July Recap

July was a good month overall, because we had so much extra income coming in, but we also fell way short of our goals. 

I had hoped to finish out the month with $8000 in savings ($2000 for tuition, and $1000 for the upcoming home repair). The actual amount is only $7,615.75. 

We owe about $400 more on the credit cards than I'd planned on, pretty much all from the last-minute vacation. I had projected that the outstanding balance would be $25,600 and the actual amount is $26,028.49. 

Selling stuff

I listed some old textbooks (from last semester) for sale online several months ago, and only one sold right away. The other two listings actually expired after 60 days, and I had to relist them for sale. Both books sold this week, probably students trying to get good deals on textbooks for the upcoming fall term. One was $35, the other was only $15 - but hey, after shipping that's still an extra $40! 

I have a few other books laying around, and a few household items that we no longer need, so I think I'm going to spend a couple of hours this weekend listing those items on Amazon and Craigslist... hopefully I'll be able to make another $60 or so! 

Anniversary Gifts

I've been pondering over anniversary gift ideas for awhile now, and debating whether I should buy anything at all. We did just take a short trip, and we bought a few souvenirs for my husband (and I think he'd be happy counting those as an anniversary gift). 

But I do want him to do something special for me, and I'd feel too selfish if I expected that of him but didn't do something in return. He's hinted at a few things he'd like, but they're all in the $100-400 range, which is way more than I want to spend. I'd love to buy him the things that he really wants, but I'd much rather be that much closer to having the credit card debts paid off.

One of the items he's mentioned is a new wedding band. The one he wants retails for around $300 at the local jewelry stores, and is online for $100. I searched on eBay and found one that looks identical for only $25. Now that's definitely in my price range! 

The listing said that it's brand new, and that the metals are genuine. I'm a little dubious, because it seems too good to be true, but I know jewelry tends to be marked up quite heavily, so I guess it's possible. I'm just hoping that it arrives soon, and that it is what the listing claimed. I don't think I'll tell hubby how much I paid for it though! 

Grocery Shopping

I recently discovered that a few Kroger stores in the area double coupons up to $1 (most other Kroger's only double coupons up to 50 cents!), so I went there yesterday to see how well I could do. I don't usually like doing my "full" shopping at Kroger, because they do tend to be more expensive than several other local grocery stores, but I had a ton of $.75 and $1 coupons...  

Thanks to a large stack of coupons, many of which were going to expire soon anyways, I scored tons of free & really cheap stuff. The freebies included yogurt, toothpaste, air freshener, deodorant, pet snacks, and candy. I think I'm going to have to make a more conscious effort to set aside those $1 coupons, and then head up to Kroger every week or two!  

Vacation

I had optimistically budgeted only $300 for our mini-vacation. $100 for travel, $150 for food, and $50 for souvenirs and miscellaneous expenses. We definitely went over-budget, and ended up spending $450. 

A significant portion of the driving was on toll roads, at a cost of $25 each way. I had realized that there would be some tolls, but I definitely underestimated how much it would be. Pennsylvania is really expensive! 

We also ended up spending far more on souvenirs & miscellaneous things than originally planned. We spent $40 on books for the trip before we even left, and we spent about $120 while there. 

The only thing that we stayed on or under budget was food, and that's mostly because someone else picked up dinner one night, and we skipped lunch another day. 

Gas Bill

I logged in to check my email this morning, and found the monthly email from our gas company saying that our bill is now available (most of our bills & utilities have online accounts/e-pay, so we use that to cut down on paper waste and to save on postage). Our summer gas bill runs around $50/mo, with the absolute lowest being around $35 if we're really cutting back on showers & laundry.

July's gas bill: $16.86

At first I thought that perhaps they had estimated our usage for the month and managed to screw something up (we've had several problems with both the electric and gas companies doing that in the past, and then we end up with a bill that is $100-200 more than usual when the actual vs. estimated readings catch up). Turns out that they had estimated our bill last month, and they must have over-estimated our usage - so I'm thrilled.

It's only $35 saved, but after yesterday's realization that we're somehow $850 behind for the month, every little bit helps!

Property Values

We bought our current house at near the peak of housing prices. We settled on a purchase price around $180k, and felt that we had an ok deal. We made the mistake of getting too attached (and desperate to settle, after being unable to find something that met all our criteria but was still in our price range!), so we felt that we had overpaid slightly, but we made that tradeoff when we placed our final offer. 

Three years later, our house is valued somewhere around $145k, a drop of $35k (almost -20%). It means that we're upside-down on our mortgage, and we're pretty much locked in to a house that we can't afford to sell. We'd love to "move up" into a bigger nicer home, but we wouldn't be able to come up with the difference on what we owe, much less a down payment on the new house. So we're stuck where we are, and we're trying to make the best of it. 

Although the entire state has suffered some pretty significant drops in property values, I knew that where we live hasn't been hit as badly as others. For curiosity's sake, I decided to check and see how it's affected property values of some of our friends and family who live nearby. 

One couple we know paid $140k in 2003, and their house is now worth $120k (-14%).  Another couple paid $95k in 2004, and their house is now worth $45k (-47%). And yet another paid $265k in 2005, and their house is now worth $215k (-19%). 

It definitely sucks that values have dropped so much, but it's oddly reassuring to know that so many people we know are in the same situation. We've lost a lot of money on this house (if we were to sell it now), and especially if we include the money that we've put into repairs & improvements (not even talking about mortgage interest and property taxes!), but it could be worse. I'm sure that we'll end up taking a loss when we move (because we don't plan to stay put for more than a few years), but hopefully we will get enough to at least pay off our mortgage when we do finally sell.