I don’t even know where to begin. Mr. ODA and I are looking at our accounts wondering where it all went wrong. Only, it didn’t really go “wrong,” and we have plenty of money, we just don’t want to move anymore money. For not really doing any frivolous spending, we spent a lot. The rental houses needed a lot of money, which equated to high credit card balances and extra payments towards that.

We had been sitting with insurance money in our savings account or our Treasury account. That insurance money was paid out to us last summer, and we’ve been saving it until the deck was rebuilt. The deck is nearly complete, with a balance of only $3,500. So that’s $41,500 that’s left our cash accounts in the last month or so.

We have our typical monthly expenses – preschool tuition, YMCA registration. Then add in buying a few summer clothes staples for the kids (honestly, I’ve literally made it this for without having to buy them clothes because of hand-me-downs and gifts received, so this is a huge blessing and win). Although, I will note that these purchases totaled under $100. We had a pickleball tournament, kids bowl free subscription, a dance recital to purchase tickets for, an eye exam, contacts ordering, swim lessons, etc. All of these add up quick. Not to mention the gigantic purchases that were on the credit card of new flooring in a rental, new patio furniture to replace the set that a tree fell on last July, and season passes to the ski resort for next year (although that cost less than last year’s passes). We booked concert and baseball tickets for a trip this summer, bought flights to NY for a wedding, booked an AirBnB and rental car for a trip, paid for a week of summer camp for two of the kids, paid $800+ for taxes (that this jurisdiction allows me to pay with a credit card!), and then just the regular day to day spending.

It’s been an exhausting few weeks while we manage rental turnover, arguing with our deck contractor to do the job right (waterproofing is either 0% or 100%… there’s no “good enough”), managing a nasty tenant, reading two books that have a deadline of next Wednesday, an allergic reaction by one kid to amoxicillin, and keeping 3 kids alive and to all activities while finishing out the school year. All that to say, I plan to dig in much deeper into first-third-of-the-year spending here soon.

Our cash and investment accounts are down almost $37k from last month. Our credit cards are actually lower than last month, but the balances are still higher than I like to see. But everything else went in the right direction, with our net worth even increasing by over $25k. Hopefully we’ll hit a spending lull over the next month now and get back into a groove of ‘normal’ again.