I was looking at our American Express account today and noticed that there was a new offer providing 10% off a cable or satellite bill. The offer is good through 1/31/2017. Limit on credits is $30. So I think the offer can be redeemed for more than one bill. I plan to use the American Express card for three months and will be able to redeem close to the $30 limit.

We just enrolled our daughter in her WWII Europe trip for this summer. I paid in full. I did charge it to our Southwest card, but we have the cash on hand. I will get some miles and a little extra purchase protections. The trip is 14 days and includes a lot for $4719. We did add on a side trip to Versailles for $100.

My daughter is going to pay for some of the additional spending money she will need to cover at least one meal a day, souvenirs and a few other extra side trips that may come up. She will also need to pay for her passport.

I now need to come up with a plan to make sure we pay ourselves back for the purchase. If I had signed up for the payment plan I would have been paying about $569 a month, which is probably doable.

I had to laugh last night when we left the meeting about the trip because I was talking about the cost. He said, isn't there some card you can apply for and get $500 in rewards?! I guess he has come to see that is a way to bring in some cash. And it probably wouldn't hurt to look around and see if any offers come up.

I mentioned a few months ago using an Amex offer for Boxed.com to buy a lot of toilet paper. Specifically, 114 double rolls!!

My husband and I each have a different Amex card account, so I decided to dip in again with his card. The offer is to spend $50 and receive a $20 credit. Shipping is free with the Amex card (or at least some promo code I found last time that is related). I bought to 36 count double rolls of toilet paper and added in two large bottles of sriracha sauce as I'm having trouble finding it at the commissary and my husband uses it on everything!

My total after a $2 rewards credit was $50.76. I will owe $30.76 after the Amex offer. This purchase will also get us closer to redeeming $25 in rewards on the Amex card as well.

Now I'm stocked up even more on toilet paper. And for what it's worth we haven't even used half of the 114 rolls I purchased last time.

If you want to try Boxed.com my referral offer is

A little more spending today, primarily snacks and alcohol. Neither were needs. But we are down to $166 left through payday on Saturday.

I've already worked on October's budget. I've allocated the money for rent, flute lessons, water and electricity. I've funded money for groceries, fuel, entertainment and spending money among others. The latter categories were funded to the tune of $1,125.And that is for about half the month.

The good news is I added $730 to savings.

Turns out we may end up letting our daughter go to Europe this summer for a World War II trip. We knew about the trip last year, but hesitated signing up and then had some concerns about the safety of international travel. So we thought the option to go was gone. Turns out it isn't. Still need to get more details, but she was told it is $4600 for a 14 day trip plus spending money and the cost of a passport.

I posted a few days ago that we had $300 left in our budget until payday on October 1. We do have other cash, but we are saving that money! This is the money we can spend if needed.

Today my husband filled his truck with fuel for $34.45. I made a $25 donation to a charity. I paid the university for a book my daughter charged to her account for $28.73. I also asked my husband to pick up coffee at the commissary on post. He spent $23.38, which must be for more than coffee, but he's not home yet so not sure on that charge.

We are down to $193 and change left our budget for the next two days. I expect a couple more small expenses, but nothing major.

My daughter's flute lesson was cancelled so that will mean a credit of $25 on my account for next month. As a result of not driving to the lesson, it means I didn't get a chance to go into Kohl's looking for anything to buy with my $10 rewards coupon. So for now I have saved some money!

How much cash do you have left until your next payday? And when is your next payday?

Just five more days left in the month of September. The year is going by really fast!

We have just over $300 that was originally budgeted for the month of September expenses. If we can spend half of that amount or less I will be very pleased. I expect gas and maybe a couple personal needs expenses.

I will send the extra funds to savings!

On Saturday, a check arrived in the mail from our old electric company. It was a co-op so it was a return of capital credits in the amount of $19.07. I added that snowflake to our savings account.

I went through all of our accounts on YNAB today to make sure I had all of them reconciled. It was pretty easy since I had recently paid all of them down to zero! We really need to close some of our credit card accounts....as I'm really liking the idea of simplifying those.

I sent a payment to my sister by Bill Pay last week for a fundraiser her daughter was doing. I honestly didn't want the stuff, so let her girls pick candy, figuring it was a consumable and wouldn't add to the clutter, but would still support the school. This made me realize, I should use Bill Pay for our rent! I've been writing out the check and envelope and slapping a stamp on it every month for over a year. I was always so used to a mortgage payment being automatically deducted. It was nice! So I'm giving the landlord a heads up that the check may look different. I don't think there will be any issue, and now I know I won't forget, which almost happened this last month.

I use Bill Pay for our trash service, but all other bills are automatically paid from a credit card or checking account. What do you use Bill Pay for?

One of our kitties isn't feeling so well. GI imbalance the vet says. I did get my first visit free, but a test and meds cost me $80.92 today. I don't like that she isn't doing well or that I had to spend money, but that is how it goes. Will try to have this expense come from this pay period and avoid pulling what I put aside for savings a few days ago.

Yesterday was spendy. I bought some goodies to send in a care package and then mailed two packages. I wasn't exactly looking to spend more than $15 on the gifts, but ended up finding a few more items for another $15. Not a big deal really, and I don't have any regrets. It just all added up fast!

I sold an item on eBay. Look like I will net about $6. I almost gave up on that item even selling, so that was a nice surprise!

I redeemed some credit card rewards this week. I had enough points to redeem a $50 gift card to Target. It's on it's way in the mail. I also redeemed just under $7 from US Bank (which is 5% off our cell phone bill each month). I requested this as a statement credit. I also intend to redeem $17 from USAA on our credit card account. Turns out that is the total cost for our Netflix subscription and Ooma telephone for the month! I will redeem for a credit and save that money in our savings account.

I used a Staples gift card (a previous credit card reward) tonight to buy a ream of paper. The cost was $0 out of pocket, but the actual ream is $2.99 (after rebate). Did you know that Staples sells one ream of multipurpose paper (500 sheets) for $7.99? There is no way I would have paid that with out the $5 rebate. The rebate won't arrive for 6+ plus weeks. It comes in the form of a Visa Prepaid card. Essentially, I shift some of the Staples cash for Visa cash, which is a much better deal!

Yesterday we only spent $10 on three items (all needs) and today $0 out of pocket since I used the gift card to buy the paper. Tomorrow is payday!!

First of all, I paid tuition in full today! No loans. So happy with that. I honestly wasn't sure I could make it happen this year, but without trying it seemed to work out just fine.

The air conditioning on the upper level of our home has stopped working today. It's 83 degrees up there tonight. I wish we would have noticed earlier in the day. Now we have to wait until tomorrow to even get anything scheduled, and I fear that it won't be tomorrow that they come out. We sleep upstairs so it's not going to be pleasant. We do have a guest room on the lower level, so we (my husband and I or our daughter) could sleep downstairs. The only good news is the repair won't cost us anything since we are the renters!

Last Friday our Honda Odyssey notified us with a little light on the dashboard that the air pressure on one of the tires was low. We stopped by and filled it with more air for $1. (I remember when air was provided free!) Tonight I thought the light came on again. My husband was going to take it to get filled and the light wasn't on again...so maybe it's not a problem. I'm really not sure what light I actually saw then?! But for now, no repair needed.

I put in a sell order today, which will happen tomorrow because of the holiday. I'm selling shares of my daughter's Educational Savings account. We have been using the money primarily for housing, because the tuition portion is easy for us to pay out of pocket.

The housing portion for the fall semester is $5,641. I sold enough shares to cover $4750 worth of housing. The remaining $891 will come from our pocket. I likely can save that much this month anyway, so might as well apply it to that bill.

The other portion of tuition and fees (after scholarships) is $3,288. We are paying this out of pocket too. Our savings account has built up over the last several months, so not a big drain at all.

I've come to realize that not having any debt of our own, and thus any payments we are obligated to, helps so much in being able to pay for college out of pocket. I know people with two car payments which are easily in the $450 range each. If one could avoid those payments that is $900 a month one could apply to paying tuition...that's 10,800 a year!

We had been saving $2000 a year for our daughter in this Educational Savings account. One cannot contribute to them after the beneficiary turns 18. After those contributions stopped, I still saved the money. I haven't actually made it a line item in the budget, but I'm starting to think that I will so I can see the money available and set aside specifically for college.

I also noticed that we spend less on groceries when our daughter doesn't live with us. It's hard to tell exactly how much, maybe $50 a week or $200 a month. We give her $100 each month for miscellaneous expenses right now, so we may have another $100 we can set aside each month. There may be other impacts of expenses without her living here, such as a few dollars saved when we go out to eat, or pay admission to the movies.

The act of saving something every month for college all these years did add up. But continuing to save has definitely helped limit the burden of needing to take out loans as we enter year two of college. And wow, not having any car payments or other loans sure helps too!

If you are in the thinking about how to pay for college. I would definitely consider that they money can come from savings, student's income, current cash flow (at the time of college), scholarships and then loans if needed. The money doesn't have to all come from the same source!

I think I mentioned in a past post recently, that we had likely accumulated $1500 in snowflakes this year so far. I haven't kept exact track so that is a rough estimate. I could have been making a point to set it all specifically aside for college. So think side gigs along with the other sources I mentioned above.

I've already mentioned how my daughter needed to buy a specific dress online for her choir class. That was $85.50. It may need to be altered too, so that adds to the cost. She also spent $114 on art supplies for her two drawing classes. I reimbursed her for those expenses since I will be able to claim those as required supplies for classes with the American Opportunity Credit.

My high school daughter came home with the picture order form. I do always buy these, but buy the smallest package that will provide the grandparents and a few aunts a picture. With tax I paid $37. Next up, the yearbook. They go all out at this high school with colored and glossy pages. I think the advisor is probably doing a disservice by allowing the yearbook kids to pick all the bells and whistles. It only make the yearbook an option to fewer kids. We have always bought them, and I did ask if my daughter felt she needed it and the answer was yes. I paid $68 plus tax for the yearbook. And finally, she needs a new academy shirt for the engineering program they have at school. That is another $28. I did also pay the Junior class dues of $35 which go primarily towards prom. At least I'm almost positive I will not have prom expenses, as she isn't interested in going.

I realize some of these expenses are not required, so I'm definitely not complaining. It just amazing how much stuff they throw at you at the beginning of the year.

$43.70. That is how much we have left of our budget until payday on Thursday. Our checking account still has $8K in it, so we aren't broke!

I did spend about $25 today at Walmart. Not a fan, but it is close, so we end up there occasionally. I bought a large umbrella, package of pens, composition notebook, ant bait (ants in my kitchen...not a fan!!) and a soda.

I also wrote the first check to the school for $35. Each grade pays dues. They are higher for Juniors and Seniors because of prom. Dues were only $5 last year and I think all the students get a spirit t shirt with the money. My daughter doesn't plan to go to prom. It's just not her type of things. But we pay what we owe. She can't even get a locker assigned until she brings in the money!

My older daughter had to buy a specific dress for her choir class this year. Dress, plus scarf and shipping was $85!!! She will wear it three times. I did tell her she should ask around if anyone from a previous class had one to sell, but she either didn't OR couldn't find anyone her size. Maybe she can sell hers next semester. I do get to count it towards required class expenses when figuring our taxes, so that helps a little.

The plan is to make the next two days no spend days! I feel pretty confident we can do it.

We are in the midst of marching band season for my youngest daughter. Well, oldest daughter is also, but she's out of town. We pay $7 each to get into every football game we attend. Tonight we also bought food and drinks. We spent $8.50 on four beverages, nachos and a hotdog. It was hot! We may have been able to skip a couple beverages if the weather was cooler.

I did a little clothes spending yesterday. I need a few new pairs of panties. I have a favorite brand and style, and I don't buy them very frequently. I also browsed the clearance racks and found a pair of capris in my new size (yea, for weight loss). I bought them plus four pairs of panties for $30 at Kohl's. I did have a 30% off coupon so that helped quite a bit. I was willing to spend $30 on three pairs of underwear before I walked in, but I walked out with an extra pair and the capris for that amount. Very happy!

My husband is helping his friend move tomorrow. This is actually the couple that let him stay with them for three months in their apartment before the rest of us moved out here. They offered their space for free! We will always be grateful. We definitely want to help payback that generosity in any way we can.

We have $300 left until payday. I think we can make it!

I've sold a few more items on eBay. I netted less than $15, but that is money in and stuff out, so I'm happy. I have eight more items listed. I'm not sure they will all sell, but if they end without interest, then they will get donated.

I haven't had a Pinecone survey lately. Although, I know I've done some of the household questions. I decided to log on to their website. I found I had $3 that I could cash in. Nice surprise!

I'm transferring more money from our money market account to Navy Federal Credit Union. We had a certificate mature and they now have an offer of 2% for 20 months, up to $20,000. I decided that 2% is better than .95%, so I'm going to maximize the amount we can invest.

My daughter did get marching band changed to zero credit. The other one credit needs to stay as it is. She has 13 credits officially, we will pay about $3300 out of pocket, after scholarships for the tuition and fees. Total for books and supplies will be known shortly. She has to order a specific dress for choir, not sure yet on it's cost.

I took my daughter and a friend out for a day on the town. We ate lunch at Subway first where I spent about $20. Downtown we stopped into our local art council to see the current exhibit, however the exhibit was not open to the public. It would have been free to view.

The girls decided to paint pottery next door. It was military Monday so there was a 10% discount. Total cost was just over $23. We were there for about 1.5 hours. Their pottery will be ready next Tuesday afternoon.

And then after walking around getting hot going in and out of stores just to look, we needed ice cream. Unfortunately, we went to the most expensive ice cream place...Cold Stone Creamery. I spent $15 for the three of us to each have one small item off the menu. I wish I would have suggest a soft serve cone from McDonald's instead!

It was a good time. And a good way to end the summer vacation. School starts on Monday of next week.

My daughter is in marching band at her university. She has to enroll in this as a class. Last year she took it for credit. This year there is really no point in taking it for credit as only one time with marching band can count towards her degree. So we are saving over $700 since she is taking it for zero credit. Yes, it could count as an elective, if she did pay for it and take it for credit. And that $700 is for one credit hour at the non resident rate. She has a scholarship that covers about 10 hours at the non resident rate. We pay out of pocket for the amount over that currently.

My daughter is enrolled for 13 credits now that she changed marching band to zero credit. She thinks there is one other class that she may be able to switch to zero credit as well. She will get that all firmed up on Monday.

I'm thinking ahead. I know that yearbooks, school pictures, and class dues are all going to be coming up once school starts. Since we have been here one year, I know how this school works. The first year at a new school is like going in blind.

Here's what I'm aware of right now:

Class dues $35 (prom primarily, which my daughter won't even attend)
Yearbook $68 (goes up as the year progresses)
School Pictures $40 (not sure exactly, as packages vary)

We don't expect any other expenses from the school, but of course, that doesn't mean there won't be any.

If I ran a school, I might actually provide parents a list of possible expenses. Indicating which are required and which are completely optional. Many are optional.

We stopped at Staples last night and bought two new binders and two sturdy folders. The total was $19+, but I had gift cards so out of pocket cost was zero. I think Staples is VERY expensive compared to the discount stores. Binders shouldn't cost nearly $9 in my opinion.

Are you aware of what expenses you may have coming up from your child's school?

I made another small eBay sale yesterday. I probably only netted about $5, but that's fine. Item out, money in!

I've redeemed some rewards on credit cards recently. American Express for a $25 credit, which helped offset the charge for vitamins I bought my husband. I also redeemed just under $7 on our US Bank Visa to reduce our cell phone bill. I love the 5% cash back on cell phone bills!

My daughter left her rain jacket at home, along with several items for cooler fall days. I shipped them out yesterday, along with her bus pass, in a Large Flat Rate box. I paid $18.75. Ugh! I hope she didn't forget anything else!

It's been a calm week here so far with limited spending. I even tried to convince my daughter she may want a new shirt for picture day. She said no, she has something in her closet to wear. Turns out its the same shirt she wore last year, only in a different color! I guess that is okay. Her hair is shorter, so it will look different. She's a practical girl.

I guess I should have factored in school pictures to my budget this month. They are bound to happen that first week of school. I think she will owe some class dues. Only $5 last year, but may be more as a junior.

College starts next week for our daughter. Thus a tuition and housing bill will be due in September. This made me think of the American Opportunity Credit, and wondering how much we might be eligible for.

After a lot of number crunching and estimating, I came up with credits worth between $2075 and $2500. The maximum is $2,500 based on a maximum of $4000 paid in qualified tuition expenses. Room and board are NOT qualified tuition expenses. It is actually our biggest expense.

This means we will get a refund in the spring. I'm estimating approximately $1178, up to $1553 depending on the American Opportunity credit.

I'm going to firm it all up once we have paid tuition in full. I've thought of changing withholding for the last two or two and a half months of the year. I figure it might be nicer to have the money earlier than wait for a refund. That will require some more number crunching later.

I used $4.44 from Discover rewards to make a purchase of ink for our printer on Amazon. After the reward redemption, I spent just over $17 for color and black high yield ink, remanufactured. It's been quite some time since I've bought ink for the printer. More school work done online and less coupon printing I think.

I also redeemed some Marriott points for a hotel room the night before my daughter flies off to college. She has an early 8am flight and we live 1.5 hours away. It's just more relaxing for everyone to be in the town the night before.

My husband wants me to buy his preferred vitamins from GNC. I thought Tuesdays were usually their best sale day. Right now I'm not seeing the deal I'd like, which is buy one, get one! I may need to wait another week, unless I can round up some other ways to reduce the cost!

This probably won't be a well thought out post, but I just need to write out some thoughts. We have seven years until my husband can retire from the Army with a paycheck starting immediately. He will be 54. I will be 51.

According to military retirement calculators his retirement pay before taxes would be $4,572 per month or $54,863 per year. So, theoretically, our goal should be to have expenses less than $4,572 per month. At least if we didn't want to pull any money from our retirement savings. I'm pretty sure we could live on less than this, even while doing some traveling.

If he can get into a particular position in the next two years, he may be willing to continue to work until 60 for the Army. Which gee, at that point, isn't really early retirement! I'm not sure he cares, he does like to be busy. The retirement check would be $8746 per month or $104,959 per year. That's less than he makes now, but not by much.

One issue for me in thinking about retirement is our living situation. We have around $40K that came from selling two homes. Thus enough for 20% down on a $200,000 home. I would be fine buying a home in that price range or less. We are currently renting, so we are not building any equity. I can tell our savings has increased in the last six months, by around $7K. I think this is better than if we owned a home.

Honestly, I'd love to buy a house with cash at the time we retire. Of course, that feels overwhelming to think about when we only have $40K specifically set aside as house money. If I were to make that happen, I need to be much more diligent about saving cash to make it happen. It's not that I'm unwilling, I'm just not sure what I'm aiming for. I think we would move back to the midwest, which is where family is and likely both of our daughter's will be (although one never knows on that for sure).

We are currently in the middle of paying for college for our daughter's. We have some savings. Scholarships have been helpful so far. And we have the Post 911 GI bill that I expect will cover half the cost of each of them to attend college. The best case scenario is that they leave college with zero loans. Worse case is they leave college with one years worth of loans. Our oldest is going to be a sophomore this year in college. Our youngest is going to be a junior in high school. Thus they should both be out of college at the time my husband would retire at the earliest.

I feel we are currently living in a home with too much space for our needs and we are paying too much as a result. The home is 2800 sq ft, four bedrooms, three full bathrooms, two living areas, two dining areas, a kitchen, screened in porch, and very large yard. We pay $1800 per month in rent, which is the going rate for this size property. We are not overpaying for the property itself, but probably paying more because we have a home larger than our needs. Most of the time it's just three of us living here, with two cats. We could probably move elsewhere in the area, but I know that is disruptive to our daughter. It also costs some money to move, even in town.

Another thought I have, that may or may not be related to retiring early is buying rental property. Specifically, thinking about buying a home in the college town our daughter lives in so that she could live there rather than a dorm. Not sure if this would involve roommates or not. We wouldn't be living in that town thus as owners, that could be an issue. Although, our daughter would likely learn some things about home ownership through the process.

We max out our Roth IRAs, and put 10% in the tax deferred TSP. We would save 15% on taxes if we put that Roth money into IRAs instead, yet, I'm not sure that is really smart if we would want to use that money in early retirement. That would be $1650 in our pockets each that could go towards the saving for a home. I know we could easily save $1000 a month, which is $12,000 a year. In 7 years time, that would be at least $84K, preferably more if invested.

Again...random thoughts. I would really like to simplify overall and have some clear financial goals going forward. We save what we can for retirement and college, but I've been lazy about the plan for the next seven years. If I want to make something happen we need to start making it a focus. I don't want to only have $40K set aside in seven years for a home.

Feel free to chime in with thoughts or questions. I don't have all the answers yet.

I just bought our daughter a one way ticket back to her college town. She leaves in about two weeks! So sad to see her go. Although she is super ready to get back to her friends and her routine.

The ticket cost me $250. I wish I could have bought it last week when prices were closer to $190! We just didn't have the dates confirmed at that time. I'll watch and see if it changes in the next 24 hours and attempt to change if it goes lower.

I was attempting to redeem our American Express rewards for gift cards today. I got some message that we need to call to complete order. This is on my husband's account, so I'm going to have to have him call when he is able. Maybe it's because it is for over $500 worth of cards? I did all the extra confirmation to confirm it was us. Who knows! Just a big frustrating. ETA: Well, American Express called us not long after to indicating fraud on the account. Then we called them back, since we don't give personal information when we receive a call like that. But really there was no fraud, they were just making sure the redemption was legit. So all the gift cards are on their way here.

I've listed three items on eBay this evening. It's been awhile since I listed anything. It's still time consuming! But we've decluttered quite a few things recently and some of these things are probably worth a few dollars. I decided it would be worth my time to accumulate some cash, as I know there are some expenses like band camp and college textbooks coming up very soon.

Pretty low spend weekend here. We bought groceries and got a 50% off deal on a pizza Friday night (I didn't feel like cooking!).

I bought an item on Amazon Prime Day. According to USPS it was delivered, but I didn't get it. I inquired about that today. Normally, they would send a new one, but they are currently out of stock! So I asked for a refund instead. I'll try to buy this item later in the year when I know it will likely go on sale again. Or maybe we don't really need it, so maybe I'll skip it all together.

I received notification that my daughter's textbook that we listed on Half.com has sold. We will net $36 on the sale. I don't know off hand how much we spent on it. At least double. This was one of those cases where renting wasn't an option.

And we have discovered that renting isn't always the most economical. She rented a music book this past semester for about $14. Turns out the same book will be needed for the next music class. She could have bought the book for just an extra $0.18! This is a case where I didn't have access to that information or knowledge and she didn't read the receipt, let alone consider the option. We are all learning as we go through this college process!

We are starting to buy more things for her dorm. She is rooming alone this year, so we are buying rugs, and a microwave that her roommate brought last year. Overall, I think it is still less expensive than year one.

Just as I lower our cell phone bill by $12, our Time Warner Internet bill goes up by $10 because our promotion ended. I tried to get them to lower it back down. Only way to do that would be to lose speed. I don't think that would work as it seems we are streaming things all the time (currently trying 7 days of Sling TV).

This may prompt me to cancel TV service. We have the most basic of plans, but we rarely watch it and pay about $45 a month once you add in the cable boxes. I just don't think we can get even one station over the air here.

It's been a bit since I've posted here, although I've been reading and commenting. I don't have any real exciting updates as of late. No new snowflake money to report. We haven't spent any major money. We are still saving what we don't invest or spend.

The market drop because of Brexit is a bit hard to take. I haven't actually looked at our balances because I know I won't like them! At least the market had an up day again today.

We have decided not to go to Washington DC this summer. Our youngest daughter is taking an online German class this summer. It started a week ago Monday. It goes through the first two weeks of August. We were hoping the course work would be light enough to work ahead. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that will be the case. We could shorten our trip to three days, but we feel that wouldn't be enough time to do what we were hoping to do. My husband is also in a class for work and has deadlines every week in July as well. He said he was relieved that we had changed our plans.

The vacation fund has $1100 in it. We were going to drive and use Marriott Rewards points for the hotel nights. This money would have been for transportation, food, souvenirs and any other admission fees. I think for now I will leave it there, as I know we will also have some plane tickets coming up in the next six months.

June has been unusually inexpensive. Not as cheap as our No Spend Month in February, but definitely closer. I like when we have less spendy months!!

We use our credit cards for all purchases that we can. Yes, at one time we stopped using credit cards (thus the name Creditcardfree). But we are super good about paying them off on time. In fact, I effectively make at least two payments a month when payday comes around.

Tomorrow is payday. All transactions since the last paycheck were posted on YNAB, thus the money is set aside to make the payments. Today, I logged on to each account we had a balance with and paid them in full. Easy!

I should mention that we don't really use YNAB the right way. We don't 'Live on Last Month's Income'. Part of the reason for this is we have more in our checking account than we spend each month. The other is we have an emergency fund in other places to count as a buffer. And finally, because we use credit cards and generally pay them off within two weeks of the transaction, we have a buffer with the due date of those transactions if needed.

What we do is count each paycheck as income for current month. In our case two paychecks each month. We then budget that money into categories to cover us until the next payday. We do fund variable accounts like car maintenance, vacation and other various savings at the same time. These accounts slow build up, and yes at times get depleted.

In YNAB we can still see how much we budgeted for monthly expenses and how much we have left. Usually we have plenty. I can also adjust the amount in each category if I didn't guess/estimate right at the beginning of the pay period. After several months, it gets easier to see how much you are spending in each area and the amount to budget.

I'm loving watermelon right now!! So good for you and tasty.

My youngest daughter is out of school for the summer, but starts band camp next week, and then her online German class! She is going to be busy...hopefully not too busy, so we can still get to Washington DC in July.

I got a class action claim check in the mail from Tom's of Maine for $30.59! Wow, I sure wasn't expecting that! But I did know just what to do with it. I deposited into our savings account right away!

My husband's tablet (Samsung Galaxy)stopped responding to touch commands a few weeks ago. We decided to research if it was a part we could buy and replace ourselves. The answer is yes! We actually bought two screen digitizers at $21.99 each. The second one works!! The first screen digitizer was just a bit hard to reattach and after we did it didn't work quite right. And then to top it off we cracked the screen. But those errors did help us get it just perfect the second time. So for less than $44 we were able to fix something that would have cost us around $400 to replace new. My husband is super happy to have it back!!

It seems that class action claim check helped cover some of our costs! I like that.

After a month with two sets of visitors, we are now free to reign in the spending! It actually wasn't bad at all. We did a lot of free things. And I made lots of meals rather than going out to eat. We did spend quite a bit on fuel as we did a lot of driving around, including two trips to the beach!

I was a little worried about meeting my Diet Bet goal because of family in town. Weigh in day was yesterday, and I made it! Scale wasn't cooperating first thing in the morning, but after my 45 minute walk it was under goal by about half a pound. So I officially win Round 1 of my Diet Bet goal! I don't know what the first month payout is yet. The bet was $25.

Our daughter is still doing really well with recovering from wisdom tooth removal. Seems the pain is not as comfortable as it was the first two days, but she is still on enough meds, so not much more we can do about that.

Today was the wisdom teeth removal surgery for my oldest daughter. Despite being very nervous, she did great...although I nearly fainted as I was leaving the exam room. I'm fine though too. I probably didn't eat enough before going with her.

Cost was $493. I set that money aside yesterday when I was paying bills. So I can pay that off the credit card as soon as it posts.

I also picked up three prescriptions for her at CVS. With our insurance, they came to just over $10. I doubt she will take all of them, so it is good they didn't cost much. While I was there, an elderly woman was picking up an inhaler. It didn't seem to be covered under her insurance. She paid $72 out of pocket. She was originally waiting to pay with a $20 bill, but then had to write a check. I just wonder if there was some confusion on her insurance. Hard to know for sure.