We are determined again. I've been trying to track all our spending this month, but have fallen short with all that's gone on. Especially since we've been using cash more, which is ultimately hard to trace.

And so I've decided that I will continue to track our purchases, but the June summary will not reflect all our spending. I just feel like I would be leaving alot out, and I want to make sure that if I look at anything analytically, that it is a true representation of our habits. All I know for sure is that we have spent more than we budgeted for this month.

I'm also going to go back to tracking our spending using this blog... I'll just post a short description of what expenses we had each day. That way I can have it all saved for the end of the month tally.

And finally... the budget is done! It will probably always be a work in progress, but I think we have some pretty good estimates in there now. I've broken down all our expenses to monthly, even if they are actually paid quarterly. At the end of the month, we will take the money we had set aside for that eventual expense and mail it to our savings account. It can collect interest for a month or two before we withdraw it for its actual purpose.

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In other news, we converted our cell phones to a FamilyTalk plan tonight. The change will take effect on July 8th, so I'm not sure if it will be reflected in our next bill or not. Our separate plans gave us 450 anytime minutes apiece, and cost about $120 before taxes and fees. The FamilyTalk plan gives us 700 anytime minutes to share (unlimited in our network), for $105 before taxes. So hopefully in the end, we will save a little money.

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I haven't heard anything from the woman I had talked to about babysitting. She emailed me from Craigslist, and said it would be a while before she needed me, but it would be nice to have the extra money soon.

I also attempted another article on AssociatedContent, this one about living with Great Danes (something I have LOTS of experience with)! It can take 2 days for them to get approved, so once I have something published I will put the link in a blog entry or somewhere.

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I'm off work tomorrow, so yay. That means I get to do some more free (library book) reading! We might rent a movie as well, since it only costs $1 out of the Walmart machine.

I got quite a bit of my coursework done at work today. We have independent study courses that we have to complete along with our regular training, and we have been so busy that I feel like I've fallen behind with it. I was able to submit four completed courses today, and request materials for four more, so hopefully I am headed in the right direction.