The weather in April was truly amazing! I attribute our low spending for this month mostly on the fact that we were constantly out and about having fun. Because we live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the best kinds of fun are often free. When we get so busy with hiking, hanging out at the lake, going to parks, being in our super fun backyard: well we just don’t have any time or desire to go spend money. A trip to Costco is fun middle of February, but in the spring? There is real fun that needs to be had.

We also enjoy a really fantastic back yard, although a little pricey (and a lot of work!) to get to this point, is a constant source of fun and relaxation for us. All the kids run around, play on the trampoline or swing set, we have a fire pit, hot tub, fruit trees, garden boxes, ducks, strawberry plants and raspberry bushes. The apple trees were in full bloom this month.  We spend the whole morning sitting under them, drinking our tea and coffee and watching the kids play. That is often our perfect Saturday morning.

We started the month by finishing up with my grandma’s funeral, which is where the $80 of vacation money was spent. The hubs really didn’t want to take it from our vacation account, but that seemed to be place most fitting. We try to keep our budget categories as wide and “catch all” as possible.

The last 4 years of life have been so crazy that the Hubs hadn’t gone to the dentist! Plus he has had dental insurance this whole time, which makes the whole thing quite silly. But I digress. So he has been getting “caught up” on that for the last few months. Which consisted of a checkup, deep cleaning, two small fillings, and a regular cleaning. Dental insurance is kind of a joke, which is why I am seriously considering dropping mine and just paying cash. Despite having coverage, we have had a few hundred dollars of copay expenses. Our coverage doesn’t even cover 100% of our cleaning. Crazy right?

Our largest expense by far was our giving this month which made up 34% of our expenses. We average out 10-15% over the course of the year, some months carrying more weight than others. You might have noticed that generally we land at $226, which is our constant contributions to 2 organizations that we support. The rest of our giving is more spontaneous. There is an organization we love that holds a fundraiser once a year. I like to give during that event. I also used the earnings from a side hustle to cut a check for a library that is being built. I am a big fan of libraries. Not only do I love reading books for free, but I appreciate not having to store the books at my home. I am actually writing this at our local library today. A wonderful place for sure!

Without our giving this month, our actual expenses would have been $1623. That reaffirms something I hold to be true.

When your life is full of fun, adventure and people you love: you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy life.

I hope you all are enjoying the spring as much as our herd is!

The most curious thing about our budget is the expenses we don’t have.

We don’t have a mortgage–paid cash for our house!

We don’t have car payments. But own a car, minivan, motorcycle, and pop up camper.

We don’t have credit card bills or student loans anymore.