Hump Day Blog Hop

It is time for the weekly hump day blog hop I usually like to link up. I am lagging behind with blogging lately. Next month will be a year since I started and I am seriously pondering whether or not I will continue my personal blog, or discontinue, and just read others blogs. I do like the blogging world I have learned alot, but I am not sure about my own. I haven't been able to keep up with my normal postings lately since we moved, we have had tons of issues with our new place....the leak, the second leak, mold, then the ac broke, and I am not going to lie, it is not easy to figure out how to make this small space work.  We keep evaluating and reevaluating what should go where.

I did take suggestions from everyone and we have been evaluating if we have space to garden :)

 So far we are looking at having to container garden.  We have a small back yard but the soil is full of roots in the sunny places of our yard and I can't get the shovel through them.  The roots I guess come from the trees in neighboring yards. Pictured above is a pineapple, coffee, and dwarf banana plant that I ordered online.  I also ordered two dwarf fruit trees that I planted.  Online was the most affordable route for me to go, but I didn't realize how small the plants are that you start with, so it will be quite some time before any of my gardening is actually fruitful, but you have to start somewhere.  We also have a window box that I tried planting kitchen herbs in but something went wrong and not much grew, i will have to do some more research and start over.  I also have some strawberry roots, corn and tomato plants to get started from seed, but I have had alot going on, and things just don't always go the way I plan.

anyway that is it....enjoy the blog hop :)

Monthly Budget

I have been working on sharing each week ways we save, but I thought I would do something a little different right now, and share our monthly budget.  Do you have one?  When I started blogging and doing research almost a year ago, we learned how important it is to have one, instead of just aimlessly spending money and hoping you have enough money for what you need.  I have watched a family very close to me with five children live extremely outside their means, not being able to pay for gas, and needed medicine for the kids because of wreckless spending.  Over 9000.00 came into their hands and they did not renew their drivers licenses, or even the tag on their vehicle. I now have seen the mother begging and panhandling trying to get those things paid for.  She didn't consider when her husband got a new tattoo or she purchased new landscaping items that she might needs gas in her car etc.  They saw what they wanted and bought it.  It was great that one daughter had a nice birthday party, but what about the daughter that is now sick and mom can't get her antibiotics. Watching them go through this has definately reminded me it is time to start a new budget for our new home. (We are still in the apartment that we had the major problems with, but we are trying to work it all out and stay)

When budgeting I have learned it is good to include the family and determine what is important to them, and if those things can be worked in, or if it is time to determine those things aren't needs and cut them out.  An example of this could be cable.  For our family, we decided it was important to have it with internet.  We just have a minimum package with our internet, but that is our form of family entertainment.  We will at times watch a free movie from the on demand categories as our family entertainment or something.

My new budget is not yet perfect and it will require some tweaking later.

Some of the main things in our budget include housing:

 water

 electricity

 and auto insurance

My goals for each month are as follows

Housing 620
Water 60
Electric 100
Car, renters, and motorcycle insurance 155 (for all)
Cable 80
Cell phones are currently 110 but I will be reducing those this month
automobile Gas 150
YMCA 41

We also plan to tithe and set a grocery budget of 200.00 per month once we start paying for family health insurance through my husbands work at the end of the month.  (until then I have been trying to plan ahead, we have 500.00 in savings...the pet supplies are well stocked at the moment, and I am still reading other blogs learning how to build a pantry so that I can learn to cook more from scratch and reduce our grocery bill.) 

As I mentioned these are just my goals, but it is a start at least.  I know if these are the things I am going to have in my life I know how much money I need for them.  Once we finish regrouping from the challenges we have had with this place, we will revisit our budget, and add categories like pet and medical expenses and maybe family entertainment.   I will also be working to stay within the goals I have set for the utilities or to reduce the amount of each bill.