Clash of the Financial Goals

I'm about as good at Monopoly as I am with money…

Remember how we did pretty bad at saving money and paying down debt in May? It got even worse in June. :(

First, let's talk about what we did right!

All of the following good resulted in lower assets… :(

1. Being around for the family. – Most of the time I am able to draw the line on my own spending by saying "y'know I don't really need that" but when family and friends get involved it becomes much harder to say no. I think it's because my father has always drilled into my head that you never know long you will have on earth with these people and you should cherish every moment with them. He's right, but dang was that expensive in June!

• Host and pay for father's day dinner for 12? √
• Take my father to Alabama for his father's day gift? √
• Buy art supplies for putting together my nephew's baby shower invitations? √
• Pay for a vacation night out for 6 in Savannah, GA? √

2. And to top it all off, because of how busy we've been, we've been eating out too much. Quick dinners are so much easier when you know you will be staying up until midnight to get projects completed. *sigh* (I'm counting this as a right, because of how dead we'd be otherwise!)

3. Getting Justin a laptop. We couldn't afford it, and we probably should have waited to get it another month when we had more money, but at least now he has a laptop and can work from home if he'd like. (Plus computer engineers like having computers to engineer. Crazy, right?)

4. Signing up for 2 new credit cards! We signed up for the Amex Blue Cash which gives us a $200 introductory offer and 3% back on groceries (which is more than our current 2% back) and Chase Freedom which has rotating categories (which currently is 5% back on gas purchases from July to September) and $200 back for spending a certain amount on the card in 3 months. For $400 and the additional perks, these definitely seemed like good cards for us. (We won't see that money until August fyi.)

5. As if the cards weren't enough, we were pleasantly surprised to see Justin's credit rating go from great to excellent! This will definitely be a benefit to us when we purchase a house and we are already benefiting from it with our car insurance rate! :)

6. Justin is putting more in his 401K account than he was previously!

Debts still on the decrease…

7. And it seems the Earnest account we set up for student loans means we are paying off our debt just the tiniest bit faster! :)

Now, here's what we did wrong:

1. $7 bank fee because Justin hadn't used his Suntrust account the way it was designed to work (i.e. with at least one direct deposit a month). Obviously, if this happens to you, the best thing to do is to call and see if the bank will reverse the fee. Unfortunately, we were too busy and Justin never found time to do that. *shrugs*

2. We spent too much. Yes, I am counting all of the family spendings as good, but if we could have spent just a tiny bit less we would be in a far better position financially.

3. Not managing to find time to take full advantage of our Serve card. I'm not going to go into full detail because it can be a controversial subject, but I suspect if you know what Serve is you probably know what I'm talking about.

4. I wasn't able to get a price match at Anthropologie like I should have… We were just really short on time in June.

Spending graph
yellow = last year; green = this year
(The little random note at the top is because of a hack I used to get this comparison.)

5. We spent more this June than we did last … no thanks to Mint's comparison feature not working. But even worse, we spent the most we've spent all year! :(

6. AND we had to take money out of savings to make up for over spending. :(

7. Student loan payoff date got moved back a month to August 2020. :(

Takeaway:

Net worth – Could be better; could be worse.

*shrugs*

Technically it's the same as it always is – Spend less, save more. HOWEVER, I see July and August looking bad as well. The baby invitations have cost us quite a bit to make and we still have to pay for the baby shower. On top of that, there is the drive up to north Georgia to see my grandfather for his birthday, the trip to NYC in August, and the fact that both Justin and I need new jeans. *sigh*

So is my finance song "Livin' On A Prayer" or is it "It's My Life"? I'm still trying to decide…

What is your financial theme song? Are you barely making headway on debt (like me)? Or are you successfully following a budget and succeeding at all things money? (Could we talk?) Share! I'd love to hear! :)