but we get a discount for paying in full and then we don’t have to worry about it for another year. If any of you are the children of service members we save a LOT of money by going through USAA for our home and auto insurance.

In addition to our car insurance bill (which we’ve saved money for so that’s good), we also will be staring down the barrel of an almost 9 thousand dollar preschool/toddler school bill. We’ve been very very lucky in the childcare department and have had my parents and in laws babysit from the very beginning, but they’re an aging population and it is becoming more and more apparent that the days of 9-5 babysitting are coming to an end. It had already been planned that Frugal kid #2 would be going to pre-k4 in the fall 3 days a week, but her pre-k program also happens to offer a toddler program so we’ll be sending frugal kid #3 2 days a week as well. Do we have 9 thousand dollars? No, but it’s billed monthly and we’ll be working lots of weekends to make it work. We are insanely lucky that up until the preschool years we haven’t had to pay for any child care at all, so here we are.

Alright so down to the depressing numbers-

1. Frugal house- $202,700
2. Frugal Student Loans- $161,000
3. Frugal Private Student Loan- $2,400
4. Frugal Car 1- PAID OFF WOO HOO!!
5. Frugal Car 2- $12,333
6. Frugal Credit Cards Total- $41,900

That is an increase of 3,369 which is a direct result of the amount of time we lost when our hours unexpectedly got cut and the unexpected increase in our propane bill. SUCH a bummer, but the good news is that we’ve been back and able to work for the last few weekends and silver lining is that we’re still close to 40 thousand dollars less in debt than we were when we started this journey. I’m really really hoping we’ll be back on track next month. Next month the plan is to pay off the private student loan which will free up $200 a month and then we’ll attack the credit card debt like crazy people.

That’s all for me! How are you all doing?