Time for our monthly financial check-up. I missed March’s update because I was having a baby. It is probably a good thing because I never made out a budget for the month, whoops! Bad idea folks, very bad idea. I really don’t know how much we spent because I spent several days in the hospital and then another several days in bed, but it is never a good idea not to tell your money where to go. Fortunately since we don’t use credit cards we didn’t go into debt, we just didn’t save as much as planned.

I finally got set up with Pear Budget. I read about this on Meredith’s site and was eager to check it out. So far (I have been actively using it for 5 days) it works great. I like it because I can log in (my husband can too) from any computer and enter receipts, track progress, etc. I like the fact that you are not tied to a specific computer.

My husband promoted a received a hefty raise this month (which I plan on blogging about later). It is our goal to act like the raise never happened. Although I would love to spend the money on a variety of different things; camera, new mixer, laptop, cruise to the Bahamas, those are wants and not needs. So the extra money is going into savings.

Last time I posted about this I was considering different levels of frugality our family could pursue. I bolded the ones we are currently implementing.

Drastic frugality- I am not sure what this all would entail but some ideas discussed were dh biking to work, making even more items from scratch to cut grocery costs, cloth diapers, vehicle changes, growing our own food, switch to a pay as you go cell phone, cut out paper plates, napkins, paper towels, disposable wipes in addition to the things we already do.

Moderate Frugality- Basically continue on the current path with slight modifications. We are planning a Square Foot Garden
this year and I hope to increase our from scratch cooking since it is something I enjoy doing already. Due to the bed rest and then a preemie baby the garden isn’t going to happen this year. I feel like I am just starting to catch my breath since everything happened and I am not ready to over do it, yet….

Frugal living for Wimps- This is how I feel about how we are living now. We made some pretty significant changes a few years back, but have stalled a bit in our progress. Even if we continued on the exact same course we could still save money, but not enough to purchase a house for cash in the next few years.

This year our financial goals are pretty simple:

• Purchase 15 passenger van (cash) by April 2009 We bought the van WITH CASH on in March!
• Fund IRA – Researching some new funds to invest in, currently the money is sitting in our savings account.
  
• Braces for child #3 half-way funded by end of the year (saved $1300 so far)
• Cut grocery budget by $50 a month - Decided to scrap this goal, we already have a fairly low grocery budget and since we don’t need to save in this area I am using the extra $50 to purchase more organic foods.
• Live on half our income/ save or invest other half I will need to rework the numbers since my husband got a raise, but we should be able to make this happen starting in June.
• Save for short term goals: vacations, home school materials, gifts We worked out our short terms goals the other night and are on track to meet them. Thanks to Swagbucks I have not spent any money out of pocket on gifts this year!
• Start commission system for the kids (I haven’t started this mainly out of laziness. I need to make a chart and just do it!)
• All extra money goes into house fund Our plans have changed slightly over the past two months. While we thought my husband would retire from the military in two years, he has now decided to stay in for a while longer. We are still saving for a house, but we are not saving as aggressively since a house purchase is now several years away.

For more financial updates visit Money Saving Mom.