Wrapping Up A Thrifty January

I ended the month with a car on fumes and amazingly $90 left in my checking account.  I was able to fill up the gas tank on my truck, and do my first round of grocery shopping for 2020.  I moved funds from savings to my checking account and wrote a check to my youngest daughter's orthodontist to make our final balloon payment on time.  Her braces are officially paid for and one less thing to worry about.

Once payday arrived on the 6th I paid all of my monthly expenses, made a good sized payment on my debt, met all of my savings goals and then filled the gas tank on my car.  I had just enough left for a couple small grocery shopping trips.  When my next payday arrived on the 21st I made my savings goal, paid my mortgage two weeks ahead of schedule and made another payment on my debt.  I was left with about $80 for the remainder of the month.

Medical bills have continued to trickle in, but I'm hoping to see the end of that by mid February.  Hopefully.  Fingers crossed for a healthy and medically uneventful 2020.  We have all three pledged to do our best not to get sick or injured this year.  Once my income tax refund arrives I plan to use that to tackle a big chunk of those expenses.  I prepared my taxes and filed my return this month so that should arrive soon.

I kept to my low spend goals without going out and spending money on anything we didn't need.  Our grocery total this month came in well under budget as we didn't really need much and are still working off of our winter stock up from last fall.  I purchased two resource books from Amazon using a gift card and a small amount of cash ($15).  I'll talk more about those later, but know that I'm very excited about them.  I also sold some old inventory on eBay to add money to our PayPal account and plan to continue doing that until it is gone.  We will use that money for miscellaneous household expenses as they crop up.

I used craft items I already had on hand to create my 2020 Christmas cards, three Valentines I plan to send out next month and fourteen birthday cards to replenish my stash.  I had a lot of fun working on these cards and hope to create more things as time allows.

It is hard to believe that the first month of 2020 is already over, but I'm very happy with the progress made so far.  Yes, I would've have liked to have made a bigger dent in our debt pile, but I did make some progress.  Even a little progress is still progress.  The goal this month really was to get everything paid without going in any deeper and that was accomplished, thankfully.  I have high hopes that February will bless us with greater progress.