Our family has a high deductible health insurance plan. We don’t have any chronic health problems, and we rarely go to the doctor. During a typical year, we save money with the high deductible policy. However, when things don’t go as planned, money starts flying out of our HSA. Last February, our oldest son started…
Month: June 2021
Sealing a deck and bringing it back to life
I am terrible when it comes to maintenance, which is why it has been about 12 years since I sealed our deck (or even cleaned it). Sealing a deck isn’t hard, I’m just really good at not maintaining things. As our two readers know, I am also not good at documenting home improvements. Luckily, this…
Am I a bad parent? – KITTEN EDITION
A friend contacted me last week to ask if I would watch her tiny 6 week old kitten for a few days. I thought our kids would get a kick out of it, so I volunteered to help her. She brought her kitten over on Monday afternoon, and we instantly fell in love with the little…
Working Toward Retirement – June
Hooray! We are back in the black this month – up $3,882. Anytime we have positive growth, it’s always a good feeling. One of these days I’ll get around to sharing my financial spreadsheet. More specifically, my compound interest calculator for retirement. Until I get the time to figure out how to record my screen…
The Cost of Remodeling a Kitchen Revisited
In January, Christy broke down some of the costs involved in remodeling our kitchen. There was a lot of work that went into this 4 month project, so I wanted to get a better view of our total cost. I went back through our credit card statements because I wanted to capture every thing from…
Hershey Park: Our First Trip During the Pandemic
We just got back from our first trip in nearly 2 years. I was feeling a little nervous about visiting Hershey Park with five children in tow during a pandemic, but it turned out to be a pretty awesome mini-vacation. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a normal person, living…
Saving for the future – June
I missed last month, but we are finally back up above $20,000 in our savings. With our federal tax return and the $1,000 of our normal savings we are up to $21,255. We earned $9.82 in interest. Only $18,745 left to get to our $40,000 goal to cover non-emergency emergencies (new car, etc.) In vacation…
You Get What You Pay For
When I was pregnant with our third child, John and I decided to buy new beds for our 2 older children. At the time, we didn’t have much money. After extensive shopping, we selected beds that looked decent, but were very budget friendly. This would have been a good plan, except that we should have…