Things aren't quiet where we want them.  We decided to go ahead and finish most of the home repairs we were in the middle of while Angela's parents came to visit and as we expected it used up most of our savings.

Wow, what a month! Quite a bit of unexpected expenses this month, and almost all of it was car repairs and/or expenses. We weren't able to save as much this past month because of it, but at least we didn't have to dip into our reserve, we just didn't put anymore away this month.

Whew we made it!  This month has really opened our eyes to what we need to be saving and what we need to be putting towards debt and how we have not been doing that!

Well, we are almost there and we have done better than I thought we would. 

This past week has been about adapting this new “saving thing” to our lives or loosening up a little bit in order to make it more comfortable so we can keep it up. 

Well, maybe not so giant but still a big step for me:  I am re-using a purse from last year!  I have never in my life re-used a purse!  I have been carrying my winter time black purse so far this summer and this weekend finally decided that I need to change over into a lighter colored purse but didn’t want to spend the money to buy a new one.  So I went to my closet last night and retrieved my white purse from last year.  I cleaned it up a little and it looks good as new! 

Well, we are not doing as well as I had hoped but we can still recover.  We have all been sick this week so there was some added expense for medicine and some eating out since neither of us had it in us to cook.  We did better at the grocery store this week by clipping coupons again and really looking at what we were buying (no steaks this week) but then we had to buy diapers and that kind of threw a big kink in things. 

Meet the Reyes family, our July Challenge participants. German repairs cell phones for AT&T and I’m Lindsay, I am a land planner and I work by the Galleria.  Haydyn is 3 ½ months old and her hobbies include squealing, drooling, and attempting to roll over. 

Well it was a good weekend. Went camping with family and spent wisely. Bought a case of water with the drink mix-ins instead of cokes and gatorade, made my own dips, and made other smart food choices for the trip instead of eating there or buying expensive. So all in all, I only spent 5 dollars more than planned and that was on ice. The kids and I had a blast so it was very much worth it.