the debt reduction diaries: May

well gosh, we're almost halfway in to June already, but I suppose when I look back on our debt reduction I'll want to know how it went it May.

It's hard to know what to write and what to skip.

May was really hard on me emotionally, for lots of reason.

it wasn't all bad though...we had a HUGE delivery of tons of fresh fruit and such from Steve's parents, plus we had also been given some gift certificates to Aldi (where we do most of our grocery shopping) at the end of April which we were able to use in May.  so awesome.

It baffles me that somehow we still ended up SCROUNGING around for food at the end when we had so much more to work with throughout the entire month.  but that's just proof that you spend what you have for, no matter what.

but it's a really good thing that we had all that extra because I was just in a really hard place for the month of May and obviously didn't focus very hard on meal planning.  I was feeling really burnt out by the pinkadink, discouraged that I feel like I work so hard for hardly any money.  (I've since raised my prices a bit, if you haven't noticed.  I'm hoping that helps.)  It's frustrating to see my business growing by leaps and bounds (I had a crazy dollar amount of sales last year, which was awesome, but also why I felt like I should have a little more in my pocket than I do, but my supply cost and all that is obviously too high for me to make money...)

and speaking of money in my pocket, we went to tulip festival with ZERO dollars in our pockets.  Grandma bought a couple rides for each of the kids, and also had a house full of food like she does every year, so we didn't eat a single thing downtown.  no schnew wagon, no poffertjes, no cheeseballs. nothin.  and guess what!  it was still fun!

The easy solution is for me to add money would be to daycare kids, but that's hard too.  I don't like the "daycare setting" that i've had before where I run myself ragged all day trying to keep up with all the kids in my care, and then find myself with NO ENERGY at the end of the day for sewing.  Plus, it would have to be the perfect match for a family to choose me to take care of their kids.  I'm not licensed, have to drive kids for drop off and pickup every day at preschool, and don't have a "play area" in my house, since I took it over with sewing equipment. :)  With Maddie here the girls just play in the living room, play outside, or in Brielle's room.  and it's not a big deal bc it's just like I have an extra kid in my family. :)  but if I added more, I would only want ONE kid, so I wouldn't have to get licensed, the parents would have to not care if I drive their kid around every day, and the parents would have to be okay with it being short term, since I am hoping to be done with daycare after Brielle goes to kindergarten.  so, it would likely have to be someone contacting ME to ask, instead of me searching out someone to watch.  so that's just not as easy as it sounds.

but of course I keep thinking that if God provides me with the perfect opportunity, it would be the best way for us to pay down our debt a little faster.  it seems to be crawling right now.  We finally got our snowball built and now it's just hanging out at around $300 a month, which doesn't go very far.  Each month we have to pay out from our snowball anything that we were unable to budget for.  Remember that our budget doesn't consist of anything except grocery, gas, and "other" which never lasts very long.  So for example, when I had a bladder infection and had to go in for a test, we had to pay that bill out of our snowball, since it's nowhere else in the budget.  and when Steve's car had to be fixed, we had to pay that hundred bucks (which was a miracle since we were first told it would be about $1200!!!) out of our snowball too.  so when you chop the snowball in half from paying out other things, it doesn't go very far.

we also were not approved for our refinancing, which was really discouraging to me.  our house had a REALLY low appraisal, and so in order to get the loan, we'd have to come up with almost $3000 in closing costs.  well that doesn't exactly fit into our plan with only a $1000 emergency fund.  so, we lost the 3.375% interest rate we were locked in at, and had a huge pity party that we won't be able to save $140 a month on our house payment after all. that was a sad sad sad day.  and I'm still mad about our appraisal.  I know there was a "drop" in the housing market, but it didn't seem to affect the value of our neighbor's house like it did ours, and I"m still bitter about it.  that whole appraisal system is shady if you ask me. :)

so yeah, there ya have it.  sucky month.

but we're past that.  I'm "back in the saddle" after doing bare minimum for the pinkadink during May, and already having a great month so far.  summer is in full gear which makes things tricky for getting pinkadink stuff done, but we'll just play it by ear for now.

oh, and we joined a sand volleyball team, which was the best way EVER to spend twenty of our "other" dollars last month, because we are finally doing something together that's super fun for both of us. :)

June finances are already getting very tricky, but you'll have to wait til next month's report to see how it all turns out!  we're refusing to pay our "10 year anniversary date money" OR our snowball on the extra bills we got for this month, but now our plans to celebrate are all falling apart too.  it's not looking good, but at least we get to live life together every day! :)  I better go sew so I can pay those darn bills!