One of my goals this month was to only go grocery shopping at our local A&P store. Apparently, this was only my goal. DH and DD whipped up a fantastic Mother’s Day dinner for me and the family but it made a huge dent in the grocery budget. They went to THREE stores to get all the ingredients for dinner and spent an extra week’s worth of the grocery budget. I’m not going to consider this a failure. It’ll just be a non-recurring “extra” for the month. Dinner was really good.
So DD is home for the summer and will be transferring from a university in PA to one here in NYC. Farm country just wasn’t her thing. My slush fund has depleted another $800 for her tuition and room/board deposit. I’m hoping I can keep this account funded until the end of the year. September is usually a heavy spending month with all the kids back to school and having to purchase all their books. My two kids in college will be instructed to buy used books whenever possible. Last year my daughter spent $275 for a math book and then dropped the class. We tried to sell it on Amazon and craigslist. The highest price being paid for it was around $25 – what a rip! We were able to sell other books on Amazon and collect close to $200 which made me very happy. The newer/cheaper trend is downloading textbooks but I’m not sure if they are interested in doing that.
SON1 has to have surgery again on his shoulder. The surgeon is not in our medical plan, but thank goodness he has agreed to accept whatever the insurance company is willing to pay. The last operation cost $10K and he accepted $8K. He has to do something a little different this time so I don’t know if it will cost more. Either way, that’s $2K I will not have to spend, although, I would if necessary. Physical therapy co-pays will probably cost close to that much anyway. (Thank you to the NYC officer who did not ticket my husband for an expired inspection sticker, while he was looking for parking so that SON1 could get his MRI – saving us about $50)
Besides the above, additional “extras” this month are a baby shower gift and a graduation dinner. I hope I can keep to it. Wish me luck.
Groceries, surgery and a nice policeman!
May 13th, 2010 at 04:42 pm
May 13th, 2010 at 04:57 pm 1273769850
May 13th, 2010 at 05:45 pm 1273772704
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May 21st, 2010 at 06:05 pm 1274465156
Jerry