End of May Update
June 1st, 2014 at 08:20 pmApril was on track but May was a big spend month for both food and miscellaneous expenses. June however is a new month and I will be aiming to get the food budget back on track (miscellaneous expenses hit a couple times per year and tend to take care of themselves, no shopping addicts in this house).
My brother is employed once more so I don't have to worry about that expense now.
Its looking like the auto loan will be paid in full at the end of August and then I can start on the 2014 Roth IRA contributions.
I still struggle with how much do I care about the food budget being low but even attempting to cut it has resulted in saving $914 this year so far. So I figure I will keep trying since its the easiest area to make a dent in and by far our most ridiculous expenditure. Sadly, all of that savings was ate up by my brother's period of unemployment. This, however, was my brother's final bail out for stupid decisions so further savings should go towards our actual goals.