If Money Grew on Trees...

If only money grew on trees.... That would make my life a whole lot easier! This post is a "monetary minute" as G would call it. With my new job and G's raise at work we have some unexpected funds coming our way. So for family night we talked money. Although we try to save money here and there (by using coupons and shopping the sales rack) sometimes its amazing how quickly we can burn through our hard earned mulah. So we started our savings.....

approx. $12.50

In all honesty once we started saving our change we were surprised how quickly it added up! This is the start of our travel fund! (next summer G and I plan on traveling to Spain!) But G seems to be an expert in the art of saving money... our last trip to California produced this gem:

Its a can that says "I Garrett, can be a missionary." The top is sealed off and only a small coin sized slit was made on top. G saved up for his mission in this can. (although you can see where he tried to use a can opener in his moments of weakness!) When we brought this home we opened it up and counted it out of curiosity. Here was the results:

A whopping $30.47!! G saved up that money about fifteen years ago. As you can tell, we are now "rolling in the dough!" So back to our family night... G and I looked at our incomes and set up a budget!!! You may think this sounds like a boring family home evening, (and ten years ago if my parents had suggested a budgeting FHE they would have been shot down pretty quickly!) but I really loved it! G taught me how to set up a spreadsheet and how to track our finances through Excel. Now I know exactly where all our money is going (and let me tell you the 'eating out' category was much bigger than I had anticipated!) After the spreadsheet we were feeling ambitious and went on to do more adult-type things by setting up a real savings account at USAA as well as our car insurance and renters insurance. Who knew being an adult could be so cool? We ended the night with a game of monopoly! G won. However, I gladly admit defeat because monopoly isn't real money so it doesn't count, right?