A bill I was expecting came in today -- it was WAY less than I had budget for (worst case plan) and so not I've funded date night, my deck replacement and some retirement savings. SO happy!!

Realized today that both my wife and I are paying for Amazon prime, and I didn't know (until I googled it) that Amazon has a 'family plan' that allows family members to all use a single prime account.  Happy to save $100.

I've been watching what I eat and I can say it's been three days since I have bout take-away coffee, take out lunches, and junk food for dinner. I definitely didn't expect this to happen when I decided to become healthier!

After working casual for the past 7 years to make sure I was there for my 3 kids (my husband has a good job), I  accepted a permanent part-time position today!  Time to put some $ away for my wishlist.

I'm a knitter and have a lovely stash of yarn, but more than I will ever be able to knit, so I've been selling some of my yarn since I started YNAB in December, 2018. In looking at my YNAB reports, I noticed this was the first month since starting that I had not sold any yarn, and 2 days later, I did sell some. I mailed that yarn today and listed some more for sale. Nothing massive, but every dollar is making a difference. 

I've been following a new strategy over the past few weeks of batch cooking then always freezing some.  Almost everything I cook - like soup, curry, rice and quinoa - I try to put at least one portion into the freezer.  Then I rotate eating freshly prepared food with frozen.

This weekend I'm really getting the benefit of it.  I've got a horrible cold and don't feel up to even boiling pasta.  But I've been able to defrost healthy home-made soup and lentils, and I have enough in the freezer that I don't need to worry about cooking anything for the first few days of the week.

So I'm resting, eating well and having some unexpected no-spend days too.

I've made many changes in the past few months, but today in particular I did two things:

1. I signed up with Questrade- commission free purchases of ETFs here I come!! (Currently paying $10/trade)

2. I put a plan together to get my kids on budgets, too.  Tomorrow I will sit them down and help them hash out a budget for each of them.  Makes me feel like a great mom!!

Had a home-date with my husband today.  Played board games all afternoon with a couple of beverages, a bowl of our favourite chips and a plate of veggies.  Probably cost less than $10 and we agreed it was really fun.

YNAB has helped me  get current and have enough of a buffer in checking that I was able to put both my student loans on auto debt so that I can take advantage of the .25 percent interest deduction on both loans. Plus I’ll have  An extra 100 to throw at the debt at the end of this month and  another 600 the first week of May!

A little thing: I bought a large, black no ice iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts that I can stretch into at least four drinks using creamer from the store. Total cost, around $5.00 for four drinks versus $5.00 EACH when buying it daily from them. Eventually I'll graduate to cold-brewing my own coffee at home, but for right now, it's a little win...

I cancelled Netflix last month. Just hit the one month mark am managing just fine with Hulu. I figure if there is something I want to watch on Netflix, I can always re-up for a month, but am saving $10/month in the meantime.

Starting month 2 on YNAB.  While we were starting from a good deficit because of lack of income for 45 days, we were still able to get the mortgage back under the 30 day late window, get our 2 auto loans back under the 30 day late window *AND* pay 2 months worth of health insurance premiums to get that active for this month.

My next influx of money is a couple days before the end of the month and about 1/2 will go towards budgeting May while the other 1/2 will backfill categories that are spent on the credit card.  As long as we stick to the plan we will see ourselves budgeting ahead on most categories paid by the credit card and finally get that back to the point where we can PIF at the end of each week.

Also found a debt calculator ( https://undebt.it/ ) where we can plan out our debt reduction while looking at tweaks to the plan and have worked it such that in 20 months we will be debt free *AND* have an Emergency Fund filled to 1 full month of cash. I treated the EF as if it were a debt (in my mind it is until it is full!) and it will be full before the end of this year. Without it, our debt reduction would only be 2 months shorter so I am willing to trade those 2 months for peace of mind.

I finally took pictures of a few items I haven't used for years and put them up for sale online. We'll see how it goes!

This was last weekend, but it was a BIG win! Both of us got rid of our personal checking accounts and put everything into our joint account. Then we changed the joint account to one that has no fees because I have direct deposit. Then we changed our savings account to one that would be more beneficial. All that was a savings of $62 a month. Then we eliminated two subscriptions that add up to $50 a month. $112 a month....boom! Then yesterday, I got my oldest daughter started on YNAB (using the referral, of course!). She feels better already! They don't have a regular income, so she was afraid to "look at it." I assured her that it was much better than not knowing!

Well had one set back this week. Had a 75 subscription hit my account this week that I hadn’t accounted for. But I rolled with the punches and cash flowed it out of what I had set aside as extra payment on my student loan. The. I had an unexpected refund of 120 come for cancellation of my gap insurance after paying off my car. So Net I now have 150 extra to throw at the student loan instead of the original 100

And this is why we have a category for unplanned trips into New York City.

On Friday afternoon my wife won the lottery for discount tickets for the Saturday 8pm performance of Kinky Boots on Broadway. How can you say no to a pair of $45 tickets (very close to the stage in a box) for the hardest night to get tickets for a show that's been next to impossible to get reasonably priced tickets and is in the final week that Wayne Brady is in the show ?

And as a bonus Wayne Brady did some very "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"-style freestyling after the show with audience participation. It was an awesome evening.

The whole evening, including dinner, transportation and babysitter cost about 4x the tickets alone. But it was worth every penny, and that's why we budget for unexpected trips into the city.