HARD WORK & DILIGENCE IS PAYING OFF

Last week, we told you about how we hold each other accountable with our finances. This week, we would like to tell you how our month of July actually ended. As you recall, we did have a couple of hiccups at the end of the month with our air conditioner not working and our vehicle not starting. Well, it turned out to be relatively quick and inexpensive fixes for both. Dodged that bullet!

We met with our coach, Aidan, last week and were anxious to have her tell us how we finished out our month. We both felt really good about how we managed our spending. Even though we were over budget on a few categories, we were still able to save a little over $2,500. Our refi was paid down by almost $2,900. This tells us that we are on the right path. What an incredible feeling! We haven’t been able to save an amount like that in years! 

We are already on our second week in August and our accountability is still holding strong. We were on vacation this last week but decided to only do small day trips. We discussed beforehand how much we were willing to spend each day and stuck to it! This proved quite difficult at the State Fair. First off, we scored two complementary admission tickets from a friend…$28 savings right there…not bad! However, the State Fair holds so much temptation! One example was at the wine tasting bar where you can sample wines from all over Wisconsin. Normally, we would each get our own 9-sample tasting, but this year we decided to share (there was no need for us to sample wines we knew we wouldn’t like). In the past, it was common for us to walk out of there with 4-6 bottles of wine. This year, we each chose one bottle to take home. There were loads of free entertainment to take in. We shared all of our food purchases, so we were able to try more things. It was an amazing feeling to know that we were able to enjoy our day without spending a “gob-wad of money!”

This is a testament of what Summit Credit Union’s Project Money is teaching us. Aidan asked us this last week if this is something that we would continue with after this program is over. No thinking was necessary as we both responded “ABSOLUTELY!” It is truly eye-opening to see what you are able to save when sticking to a budget. What we are doing is creating good habits from watching our expenses. We can see that these good habits will just become second nature for us after Project Money is over. Having a nice retirement and being debt-free are our goal and we realize that we have to stick to this plan if we expect to reach those goals.