Our main goal is to save $750 a month towards our student loans from January through July. I was hoping for a minimum of $750 and than as much as we could scrape together beyond that. Well, after we got stuck overnight out of town when the brakes went out on my car, we realized that we’re going to need to replace 2 cars within the next two years, not just one at a time like we were planning. So, we decided we’d stick with the $750 towards the student loans and whatever else we could manage past that would go into our car replacement fund. We saved some from paychecks and moved some other money around, which gives us $1400 in our new car fund. We’re expecting around $900 in a tax refund soon, which we’ll also put towards it! I’m thrilled with that progress, especially since we were starting with nothing at the beginning of February and this wasn’t part of our original plan.
My other challenge for February was to spend as little as I could on groceries and use more from my freezer and pantry. I did pretty well at first, but started buying more fresh fruit towards the end of the month to add to the applesauce and other frozen fruit we already had. If I weren’t pregnant, I would have made do with what we had on hand, but I’m trying to make sure I’m getting lots of fruits and vegetables and I wasn’t doing so well on the fruit side with just what we had already. I ended up spending $40 on groceries for the month, but I also had the opportunity to buy beef from someone I work with that came from her brother’s farm. She bought half a cow and shared what wouldn’t fit in her freezer with the rest of us. I paid $50 for 20 pounds of ground beef and 11 pounds of various other cuts. I don’t usually buy much meat, for a number of reasons, but this was a great deal and we’ll definitely make use of it, albeit slowly. It’s a good way for me to get in some more protein and iron right now. Not necessary, but helpful. Between the regular groceries and the meat, I ended up spending $90 on groceries, instead of $180 like normal, resulting in $90 towards the loans in addition to the regular $750.
Our FPU class has been fun and it has been a good recharge for us. We’ve refined out budget a little more and are excited about making progress towards paying off our student loans.
I haven’t sold anything yet on Craig’s list or ebay. Time to get moving on that one! We are also thinking of having an FPU group yard sale in May.
Summary/Breakdown:
$840 towards student loans ($2256.93 so far for the year)
$1464.18 towards a replacement car
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