March Goals

A new month and a chance to try again. We overspent last month by about $75.oo. However, included in this is my husband and my Valentine dinner.

Saturday's seem to kill us. It is the one day we have where we are all together and we generally spend it running errands or doing something together as a family. Unfortunately, that means we are usually not home for lunch or dinner. I am still troubleshooting our Saturday's for a way to avoid this.

Ideally, we wouldn't be eating out at all. But I figure baby steps are better. My main motivation being we are trying to pay off our debt this year and this is the one area in our spending that really isn't necessary. Therefore, it simply has to go. I have been doing my best, but apparently I need to up my best. We are still working on our emergency fund and are half way there. If we are diligent, we should be able to finish it this month.

We have budgeted three big eat out days this month: our date night, our trip to the Temple, and a family dinner. Those three days will be about $60.00. If we do our half rule (reduce last months spending by half as the new goal), that leaves us with $35.oo to spend eating out the rest of the month. I suppose that averages to about once a week.