Wrapping Up Another Month

Well, it’s now the end of January, and I am warding off discouragement.   We did have some fun milestones this month, namely burning our VISA, but the progress still feels painfully slow!

This month, we caught up on the $185 we’d over spent on Christmas last month, but we didn’t make any further extra payments on our debts.  We did ok making a budget covering everything that would come up in the month and sticking to it.  That is, we did until our van needed brakes ASAP, and we took that money out of our emergency funds.  I’m glad we had it there, but now it means instead of making extra credit card payments this month, we’ll be needing to refill that emergency fund.  At least, because we got our interest rate lowered, the payment we do make will take us a little further.

I’m still battling to get our grocery budget down, and will be doing a few more break downs on meal costs.

I am glad that we are, at least, not going into the hole each month any more.  I admit, though, that I wanted to see an actual amount that we would be using to pay things down more often.  I don’t want our progress to be “ well, we’re keeping afloat at least”. 

When I sat down to make our February budget, I was able to make the math work, and cover everything that will be coming up this month.  But unless Shawn ends up with some unexpected overtime, we won’t be making any extra debt payments.  “Birthday Season” starts at our house this month too, so I will thinking, and writing, about doing that on the amount we could fit into our budget.

As I go get groceries this morning, in this –44 morning, I am going to pray about my discouragement, and focus on how good it is to have come at least this far in our journey.  And drink lots of HOT coffee!  How does your month wrap up feel this week?