Here is an update on how Project Minivan is going. Starting in April, I will be saving $20 a week of my grocery budget for this fund. God has blessed us with tons of free food recently so I know it will be very possible to do this. One of the Mexican families here left abruptly with very little warning and before they left they gave us a bunch of stuff from their pantry and several pounds of hamburger, some frozen fish, and a whole turkey from their freezer. We were sad to see them go though! One family, the most demanding one, still remains.
Here I was looking for ideas to make a few bucks here and there, and my husband, being the financier of the family, goes and saves hundreds of dollars with the touch of a pen on the budget sheet! However, I'm not complaining! So far, the Minivan Fund is at $766 as of today! Hurray! We got a notice about the Economic Stimulus refund and we are excited about that as well as it should bring our fund up to $2,400. Our goal is $3,500-$4,000, which will buy us a decent used minivan in the Twin Cities (unfortunately the picture above is just for fun, not the actual van we hope to buy!). King Jo's folks have tentatively offered to purchase and drive out a van for us in July or August. That would be wonderful!
With no surprise emergencies, and careful spending in the coming months, we should be able to buy it for cash around the time the baby makes his/her arrival!
What financial goals do you and your family have for this summer?
1 comment:
Nate and I have been talking extensively these past few days about all the projects we want to do around here and how we can save for them. Our #1 priority this summer is to build a garage. Nate would do most of the work building it himself,(as he did at our old place) so that would save us a lot of money.
We are also hoping to be able to buy a different vehicle soon. Originally we were thinking a minivan, but the more we got to talking about it, the more we realized that we could get by with just another car (instead of the pickup we currently have). A decent car would get better gas mileage than a van, and since we haven't completely outgrown a car, we can hardly justify spending more in gas in exchange for a little more comfort and space. However, if and when child #3 comes along, we'll probably have to do the minivan thing as well.
By the way, if I could just go off an a little tangent for a moment...
Isn't it frustrating that vehicles don't get better gas mileage than they do? All the ads and commercials today brag about vehicles getting 20-30 mpg. So what?! Our Honda is 14 years old and we often get 35 mpg. Why haven't the automobile manufacturers, in 14 years, figured out how to improve them?
So anyway, that was a long-about way of saying we're saving up for a garage and a car. :-)
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