Haven't updated in quite awhile...

The title of this post is our oldest son's newest nickname. I've been feeling bad that we've postponed getting him braces. Now that he's about to turn 18, we've finally gone and paid for them. The actual cost is $5,581, which includes a 5% discount for paying the entire amount up front. I hope that was the right thing to do. Our savings account is only earning 2.75% right now so I figured I might as well, but I don't like paying that much money up front. Then there were the initial x-rays needed at an additional cost, so that brought the total close to $6,000.

Our health insurance premium had a huge increase over last year. I noticed on our auto insurance policy that they only updated our mailing address, not the address where the vehicles are parked, which still showed our old address (weird). I called and corrected that and got a rate hike adjustment as a reward. Ugh. And, of course, food and gas have gone up a lot. And I'm disappointed with how much less interest we're earning from our savings account with the lower rate we're getting now.

On the positive side...

It's been 15 months since we sold our house. I am so grateful we were able to sell it when we did with the way the house prices have dropped dramatically since then. I must say it's been quite nice to have no debt and some savings.

Work (construction) has been picking up for DH. Hopefully, we can start adding to the savings account again. We've been dipping into it this winter.

DH added insulation above the ceiling (BIL/landlord paid for materials), and I've begun to notice a big difference in the utility bill.

We got our vegetable garden in early. We had one cold night when the tomato plants got damaged, but they're growing back now. We've been remembering to cover them up on cold nights since then, and that has worked well.

I've renewed my efforts at cutting down the grocery bill, an area I know has room for improvement. We'll see how that goes. My goal is to cut it down enough to eventually "pay" for my son's braces.