This past weekend I went to play BINGO with my mom and my sister. Truth be told, my sister and I are not on very good terms right now (families are complicated!) and I didn’t really want to go. However, I was invited as a sort of olive branch, so I went. I didn’t know about this at the beginning of the month, so I didn’t budget for it, but I keep a little purse that we throw “extra” money into once in a while so I took $75 out of that to go play BINGO. (We buy little treats or pay for small things out of the purse.)

When I got there, my mom and sister were already seated and had purchased our BINGO cards. My mom treated for both my sister and me, so I ended up playing for “free”. I have never gone to play BINGO before and didn’t know how expensive it is or how expensive it can get if you add all the extras. It was $45 to play the straight BINGO cards. Then there was a $25 pack for special games, plus you had to buy some $1 ticket each, so $71 for each of us. As we played, they sold lots of extra games and cards that we didn’t buy but were apparently big business!

The pots were huge for each game… $500. I still can’t believe it, but I BINGOed! Twice! The first BINGO I won was split 3 ways so I got $167. The next time I won… it was just me! I won $500! I ended up winning a total of $667!

I tried to pay my mom back, but she wouldn’t let me. She allowed me to buy her a $2 candy bar. I bought dinner there to the tune of $5 and I donated $10 back to the high school we were playing at. I went home with $650!

The money has already been divvied up and put in different envelopes for different things. I treated myself to a new pair of shoes that have been in my Amazon cart for 5 weeks that I was saving up to purchase; that was $95. We are going to a Christmas fair next month (we go every year) and I was going to budget for it in our November budget but used this unexpected money instead. That was another $180. We have some super expensive purchases coming up to help our kids, so $160 went into our “kids” envelope. $15 went into our household envelope as the holidays always get so expensive and the remaining $100 is going towards our debt.

I still can’t believe I won… twice at that! This money could not have come at a better time. It helped with our budgeting for many different purchases we have coming up in the near future; and it will actually make our November budget so much easier to make!

In some ways, I feel like I should have sent all my winnings towards our debt but I think this will work better for us in the long run.