I GOT MY CAR BACK!!! After months of problems and weeks of sourcing finance from multiple places, followed by having to wait even longer for parts and an available spot at the dealership, it had finally happened.
I try not to think about how long these repairs will take us to pay off, to truly just enjoy having a working car and a clean slate to start our debt journey from. No chasing our tails with trying to make minimum payments on things whilst trying to save for repairs. All that is left now is to have my teeth finished.
This week had also brought the decision to trial Hello Fresh. It is a subscription based dinner meal kit delivery service. Whilst we very clearly understand this is not the cheapest way to eat, we have some health goals also this year that we feel this might really help us to achieve. We also believe that by cutting out pre-packaged food while I grocery shop we can still stay within our budget. I will keep adding my thoughts on this service as we progress through our trial.
A great surprise for us this week was a completely unexpected bonus, we were stoked to have this come through and after a bit of bad luck this month it seemed like we were really due for a win. If you would like to you can check out what we did with our bonus.
So What did we spend?
We went $10 over our grocery budget this week. This really was my fault as it was our first week with Hello Fresh and that was a bit of a spontaneous choice, not budgeted for last pay cycle. Groceries were not supposed to count towards no spend figures, I will count this however as It was both over budget and avoidable.
I spent $3 on a set of paintbrushes for our daughter’s art and craft box so she would stop using her dads good brushes (that are of course, much more expensive.)
Including the repairs to my car at $6800 and we are up for what is hopefully the most expensive week of the entire year. I almost feel that car repairs should not be included because they were actually necessary, So I have tallied the numbers with and without cars to see the difference it made. So our totals are now:
- This Week $8913.00
- This Month $8935.50
- This Year $8935.50
A grand total of that is $8880.00 on car repairs leaving $135.50 as money spent this year. If every month were like January we would still spend $1626 this year, so we will strive to make February better and cheaper!
Go ahead and give us some encouragement by following our story this year, here or on Instagram where I post pretty much daily, or over on you tube where we share video updates of our finances along with frugal recipes we have tried this year.
Family seeks freedom 