Life never seems to get any less crazy around here, so I thought I’d take a little bit of time to update on how we’re doing and what’s in the works. Not entirely sure if I’ll ever get back into a regular cadence, but I sure hope so!
So everyone is back in school, that includes me and frugal husband. Frugal husband is paying a grand total of $0 for his classes (woot!) and it appears that mine will cost about $145 out of pocket each ( amazing for graduate level courses in a state known for having crazy expensive college). I was notified that none of my graduate courses from my previous coursework would count because I didn’t take them in the last 5 years which was a super bummer. I still don’t really know what to do, I can stay where I am and complete an extra 5 courses that I wasn’t planning on taking, or pay a much higher amount to go to my alma mater. It’s the difference between 10 courses or 15 courses, which when you’re a full time working Mom to 3 kids is a pretty gigantic difference. I’m still mulling over my options, my company does offer some tuition assistance, but not enough to make it a no brainer. Stay tuned on that one.
On the money front, it’s been an expensive month of some planned expenses and some very unplanned expenses. We’re headed in to major cash outlay season, starting with our life insurance ( term life insurance to the tune of $750), quickly following the life insurance is paying for 6 cords of wood for next year ($1200), I know, it’s a fine how do you do when you’ve about had it with needing to have fires in the wood stove, the whole process of stacking etc. starts all over again. After the wood and the life insurance our fridge up and died last week. It was 7 years old and on the borderline based on consumer reports recommendations as to whether we should pay someone to come and look. We’ve already paid someone to come out and look at it in the past because it just seemed to run and run and run and the repair man couldn’t figure it out. We decided just to replace it rather than pay more money for a fridge that is probably costing us an arm and a leg in energy costs, so $1500 later we have a new refrigerator coming next week. We did use our lowes card which allowed us to get 0% interest for 18 months, we’ll probably pay for it a bit faster than we 18 months, but we’ll take advantage of the longer timeline to pay down some other debts first.
With all of the money going out the door faster than it seems we can make it, we’re going to have to be extra mindful in the coming weeks/months, I’ll be traveling for work and a wedding in May, and we have a family reunion and more work travel in July so even if we wanted to work our per diem jobs it’ll be tough. We’re also looking at a $3,000 propane bill in July, and $1500 for car insurance in September (we pay once a year), not to mention pre-school payments starting back up again (phew back to only one child in preschool next year).
So that’s were we are right now, keeping our heads down and hoping for the best! I’m really hoping to do a state of the union for May 1st- stay tuned!
