Where did August go? School starts this coming week and our third year anniversary is just around the corner!!! Wow! Where did those three years go? 
Every month, I re-post our goals from the beginning of the month, share how we did, and add in our new goals for the coming month.
This coming month, September, holds a great deal of significance for us. Nathan begins his journey with seminary, I begin my journey as a contracted kindergarten teacher, and we celebrate three blessed years of marriage. We said good-bye to our awesome friends and church in eastern WA and settled back into our home in western WA. We also begin our journey towards paying for seminary in cash. This month it is very important that we pinch our pennies and find new and creative ways to live a great life together.
So! With that said, here’s how we did in August! (Goals are written in regular font, how we did is written in italics.)
August Goals:
Stay within the parameters of our budget again. It’d be great if we could be under again, but staying within is where we’ll keep our goal for now. I tweaked the budget this month making the budget areas smaller so that it will be a little more challenging.
And challenging it was! Unfortunately, I tweaked the gas budget very unrealistically. With three trips back and forth across the state for my teacher training and family reunion, there was just no way we were going to make $75 stretch that far! (What was I thinking?) So, we came in about $68 OVER budget this month. Considering how much I cut back, this is totally understandable.
Bring in $100 in extra money. I’m going to continue to try to find ways to increase our income. I’m hoping to do a little more babysitting and craigslist selling this month.
We came close this month:
Babysitting: $20
Rebates: $11
Being over reimbursed by a friend and they wouldn’t take back the overage: $4.50
Anniversary money: $50
We did put some stuff on craigs list, but none of it sold. We are going to try again next week and lower the prices a little bit.
Total in extra money: $85.50
Continue to meet weekly to talk and pray about our finances. We’re shooting for four meetings this month!
With the challenge of paying for school, we met and prayed about finances almost daily for awhile. We will continue this as God has taught us so much about prayer and trust.
If Nathan gets accepted to Bible School, create a plan for how we will allocate our budget accordingly.
We definitely did this the best that we could. We are still waiting on God to provide and I know He will. He is so good to us in all things.
Open an Etsy account. I’ve been wanting to do this with my handmade cards and scrapbooks for a LONG time! I need to at least try this to see if it would be lucrative at all. It’s worth a shot!
I have a small inventory ready to go. I also purchased some bubble envelopes for shipping on sale at Walgreens last week for $.39/each. I should be able to get this officially going in September.
Increase our savings in our ING Direct account by 30%!
This did not happen. Mostly because we need to use this money to pay for seminary. That’s okay.
Continue to walk as much as we can! We need the gas budget to stay small as I will be driving back and forth to Vancouver quite a bit!
Yeah. we did walk. But duh Rach! You can’t walk to Vancouver! It still costs $40+ to fill up your car! Yeah, this one is kind of silly in hind sight. I know we walked a lot and we car pooled as much as possible when figuring out to get to the family reunion.
Get some quotes from mechanics on how much it will cost to repair our timing belt.
This didn’t happen either. Oh well. Let’s try this one next month if the Lord provides the funds!
New September Goals!
1. Stay within the parameters of the budget overall.
2. Set up a monthly payment with Nate’s seminary.
3. Get all my accounts set up with my school district for compensation and whatnot.
4. List 5 things on craigslist.
5. Bring in $50 in extra money.
6. Get the Etsy account going!
7. If the Lord provides, get timing belt changed.
8. Continue to meet and pray about finances at least once a week.
9. Trust the Lord, our provider.
This Bible verse has really blessed Nathan and I and I even made some art for our house with this verse on it. I thought I would share it as kind of our “theme” verse for September…
“Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; Though the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls- Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” Hab. 3:17-18
