House Account Monthly - August

I've decided to join a monthly meme at The Legacy of Home called Meme for Prudent Homemakers. I'll share bits of our budgeting experiences plus any tips/lessons learnt along the way.

1. Did you record all your spending this month?
Yes, I do this at the beginning of each week as a matter of habit.

2. What are your goals for keeping a ledger?
Ultimately we want to be debt free. That is no mortgage, no loans. We've always been very careful, but it's too easy to 'guess' we're okay then find later we're not. It's so much better to be accountable, therefore 'mind your account'!
This is an example we're teaching our children, also.

3. Do you have a success story to share?
Actually, this month I do. ☺ I divide our monthly allowance into fortnightly amounts. This is due to the fact that the pay comes in then, and it was a way of tracking smaller goals.
Well, I'm happy to say that we were almost $100 UNDER for our food budget after doing the minimal shopping week challenge last week. We're also just under for the other consumables (petrol, pet food, etc.)

On top of this, the annual home insurance was due. Ouch, that's always a lot of money, but a prerequisite of the mortgage agreement. Hubby decided to phone the company and ask if there were any benefits to being a customer with them for 15 years. Yes there were, AND there was another special going as well. So another $200+ saved thanks to one phone call.

4. (Optional) How are your children doing with this? Any cute sayings from them, or progress in their financial education?
The tax return cheque arrived today, so it was a perfect opportunity to show the children how to take it to the bank and fill in the paperwork.

5. Any helpful resources you've found? (such as a website, link to an article, or book)
To be honest, I hadn't really been looking for any last month.

6. Were you able to put aside some savings this month?
Yes!

7. Comments or Thoughts?
We watched a couple more episodes of "Gourmet Farmer" last night. There is an episode where he decides to sell at the local market with a friend, so puts in an enormous amount of work for seemingly so little return.
It was interesting to talk about how we, as a family, spend a lot of time doing certain jobs, especially food preparations, that do take a lot of time. However, the experience in the skills developed, the quality of food, savings made by only purchasing basic ingredients and the social interaction make this so much more valuable than any price you'd pay in a supermarket or restaurant.