The fees for marching band are going up this year by $50. Last year we paid $250 for our Fair Share of marching band costs. This year, the price is $300. Our first installment of $50 is due by June 1st. The Fair Share covers a new summer uniform of shorts and t shirt, color guard uniforms, props, field paint, truck rentals, and the cost to transport our students to away games and competitions.

Last year we had to buy marching band shoes, but they are in fine shape and still fit, so that is one expense we do not have this next season.

I signed up to help sell apparel at home games. I believe this will get me into the games I help at free, usually cost is $7 per person. I might see if my husband wants to help to and skip that expense for him. We will still have admission for away games and competitions.

We took our Honda Odyssey in to the dealership for some basic maintenance yesterday. Premium oil change (we are over 110K miles), tires rotated, and engine coolant flush. All were recommended based on the vehicle's maintenance minder. We had just changed the air filters a few months ago, so that wasn't necessary. We spent $225. And we had around $265 in our budget, so that was easy!

We've always felt that maintaining a vehicle is the best way to keep them long term. Our goal is to get another 6-7 years on our vehicles, when our youngest completes college.

Today, we need to get groceries for the days ahead. I'm only shopping for five days worth. We have company coming over Memorial Day, so we will shop again just before they arrive. I'm going to try to make simple meals this week as we have activities or meetings at least three nights this week. Simple usually is less expensive, too!

Our rental insurance is due for renewal in two months. I had received the most recent policy and was reminded that we had Valuable Property Protection attached for jewelry up to $2500. It is $28 a month. The only jewelry of significance we have are our wedding rings. And those probably cost us less than $2K when we bought them twenty years ago. The truth is we have cash to replace these if we were to lose them. We don't need to be insuring them. So $28 saved.

Our renter's insurance was $443 last year. I didn't realize our deductible was only $250! It is scheduled to renew at $432, so it did go down. However I changed the deductible to $1000, the highest allowed. Our premium will be now be $404. Not a large savings, but little amounts add up.

Overall savings is $67 a year!

I expect we will get a little refund for making the changes before the policy actually expires. I will count those dollars as snowflakes!

Last night we drove over 1.5 hours to go to an event put on by some famous You Tubers that my youngest daughter is a fan of. Excellent show!

We spent a lot on beverages I realized later. We all got a beverage at Noodles and Company where we stopped for an early dinner. Although I see from the receipt they only charged us for three drinks at $1.99 each our total was $5.97.

My husband and I each had a beer at the concert venue. Those were $7 each and we left a $1 tip. Total $15.

After the event it was nearly 10pm and we had all been up at 6am for our normal daily routines. We decided for the drive home we needed coffee to stay alert. All four of us ended up getting some sort of hot beverage, along with one water. Total $15.75.

Our beverage total for the evening was $36.72!! I don't really regret these purchases as they aren't usual for us. But remember small things add up!

I redeemed $6.15 in cash from our US Bank Visa. I'm counting it as a snowflake and have added it to our savings.

I've been given a two week heads up that the first band deposit of $50 is due June 1. I'm always grateful for a little heads up on these kinds of things. I need to add a YNAB category for this I think. Right now I'm just stashing it in the slush account, but I think I would like to keep better track and it is pretty easy to set up another category.

Starting to make plans for when our next round of company comes over Memorial Day. Company costs money! Although, I can see my mother in law treating us to dinner if we go out to eat, so that will help.

It was a long week, but awesome as well.

My college daughter is home for the summer. It is great to see her. It's fun to hear my daughter's laughing together especially.

My parents were here and ended up leaving a day early. Since they drove 20 hours to get here, they are taking advantage of the trip back to stop at some 'must see' places on their way back. They decided a head start would give them a little more time to enjoy those places before they have to be home.

This is really the first time I've lived so far from my parents. And while I've seen them three other times in the last ten months, this had been the longest stretch and it was hard to say goodbye. I was a little surprised at this!

The week was a bit spendy with more groceries purchased, admission to a botanical garden, extra gas needed for driving around, and we did a quick stock up of cleaning and toiletry items for my daughter so my parents can drive it back and have it stored for when my daughter arrives back to her dorm. And I decluttered a few items to send back as well. A couple for the dorm room and several toys for my newest nieces (my sister and her husband adopted a nine year old girl and now her younger sister is about to be placed with them with the plan to adopt! )

My parents are driving my college daughter home and they all arrive late today. And my parents stay for a week! I went grocery shopping with only plans for six specific meals. We spent over $200! That did include some cat food and cleaning products, but mostly food. I bought a lot of veggies!!

I'm sure there will be a little eating out and I know my mom enjoys cooking so will help me make a plan and a run to the store if we need more food for meals.

I lost 1.6 pounds this last week. That is 29% of my first month's goal. I think I will do pretty well this week despite my parents being here. They are willing to eat healthy and probably do a better job of it that I do! They also like to get out and walk, so I have some places we can check out to get some exercise in!

Oh in other news, I spent over $20 yesterday at Micheal's craft store for a diorama project for my sophomore daughter. She needed to depict a biome, or a large ecosystem. She was required to put in trees, plants and animals. One of the things she couldn't do was 'print' pictures as representations of these. They could use clay and paper. It was also suggested to go to Dollar Tree to buy plastic animals. (We tried that and found none). So we bought three plastic animals from Micheal's for $5 each!!! Since we used hot glue, I think it will peel off and we can return them. I'm sure there were other ways we could have made it less expensive, but our options were limited by availability and time. I think the teacher is out of line to limit how the biome is depicted, particularly if the child has limited resources! We have the money, others don't.

Have a great week...not sure how much I'll be around SA.

I initiated a $10K transfer from our money market account to the savings account at NFCU. The bank indicates that the money will arrive on Tuesday, May 10. At that point, I can put the application in for the 3% CD they are offering.

I requested a payout from Pinecone to my PayPal account two days ago. I thought I would receive it yesterday, as is usually the case. Once it does get deposited, I'm moving it and the Diet Bet money to our savings account.

I purchased matinee tickets for my daughter, husband and I to see Captain America Civil War on Saturday. Paid $16.50 with my Discover card. I will get 5% back in rewards for that purchase. A whole $0.83! It all adds up though.

I don't have the winnings of my Diet Bet yet, but I can't wait to find out!! And I'll probably count it as a snowflake when it arrives, so I will be sure to share.

I did sign up for another Diet Bet yesterday. It's a Transformer (which is six months). I did pay up front, which gives you the sixth month free, and paid $125. I do have 14 days to change my mind, but I really need to lose the 10% of my weight and then some, so I do think this will keep me going. And now, I want to win my $125 back and more!!

I did write a little more about what I did during the last Diet Bet on my

Organized Friends blog, if you would like to read about it.

So now I'm back to talking about finances!

I wrote two checks today for graduation gifts. They are each getting $25. I'm also going to take out $40 cash later today for a couple that is getting married. I figured checks written to a couple can get complicated when they are first married. So cash it is!

I realized I have two more graduations to acknowledge later in the month. So I need to buy more $1 cards. One will get $25, and the other $50. I'm trying to be consistent with what I give based on relationships. Not that anyone else is keeping track! I've been giving $50 to those who are children of my husband's brothers and sisters. And $25 goes to children of cousins or friends.

I hope to get my snowflake totals together from April and post those tomorrow!

My daughter's band is fundraising this weekend with a BBQ plate fundraiser. I've purchased five of the ten tickets ($8 each, so $40) they wanted each child to sell. Three for us, and two that my parents would buy if they lived here to eat the BBQ. I've donated about $5 worth of cookies and loaned out two tables, two coolers and a crockpot. I'm also volunteering my time on Friday morning to assist.

We can no longer fundraise through my husband's work due to ethical reasons. And I'm fine with that. However, we don't know anyone else, besides band parents to sell to! This is where I feel much more strongly about being able to just donate cash, or skip the fundraising and just charge us our portion of the costs to participate. Last year we paid $250 plus the cost of shoes for her to participate in band. Apparently, this year is going to be more expensive because of more props, oh and they bought new uniforms (although I think those are paid for).

What I wonder is will I end up paying more out of pocket with or without participating in the fundraiser? I will probably never know.

Fundraising is a strange beast.

We've received a wedding invitation and a graduation invite in the last two weeks. We don't plan to attend as they are not nearby. I know of one other graduation (my cousin's daughter) also. Oh, and I guess one of my nieces graduated in December from high school, so she may be having a celebration, too!

The wedding invite is a little strange as I only met the bride once briefly. She's the daughter of my husband's coworker. I feel torn about a gift, but decided in the spirit of generosity we can spare $40 as a gift to a young couple.

I think for graduations I will give $25.

Figuring these kinds of gifts out is an interesting process. First can I afford to give anything? Yes. Second what is too little and what is too much, thus what is the right amount. I think my husband would toss everyone a $100 bill, but I think that is too much for many situations.

I did buy all the cards I need for these cash gifts at Walmart today. I did make sure to buy $0.47 and $0.97 cards.

I never did send out graduation announcements for my daughter who graduated high school last year. We weren't having a party, thus no invites to mail. Some people sent a gift, but many did not, which is perfectly fine from our perspective. I do wonder how many more gifts she would have received if an announcement or invite had been mailed.

What is your take on wedding and graduation gifts?

I'm posting here to remind myself to log into all of our accounts tomorrow so I can reconcile all of them on YNAB. I usually do it at the end of the month. It seems I forget to do it at the end of March. Oops!

I want to get it complete and get any errors corrected before payday on Friday. I'm pretty sure that I, not DH, have missed a couple of transactions. One of them may be the Diet Bet funds. Not sure.

I bought a book of stamps today. Saved a whopping $0.40 by waiting until the price dropped! I also avoided buying a $8 anniversary card at Walmart. I honestly didn't know such expensive cards existed at Walmart. I opted for one that was just $3.50, which still seems like to much. I recycled so many cards in the last several months, it just seems like a waste. I did suggest to my husband a few days ago that we go look at the cards together and pick one out for each other, read them and then put them back. He thought that was lame. I guess he's convinced cards are worth it.

Do you reconcile your checkbook or budget software? What do you think about the cost of greeting cards?

My transformer Diet Bet started Monday. I weighed in last Sunday and today I've already achieved 58% of my goal. I feel much better because of the better eating and more exercise. Funny how that is. I mentioned to a friend that the reason I think Diet Bet is going to help for me, is that there is a tangible number assigned to the process, 4% of my original body weight to be lost by a set date. It's not vague in the least. And then I'm rewarded with getting my money back if I make the goal, which is super nice to think about! I will say it does help to be mentally ready to do the work. I was ready!!

I probably did spend a little extra money on food this week as I stocked up on more veggies and a few healthier snacks. However, I'm eating less, so there are leftovers, which means some of the food we are buying is stretching a bit farther.

I'm about to buy a foam roller on Amazon. I'm having some tightness in one leg, which has to be related to the knee pain I had the couple weeks before I started this Diet Bet. The knee feels a lot better, but there still some tight muscles that need some work. The foam roller, along with some videos, should help me progress towards healing faster.

Yesterday, my oldest daughter reminded me we needed to pay the final housing deposit for next year. It's $200. The best part is I already had that money set aside because I knew it was coming. She is going to have a single room next year. Sounds expensive doesn't it? It is just because it is dorm housing and it isn't because the price difference is relatively small.

As a returning student living in the same dorm she is eligible for a discount of $342. With her 7 day meal plan included we will pay $10,704. If she doubled up, with the same meal plan, we would pay $10,104, which is a savings of $600. In the end, after the discount her single room will be $10,280. The difference between the double vs single is then only $176. We decided that the extra $176 is worth it for a single room. She loves her sleep and often goes to be before 10pm, she will sleep so much better without a roommate making noise or being frustrated by the lights still being on.

This past year housing was our biggest expense because nearly 90% of tuition and books were covered by scholarships. We used our own cash and money saved in her ESA account to cover those remaining expenses.

Next year, we plan to use my husband's Post 911 GI Bill to cover all tuition and most of the housing. We will need to pay for the housing up front, but we will receive a monthly housing allowance while she is in class. That housing allowance is $1080 per month. It is prorated, so will equal about 4 months worth of housing, or around $4320 per semester.

In the end we will have some costs to pay out of pocket, but we expect these will be manageable. We are extremely grateful (and amazed) at how well we have been able to manage the costs of college.

I definitely encourage all families expect children to go to college to save something! You won't regret it. And of course, help your child be the best they can be by taking challenging classes, participating in something extracurricular, study if needed for ACT or SAT, and put in some volunteer time. It does pay off!

We finally made the airline purchases for our niece and my mother in law to visit over Memorial Day. That weekend seemed to work best for them and they will see our daughter's more, but the tickets were more expensive. Niece (20) is super excited because it is her first plane ride. She wants to have a window seat, which probably won't be an issue, since I bought Early Bird Checkin for them on Southwest. We spent in total $1004.92. The good news I had already set that money aside in our vacation fund.

I decided against participating in our neighborhood garage sale this Saturday morning. I don't have a lot of stuff. And the big stuff I want to let go of I want more than garage sale prices for. I will have to list them on some sale sites or Craigslist at some point.

Instead of the garage sale, our family is volunteering at the local food bank for four hours. She needs community service hours for the Engineering Program she is part of at her high school. This is our second time, and we actually enjoyed it last time, so it isn't a big deal to go again. We did reward ourselves with lunch out last time, have to decide if that is a habit or not!

I'm on Day 3 of my Diet Bet. I can already tell that my diet changes are making a difference. It really can be about mindset. Once I decided to actually take action and knew what my plan was I felt committed. And that is such a different place to be than where my mind just says 'yea, I know I should eat better' and so forth.

I do need another pair of workout pants! If I have lost some weight by Friday, then I'm rewarding myself with one pair, just so I don't have to do laundry so often!

And finally, it seems I'll be using more gas in my van for awhile. I volunteered to pick up my husband's coworker's son and take him to school in the morning. Unfortunately, we live on the opposite boundaries for the high school. I will take my daughter first, then head to pick him up. He could take the bus, but he's being bullied it seems, so he's avoiding the morning bus. And his Mom needs to get to work and his Dad is out of town for at least the next month. Oh, and he has been tardy over five times, because he missed the bus, which apparently could lead to expulsion. He is a very nice young man. It's just my way of helping our Army family out. I was offered gas money, but I declined. I told his mom I may need her to do something for me someday, so it will all work out!

I signed up today for the Diet Bet that starts tomorrow. I bet $30 to lose 4% of my body weight in the next four weeks. It does feel pretty daunting, but I know I need some accountability. I can't keep going in the direction I have been.

My goals are to keep my calories around 1300 and walk 8-10K steps most days. I've done calorie reduction before. It's harder in the beginning, but it does work! The exercise piece will be a bit different for me as we don't have a gym, just our treadmill at home. I think lifting weights was always helpful for weight loss. I will need to use my own body for that.

I feel like my biggest stumbling block may be my knee. I've been having pain, usually AFTER I walk, not during. It then hurts for a couple days which makes me not want to exercise again. So I'm going to do my best to address that issue along the way.

We are grocery shopping today. It seems we are out of lots of things right now, such as paper towels, soap, coffee, laundry detergent. I expect it will be a larger than normal total.

My daughter is home this week for spring break. We are going to go see Zootopia this morning. On average we see a movie in the theatre about four times a year. We nearly always go see a movie during the matinee. To save the money, of course! For the two of us, it will cost us $11 to see the movie. It is around the lunch hour, so we may get popcorn...or I might pop some at home and put it in my purse.

Do you watch movies in the theatre? How often?

Did you know that the price of a First Class Stamp is going down? As of April 10, the new price will be 2 cents less, at just $0.47. I only bought one today, since I don't want to stock up on postage at the higher rate. I don't mail too many things, but rent is one of them.

I took our youngest daughter in to have a cavity filled. The first one either of our daughter's have had! It was pretty small, but seemed a good idea to have it taken care of sooner than later. Hopefully, this can be the last one! It cost $19.80. I had cash to make the payment which feels good.

I'd like to think we are done spending for the the month, but apparently my daughter is now in need of shampoo. I buy this stuff in bulk, and it lasts nearly a year. I will pick it up tomorrow when we are near that store.

My new MacBook Pro purchase really helped move our spending along on our newest credit card rewards bonus. We need to spend $3K on the Marriott Rewards card to earn 80K points. There may also be a 7500 bonus for a second user, so there is that too. We have already spent $2,725 on the card.

There will be no issue making the threshold as we have nearly two more months to complete. I probably could pay the electric and cable bill and have it complete this week.

We still plan to use our points for a Washington DC vacation this summer. If we pick a hotel in Alexandria on the end of the metro line I think we can easily get five nights. We will get that firmed up once we have the points.

Funds are getting a little tight this month since it is a longer month. We've been snacking too much again and eating out more. Money is still there, just not put into the right categories on YNAB. Luckily I can move that around!

I ordered a Yamaha keyboard from Amazon. I received TWO! On different days from UPS. I notified Amazon that I received two. They offer, after two emails, to have UPS pick up the extra keyboard from our house. UPS picks it up today.

And now....

I get notice that Amazon is issuing me a refund for all but $29 of my original purchase cost. So while, I wasn't charged for two keyboards to be sent, they are refunding the cost of my original purchase minus the shipping fees to send the second one back. The original purchase with tax was $171.

I'm shocked that Amazon doesn't have a better handle on their inventory! Should I call and asked to be charged again? None of this is my fault. I could have easily keep the 'free' keyboard and sold it. I did the right thing and explained the second keyboard arrival and confirmed I had not been charged twice. Amazon agreed I was only charged once.

What would you do at this point?

I took our daughter to her oral surgeon consult today. She is all good to have have all four wisdom teeth removed, with an appointment in early June. I also got the estimate for our portion of the cost. The full cost agreed between insurance and the surgeon is $1,408. Our portion is $588.40, which is about 42%. I did notice that the sedation is covered at 50%, rather than 60%, so I think that adjusts our portion higher than the expected 40%.

I had to pay $95 in order to hold the consultation appointment. That fee is applied to our portion. So if the costs stay the same our final bill due will be $493.40. I can definitely handle that!

Per our estimate of charges, the Usual Customary and Reasonable charge for this same procedure is $2,230. I was willing to pay that much if it came to it, but it seems we won't need to.

Do you have your wisdom teeth or did you have them removed at some point?

We went to the Post Exchange today to look at their Apple laptop. I thought we would just end up looking despite knowing that we need to replace my computer desperately. In the end, because they were having a sale on the Apple computers we purchased the one I had been looking at for $65 less than retail, plus saved the tax because we bought on post.

The total was $1424. It's a lot of money, but I don't regret it. My last computer was purchased in January 2010. It's a Dell and for the most part has worked fine, despite a lot of work to keep it going this long. The screen has been replaced once. I'm on my third battery. I've even replaced the back to the screen. It could have failed far earlier than this!

The next step is to start converting things over. I don't want the migration assistant to move everything as I know that there is a lot of junk on my current computer that just needs to die with the computer! Hopefully, this won't take me too long to accomplish.

We were discussing how we are at the point financially where we know that a more expensive, yet quality purchase is worth it to us. In the past, we have not been drawn to the Apple's simply because of price. It wasn't worth it to us. Now it actually is and we have the cash and money to not make a big deal about it.

I put the charge on our Marriott Rewards card. We are now definitely half way to earning our 80K points! I will pay it off of course, with cash on hand. No interest or payments for us!

My computer is dying. My daughter says I don't realize how slow it is. I think I do, but just deal with it. It seems that as of last night, the sound card no longer works. Play videos with volume on high and hear nothing. Reboot doesn't fix it. And today, I can't seem to get my Fitbit to charge using the USB charger. I have it now charging on my husband's computer with no issues.

The plan has been to get a new computer, likely an Apple this year. Although, I was hoping for later in the year! We have two Dell computers now. It's tempting to think we could get by with one computer, but I've seen in recent weeks that my husband is using his much more for a class he is taking for work. He has to log in for class every other week. And at the same time he is working, our daughter is needing a computer to do her homework. We need two at this point.

The good news is we can probably pick up the computer we need at the Exchange on post for a slight discount and avoid paying taxes. We will need to do some more research to figure out which computer is right for our needs.

I do feel I need to start working on this fast, as I'm not sure how long the whole computer will even hold up. I don't want to lose any information! Much of it is backed up in other places, just not all of it. Something I will be working on as soon as I can.

Who has an Mac? Which one do you have? Tips on which one to pick?

We have Verizon for our cell phone service. And yes, I've been aware of the other options such as Ting and Republic Wireless. We seem to live in areas were the service those companies provide isn't as good. My husband feels strongly about keeping Verizon as a result.

I was aware of Verizon's newer plans. Today I received an email from them stating I could save about $9 each month. I checked it out and yes for the same 6GB on the current plan, we can switch to the new plan sharing the same 6GB and spend $9 less. But with the change comes reduced line access. Instead of $40 a line, it is $20...so a savings of $80 for the four of us. That is huge.

So instead of a bill of $240, it will be closer to $150. Verizon is quoting $131, but I don't think that includes taxes. I'll take the savings while I can get it.

I do think I looked at changing awhile back, but the access fees were going to be the same. I need to look and see if they have been reduced because of the time we been on our plan. Two more months and we could renew. I don't really want them to jack them back up again.

I just bought a portable piano (keyboard) online for our oldest daughter. She will be home for spring break and needs to practice keyboarding homework. We don't own a piano or keyboard! She will probably need to keep up the skills over the summer so she can be ready for the second semester of classes. I decided it was worth it. I spent $171 on a decently rated Yamaha. I figure it can probably be resold at some point to recoup some of the outlay.

YNAB really does make budgeting easier. For us, it seems that having a place to set cash aside for a specific category is motivating. And then to see the balance helps us watch the spending in that category a little better. I think that is what is happening. It's just better!

I finished paying all bills and current credit card balances, which are now all back to zero. No interest paid as always! I allocated cash into our spending categories as well as savings.

Savings seems easier too. For this pay period, I added $500 to our vacation fund and $513 to our emergency fund. My goal each month has been to add $336 to the EF. I have exceeded that amount every month so far this year.

Do you have a specific amount you are saving to an emergency fund each month or pay period?

We have just about finished the spending on the American Express Gold card. Only need about $50 left of spending to meet the $1000 threshold for earning the rewards. I think American Express takes a little while to get the rewards credited thus the reason we started this card first.

Next up is the Marriott Rewards Premier card. We'll need to spend $3,000 to get our 80K+ points that we hope to use on our Washington DC trip this summer. We'll be charging airline tickets soon, which will cover about 1/3 of the necessary spending.

Our oldest daughter has a birthday this month, so I have some shopping to do. She also wants to shop for some new spring clothes while she is home on spring break. There's more spending right there! In April I want to take my younger daughter to get prescription sunglasses. And it seems my husband may need eyeglasses soon too. I can imagine just those purchases will put a dent in that spending requirement as well.

First of all, super happy to have completed two days this week without spending. This isn't too unusual as most of our spending is usually done on the weekends.

I will probably stop by the store today to pick up an item or two for my daughter's science teacher who needs donations for science labs tomorrow and Friday.

We changed a lot of filters around here last weekend. All of our furnace filters are swapped out every other month. It was time to change the water filter on the fridge. And we replaced engine and cabin filters on both of our vehicles. Those were really overdue. My husband and I sort of had a race...I did my vehicle and he did his. It was close on the engine filter, but then I got hung up on a clip that I needed to loosen to get to the cabin filter. He had to help me there.

The really nice thing was the filters were all free because of rewards we have earned. I'm going to make a point to put a reminder on our calendar to get the vehicle filters replaced once a year...it had been far longer than that unfortunately.

Actually, I'm just watching the market right now. I paid our daughter's spring tuition/housing in early February out of our savings account. Her college fund is still invested in a balanced mutual fund. Thus with the market down and cash on hand I just couldn't bring myself to sell. This is really why we shouldn't have the money in the market at this point. I should have transferred it into a cash account. So for now, my goal is to wait and watch what happens. When it gets even better, I plan to withdraw the amount equal to what came from our savings. At some point, I'm going to start slowly transferring the balance to a cash account.

If we use my husband's GI bill for the next two school years, we won't need any of those funds. It would be nice to have it grow, but I also don't want to lose anything either. So cash it will be it seems.

In other news, I redeemed $12 in Pinecone Rewards yesterday, along with $17.90 from recent eBay sales. I'm using these funds, and Amazon gift cards, to buy a few items on Amazon. Needs. Primarily engine and air filters for our vehicles. I also bought a shower cover for our drain. It was clear it was needed after cleaning the drain recently. I like that I could make these purchases with non income cash!

We paid $0 in interest. No mortgage. No personal loans. No credit cards with balances. Yippee!!

We earned $59.44. Boy do I wish that was more! But it is better than nothing.

It may have seemed as though we spent $0 based on the original title to my post yesterday. I edited it. We did spend money in February on needs to the tune of about $900. And of course, we paid our bills like rent, electric, trash, water, cell phone, life insurance. And we saved around $3700 in cash, plus $1662.33 for retirement and $166.66 for college.

I picked up three large packages of toilet paper at Target. Each was $15.99 with 27 double rolls. I added on some Windex to get my total over $50 so I could use a $15 coupon off a $50 purchase. I think we are stocked up on toilet paper for at least half a year!

I've now seen the receipt from the dinner my husband went to on Thursday night for a coworker's retirement dinner. As I said before he paid for the retiree's dinner. The restaurant included a 20% tip, likely because it was a large group of 11.

So the total of the drinks and meals was $37.98, $3.65 taxes, $7.60 tip added by restaurant for a grand total of $49.23.

He added $10 additional tip because he didn't read the bill specifying that the gratuity was already added! So our out of pocket was $59.23. That is a 46% tip!!

In other news, we cancelled our Citi Premier card. We've had it since last May and have stopped using it. It has an annual fee that is waived the first year, but we don't want to pay for one when it is up for renewal. That was easy to do online.

I also closed my Capital One 360 checking and savings accounts. I had $0.06 in there. We weren't using it because the interest rate of 0.75% was lower than our other accounts. That was also super easy to do online. I did the withdrawal and it had a place to confirm I was closing the account. My six cents should arrive to our checking account on Monday.

We applied for the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card finally. We received one offer a couple months ago. It expired before I could get that completed. So when it arrived in the mail again, I jumped on it. It appears to offer $50K points for spending $1000 in three months. I think there were some points for an authorized user too. Oh, and we were instantly approved.

We also applied for the Marriott Rewards credit card. There was an offer for 80K points after spending $3000 in three months. We would like to use these points for hotels this summer, when we hope to visit Washington DC. This card, offered by Chase, didn't instantly approve, but indicated we would receive notification by mail. Chase has changed the way they do business and approvals. We have never had this card in the past though, so hoping this is available to us.

My husband did make some purchases yesterday. Fuel for his truck $23.35, alcohol $19.10, and some snacks $21.03, which was more than I expected. We will need to pick up some groceries for the coming week today or tomorrow.

The cash is getting tighter! Trying to hold on until the end.