The Honest Truth about Spending Decisions
The day before we planned to sit down and talk about how to spend a small windfall, guess what happened?
Inspired by yesterday’s post by Abby Davisson, I’d love to now hear from you, Double Shifters: What spending decisions have you made recently? Or do you have some spending decisions coming up soon that are top of mind right now?
Let me share a little bit about what’s going on with me in this department. Thanks to a lot of legwork by my husband, this year we’ve had a detailed monthly family budget and managed to do a pretty good job sticking to it so far. (For those interested, we use the Quicken App and it works for us.) One area we’ve stayed disciplined on that has paid off is grocery spending and eating out, both of which we found can wildly balloon if you aren’t paying attention. Better budgeting combined with having a somewhat more predictable income than I’ve had for several recent years (Thanks in part to Double Shift members – your monthly memberships provide me with some meaningful financial stability and about one-third of my income) makes me able to better think about future spending decisions.
Definitely on our decision roadmap is thinking about what changes we want to make as our childcare costs go down over the next year or two. The twins are entering public Pre-K and public afterschool in August (which is not free but significantly less than our current childcare costs) so we are taking a step down in costs this fall and another jump down in fall 2025. Thinking about how to align this cost change to better support our family’s values is already something we are talking about.
Related to this, it probably comes as no surprise to you that I am OVER the status quo of American summer and am doing some radical rethinking about how I want our family to spend time and money in 2025.
In terms of short-term money decisions, we recently sold a car, which resulted in a modest windfall. The day before we planned to sit down and talk about how to spend it, guess what happened?