Greetings from Tokyo!

I'm in Tokyo won't be posting much. I have a few goals I'd still like to accomplish this week:

1. Stay relaxed. I'm not a big international traveler, and this is a very stressful week of really challenging meetings.
2. Get as much rest as possible. Last time I came home, I was really ill. 
3. Eat well, & get some exercise!
4. Enjoy the trip as much as I can. See the three above. ;-)
5. Use any downtime to clean up my budget & get some personal finances coordinated.
6. Avoid spending any personal money, save for a small souvenir for the kids. This should be easy.
7. Figure out our tax plan. This could be an entirely separate post (and will be), but we just heard back from the accountant, and we owe. . . a LOT. We need to both figure out where to come up with the money, as well as make major changes to our withholdings for the year.
8. Finalize our travel budget for the year. I need to attend a memorial service, and I'm reworking a planned trip that will result in more flights, but is the best thing for the kids. All of this means I need to completely re-look at our 2015 travel budget & make some tradeoffs.

That's all for now, and here's the view from my hotel room!

A bittersweet weekend

We spent last weekend with my family, celebrating the boys birthdays. We went to an indoor water park with my sister & her boys, and had a fantastic time with all of the kiddos.

We also found out that my grandmother was in the hospital, and while the weekend was extremely painful for all of us, I'm so glad that I could be there for my mother. We took turns staying with my grandmother, comforting my mother, and staying with her husband as he made very difficult decisions. Although the weekend was nothing like I could have imagined, it was important that I was able to support my family & also to say goodbye to my grandmother, who passed away while I was in the air on Monday, flying home.

I feel so lucky that I had three of my grandparents with me until just a few years ago - my boys know all of them, and I had such a special bond with them growing up. It's hard to say goodbye to that era where you actually have grandparents, and my grandmother's passing reminds me of the difficult years that lay ahead with my own parents. My mom also has a special needs sister, so we're all very concerned about her future without my grandmother in the picture - both from a financial standpoint, as well as the logistics of getting groceries each week, spending time with her, etc.

There's a lot more here, but that's all I can muster up to write for the moment.

Take the time to hug everyone you love! I got the chance to spend time with my grandmother at Christmas, and will always be so grateful that I dragged myself away from the work drama on Christmas Eve to give her hugs, and chat with her.

Yearly Budget Spending - 10% of the way there

I've never used yearly budget categories before, so I'm still experimenting with ways to track & report. I figure that a checkin every 10% of the year might work. Either way, I figure there will be peaks & valleys, as many of the yearly categories are spiky (travel, for example).

Okay, so my total budget for the yearly categories is $46,250. As you can see, we've spent just over $4,100, with the majority of that being the boys college fund. In fact, given tuition pricing, we'll probably hold at that amount for the year. However, we have quite a bit of expensive travel stuff to book for the summer, so I'm expecting a giant jump in travel as I book flights, etc. With 10% of the year elapsed, we've spent about 9% of your yearly budget, so we're trending just under our planned spending. Again, I don't anticipate that we'll close the year far under budget (this budget was mean to be pretty accurate & I used last year's numbers to calculate), but I haven't started buying any of our summer air fares yet.

Totals	Budget	Actual	Percent Spent	Percent Year Elapsed
Category
Auto	4000	232.5	5.81%	10.96%
Boys (All)	1000	34.58	3.46%	10.96%
Boys Activities	4000	0	0.00%	10.96%
Boys College	2500	2408	96.32%	10.96%
Charity	250	0	0.00%	10.96%
Christmas	2500	0.5	0.02%	10.96%
Clothing (All)	2000	481.14	24.06%	10.96%
Gifts	1500	495.224125	33.01%	10.96%
Health	300	187.17	62.39%	10.96%
House	2000	204.85	10.24%	10.96%
Personal	1200	66	5.50%	10.96%
Taxes	5000	0	0.00%	10.96%
Travel	20000	0	0.00%	10.96%
	46250	4109.964125	8.89%	10.96%

I'll also have to watch the categories where we're trending way up. The majority of the clothing spend was for the boys soccer uniforms. I do have a few things I bought for myself that I'll be returning. On the gifts side, M & I went out for dinner for my birthday (and he bought me tulips), so that plus the boys birthdays is listed in that spending category. I'll really have to keep my eye on health (no more races!)

What about you? Do you track your yearly spending? How often do you assess your spending against your budget? 

Weekly Spending (2/2-2/8/15)

Tracking our weekly expenses really helps me stay on track. Last week was crazy - lots of unplanned eating out, which is pretty unusual for us. I blame the boys insane schedules. Here's what we spent last week! I feel like this was a very spendy week, and the summary reminds me of my old ways. I know it's just an usually spendy week (with more of the same next week when we travel), so I need to keep looking for ways to trim back!

• Monday:
• I was home sick, so I picked up soup for lunch. $8.13 at Panera
• $9.01 at the produce stand
• Tuesday - 
• $36. Pedicure
• $80. Paid for my last month of fitness classes. They no longer work for my schedule, so I needed to cancel.
• Wednesday - 
• No spend day
• Thursday - 
• No spend day
• Friday - 
• $121.50 - a new battery for the car
• $2.97 - Papa Johns. (This was the remaining amount after a Groupon)
• Saturday - 
• $14.94 - lunch at Veggie Grill for three of us. I had a free birthday entree that covered my cost.
• $80.43 - Costco, groceries
• $55.77 - drinks out for my birthday
• $68.75 - waxing appointment ;-)
• $12.93 - a gift for me (M made this charge)
• $254.72 - dinner out for my birthday. Obviously, a huge splurge! We'll be going back again, but to the bar area of the restaurant for appetizers & drinks in the future. The food was amazing!
• Sunday - 
• $15.99 - Lucky, groceries
• $4.61 - produce stand
• $1.03 - baking soda at Rite Aid. Will get reimbursed via Savings Star

Total spent = $766.78. What about you? Do you track your spending? 

Menu Plan Monday

It's a short week for us this week, as we'll be out of town. This is probably our most boring menu ever! :-) Here's what we'll be eating:

• Monday - Tacos & homemade guacamole
• Tuesday - out to dinner for my birthday!
• Wednesday - Leftover tacos & guacamole
• Thursday - grab something before the airport. I'm thinking Pizza My Heart - the kiddos favorite!
• Friday - eating at the indoor water park with my sister. Pizza. Maybe no airport pizza on Thursday, in that case.
• Saturday - eating at my parents house. I think my dad is making lasagna. Yum.
• Sunday - party for the kids birthday. Pizza. No joke. I think I'm seeing a pattern here! 
• Monday - flying back from Portland. Whatever we do for dinner, I can promise you, it won't be PIZZA! :-)

What's on your menu this week? I swear, we normally do pizza like twice/month. It's not a regular thing to have it multiple times in a week. ;-) Are you also pizza lovers? The boys could eat it every day & not grow tired of it. 

Lovely Sunday

The weather is terrible (I'm really not used to three days of downpours anymore ;-)), but it's been a nice, relatively relaxing Sunday. The boys have had a crazy whirlwind of activities over the past few weekends: 8 sports practices, four games, and two different team picture events in a week. I'm exhausted!

I learned a very valuable lesson about scheduling multiple sports per season per kid. Basically, I'll never do it again! :-)

M & I did get to do a date night last night (early birthday dinner for me, and Valentine's day combo) & it was such a fun & fabulous night. Amazing fun, great drinks, fun company . . . :-) Loved it! We really need to start doing date nights every three weeks, instead of once a month. I have a lot of work traveling coming up, so I feel guilty having evenings just with M when I'm already missing out on kid time. But, dates are so important for a healthy marriage.

I'm looking forward to a short week - we leave for Portland on Thursday evening, and will be spending a few days with my family. We're taking the boys to an indoor water park resort for their birthdays with my nephews (yes, my sister & I spend Valentine's Day together at an indoor water park with our four boys. . . so romantic!). Then my parents are throwing the boys a family birthday party, and we're flying back. I get to see a few people we haven't seen in 18 months -  so excited!

I went for a walk (in the rain - I'm so Seattle :-)), did yoga, made cookies, took four boys to soccer practice, started packing for the weekend, and did an enormous mound of laundry. I'm making blackened tilapia and rice for dinner (yum!) and pairing it with my favorite wine. M got me six bottles of my favorite "fancy" wine. He knows me very well.

That's about all that's happening here! The boys are growing like weeds, and eating so much I just can't believe it. Maybe it's all of those sports. ;-)

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Weekly spending report - 1/26-2/1/15

Another week, more spending! :-) Here's what we spent last week:

• Monday - no spend day
• Tuesday - no spend day
• Wednesday - no spend day
• Thursday - no spend day 
• Friday - 
• $115.59 - Amazon for birthday gifts for the boys. I'll get back $100 of this from my mom.
• $495 for the nanny
• $1376 - boys college accounts. We've now completed our planned 2015 contributions!
• $71.60 - new running pants & top for me. New jeans for the oldest kiddo. I'll see if I like the workout stuff. I loathe the mall these days, but about half the stuff doesn't work out & goes back.
• Saturday - 
• $9.62 - Trader Joes for more soccer snacks. We somehow ended up with all of our soccer/basketball snack bringing rotations in the past few weeks. We should be off the hook now. :-)
• $33.85 - Gas
• $5.49 - groceries. A friend asked if we could keep their son for dinner, due to a travel snafu. It wasn't a problem, but we were having cheeseburgers for dinner (already prepped) & their son keeps kosher. So, off to the store to pick up veggie burgers & fries for his meal.
• $11.01 - Rite Aid for cleaning supplies. Our cleaning lady was out of town. She brings all of her own supplies, and we didn't replace ours that we had to toss during our move.  I suppose the $11 is cheaper than what we pay the cleaning lady, so it was a net win! ;-)
• $156.09 - Costco, groceries
• $28.27 - Costco, beer for the big game
• $53.91 - insurance for M during his car racing experience (his Christmas gift). I reminded him multiple times to bring his insurance card, but . . . well, he forgot. Sigh
• Sunday
• $47.96 - Gap Kids. Everyone has grown out of everything! Both boys have put on 10 pounds & grown substantially taller, so we're in the position of replacing pajamas, pants, etc. 
• $25.21 - Trader Joes - snacks for the big game. To be fair, I always make my own appetizers, but I felt horrible on Sunday (fevers, chills, etc) & just wasn't up to it. I bought pre-made appetizers for everyone. 

Total spend for the week = $2429!!! The two big outliers were the college savings and the nanny. Excluding those two, we spent $558 - a much more normal number. :-)

Okay, how about you? How did you do on your weekly spending?