Sunshine on Your Shoulder
When the sun is shining and the weather warm but cooled by a small breeze, working outside is close to heaven. On Sunday morning, my wife worked all day (really, all day, sunrise to sunset) laying stone and stone dust to finish our patio. It looks wonderful. I spent the morning mowing the lawn with our RealMower (human powered mower), trimming, edging, and bringing stone over for our patio.
Then I sat outside and worked on my laptop. I had a few cold ones. Beautiful day, you just can't put a value on it.
Sunday afternoon, sitting outside, was time I used to check over our budget. It's probably a good thing to, every few months, see how we're doing on our finances. I still have a problem with eating out far too many times in a week. I'd like to get it down to 2 times a week, but right now I'm at 4-5. That's too much. We're really good about not eating out when we've been grocery shopping, but there's that period of a few days where your stocks are running low and nothing looks good...so you eat out. We need a better stock of staples to keep eating in during the grocery store avoidance stretches.
That's not to say we're not doing good. We knocked out over 15,000 extra off of our Home Equity Loan that built our addition in the past year. We had positive cashflow each month for the last 12, which can only bode well since we had a home addition project, a wedding, and a honeymoon to pay for. It even looks like our retirement accounts are back to where they were return wise pre-downturn. That's a nice sign.
Then I sat outside and worked on my laptop. I had a few cold ones. Beautiful day, you just can't put a value on it.
Sunday afternoon, sitting outside, was time I used to check over our budget. It's probably a good thing to, every few months, see how we're doing on our finances. I still have a problem with eating out far too many times in a week. I'd like to get it down to 2 times a week, but right now I'm at 4-5. That's too much. We're really good about not eating out when we've been grocery shopping, but there's that period of a few days where your stocks are running low and nothing looks good...so you eat out. We need a better stock of staples to keep eating in during the grocery store avoidance stretches.
That's not to say we're not doing good. We knocked out over 15,000 extra off of our Home Equity Loan that built our addition in the past year. We had positive cashflow each month for the last 12, which can only bode well since we had a home addition project, a wedding, and a honeymoon to pay for. It even looks like our retirement accounts are back to where they were return wise pre-downturn. That's a nice sign.