Yesterday was the last day of school. Yay! 
Wah! 
I am happy for the break, and the chance to get a lot of projects done in the library on my relaxed schedule (i.e. not at crack of morning), but I am going to miss the teachers who have left for other pastures. They mostly are the ones I hung around with and did things with this past year.
One of the new hires seems like she might be someone I could get along with, so I am somewhat hopeful. (Although she won't be here til August.)
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Today at church we had a guest speaker. He was really good. One quote I especially liked was, "God does not push or pull people, he draws them in." I need to remember that when it comes to various people in my life.
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So ... I have decided to do my budget a little differently. I divided my categories into two sections - The MUSTS and The Fluctuators. Included in the MUSTS is a Car Payment category an EF category and a Roth category. I then created a "loan" of $10,000 for my car. Using my total savings, I "paid" off $2000 of the loan, then subtracted another $2000 (from summer school) and then finally divided the remaining $6000 into 14 payments. This way I will have my car (mostly) funded by September, 2013. (My goal is to purchase my next car in October - end of month/fiscal year - purchase last year's model.)
Then I changed my EF goal to $2500, subtracted the amount I have right now in my BOFA account, and divided the remainder by 6.
Next I figured out how much I'd need to send to my ROTH each month to have $1800 sent by December, and divided that by 6.
After allocating money to the other MUSTS, the remainder goes into an unbudgeted slush fund which will be used to fund the Fluctuators. At the end of each month (by the 2nd) half of anything left in the slush fund will go to the car payment category.
I am going to treat the car "loan" as a real loan (minus interest). If I *really* had a loan, I'd be throwing everything I had at it till it was paid off ... so I'm hoping that same strategy will work here. 
Will see.
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I've bought two Groupons recently - one for a 2 hour horseback ride and one for a Trolley tour of ABQ. In total, they cost $26. My grandma when she learned of these purchases and that I was planning on doing it in one day, insisted on sending me money to make it an overnight stay and a relaxing trip.
So ... I need to call the horse ranch to make sure, but I am thinking of going out Thursday morning for the horseback ride, maybe take in a museum or see if I can find the ABC (Adventist Book Center which sells vege meat products), spend the night at a hotel, do the trolley ride Friday morning (late!) do a Costco run and come back home. My Grandma gave me enough money for a nice hotel AND a meal out, so I might do California Pizza Kitchen again. While there I'll also probably stop at the Apple store and pick up a second battery charger for my phone (I have one, but think I better get a second one for the train trip.)
I think it'll make for a nice short vacation.
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I saw Men in Black 3 on Friday with several of the outgoing teachers. It was awesome! Love me some Will Smith. I paid for one of the teachers tickets (we bought them online just in case of it being sold out like Hunger Games and Avengers were.) Discover is paying 5% on movies ... so I was more than happy to help her out. (She paid me back in cash later.)
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Tomorrow I am going to have a day of major house cleaning. Laundry, dishes, sweeping, scrubbing, etc. My house needs it badly, plus I invited a couple from church to dinner on Friday night!! (They had me over for lunch a couple Sabbaths ago.)
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Oh! I filled up on gas yesterday for only $3.52 gallon!! That was nearly $.20 cheaper than in T! Sweet!
Summer! Revamping budget ... again ... Short trip
May 27th, 2012 at 01:53 am
May 27th, 2012 at 02:27 am 1338085673
May 27th, 2012 at 04:28 am 1338092926
Have a nice get away!
May 27th, 2012 at 10:54 am 1338116057
How nice of your grandma to turn it into a trip!
May 27th, 2012 at 12:48 pm 1338122884
May 27th, 2012 at 05:58 pm 1338141487
May 27th, 2012 at 05:59 pm 1338141575
May 27th, 2012 at 06:19 pm 1338142742
May 27th, 2012 at 06:28 pm 1338143337
LOL Sicily - no worries, I've done the same thing myself before.