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Archive for August, 2021

Three Months

August 31st, 2021 at 06:15 pm

Wow! How has it been three months since I blogged? I had no idea it had been so long until I looked at the date of my last entry!

Things have been slowly chugging along. We have made barely a dent in our debt over the summer, but it hasn't increased, so that's a small win.

As I am a teacher, I had summer off, which was really nice. However, I only had my whole family together for 10 days all summer, 5 of which both of the kids were recovering from having their wisdom teeth pulled. The Boy has learned that he loves farming, so he spent 6 weeks of his summer on my cousin's farm in Oregon. The Daughter attended church camp and a couple of dance conventions and was just generally busy, busy, busy!

We are back to school now, in person, which I love! We have to wear masks all day but it is 100% worth it to have students back in the classroom!

My own children are a junior and senior this year, so I expect the next couple of years to be very busy and expensive! We have already paid for The Boy's senior portraits, letterman jacket, yearbook, prom ticket down payment and ASB card. For the Girl we have paid for powderpuff football, yearbook, prom ticket down payment and ASB card too. Historically we only put $100 a month into our "school" envelope, but in July we started allotting $200 per month, and I'm not sure that's going to be enough. With what we've shelled out, we are already behind and have had to juggle money around to finance everything. I'm hoping we will have a small reprieve and will be able to build our sinking fund back up a bit before we need to shell out more money for things school related.

Two weeks ago I took 9 rings into a jeweler to have them fixed. Some were mine, some were The Girl's, and some were my mom's. Some needed to be sized, some just needed to be soldered together, and some required major repairs like replacing missing stones. That was an expensive trip! $1500 to get them all fixed, but we have been saving money towards getting them all fixed and it actually cost less than we expected and had saved for, so a small win!

The Girl has been invited to be in two weddings in the next year. Two of her older cousins are getting married. As she is only 16, we are paying for all the wedding related expenses.  So far we have bought the bridesmaid dresses for both weddings. We have not yet gotten shoes or jewelry needed. We will have to pay for hair and makeup on the days of the events. (Too bad she isn't older as then she would need to pay for these expenses herself!) We are going to make her purchase a wedding gift for each couple with her own money. (We will also buy a wedding gift from us!)

I think that is most of our major financial updates from over the summer... Hopefully I won't wait 3 months to write again!